Hi Al and friends,

Excellent reply. I thought the open letter and response would be linked from the Narco News homepage. Also, why isn’t it open to comments? Is anyone actually going to see it, just sitting there in the lab section of the site?

My reaction to the letter was the same as yours: would have considered signing had it not been for the last paragraph. Even then, the questions seem premised on a guilt-by-association mode of thought, so I don’t think I’d have signed. Maybe if they were worded differently.

But I respect the desire to ask questions of a think tank that is not very transparent, that emanated condescension and indifference at the school, that made a grave mistake in 2005 for which its President did not apologize. One of the positive things I can imagine coming out of this is for the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) to respond with some new, useful level of detail and coherence about who they are and what they do.

I’ve had friendly conversations with some of the TeleSur reporters you mentioned. I disagree with them strongly. They are convinced the ICNC is a malevolent organization, likely a front for the US government, and I haven’t seen the evidence for that yet. They can’t stomach having anything to do with the group. To me the ICNC appears more disorganized and clueless, when it comes to Latin America, than anything else.

People should judge us journalists principally on our body of work. The notion that merely going to a school in Mexico for ten days where the ICNC gave some presentations irreparably taints me, or casts lasting doubt on my journalistic independence is repulsive. It’s an insult to the intelligence of the school’s participants and grassroots organizations in various countries that have listened to the group’s spiel.

What you said about journalists’ willingness to be fired from their jobs is right-on. As I explained at the school, I’ve been approached by various corporate media since the earthquake in Haiti. I will use them to fund my work and reach wider audiences, with the expectation that I might choose to end the relationship or be fired at any moment because of their penchant for sensationalism, misinformation, and incompetence.

My integrity will never depend on a salary. I know that if I’m doing valuable work in today’s wired, increasingly diverse media economy, an audience will be there to support it. That’s why I came to Haiti, back when no one paid much attention to the place, full of hope and confidence.

One thing I agree with some critics on: it would have helped to invite and address all questions specifically about the ICNC’s role in the school in a prominent public form at the start – whether by blog post or in person. This was a brewing controversy already familiar to many involved with the school. I’m reminded of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry’s 2004 run for US President, which his campaign ignored and thought other people would ignore. It was a mistake – even though the accusations had no basis in fact, they spread by various means and became a huge issue.

I wouldn’t have been distracted at times, wondering if a few long plenaries with Jim Lawson, Jack DuVall, et al. were a condition of the money, had it been crystal-clear that the ICNC’s participation in the school was strictly at your invitation from the beginning. And I have no doubts about that now.

I was hoping for more a little more hands-on journalism and civil resistance training from the school. The content of the ICNC’s lectures on non-violence didn’t strike me as groundbreaking (or manipulative) material. The dynamics of non-violent civil resistance are best understood in the midst of a movement, but an overview of its history and tactics can learned from books, films, and independent research.

The vital practice of authentic journalism cannot be learned this way. This is why the School for Authentic Journalism is so important, why it deserves the support of citizens and institutions the world over. I hope to return.

Those are my thoughts for today. I recorded audio of the multi-hour debate about the ICNC that took place on February 11 within the school. If anyone is interested in reviewing it, contact me by e-mail.

And now back to work. Hopefully no more aftershocks for a while!

Best,
Ansel

Jerry called me a few days after the quake, huddled with hundreds of people in a space without food and water. I was lining up a profile story with him before the catastrophe. But he’s already back at work, it appears. See some of his pre-disaster work here. He even tackled the problem of Haiti’s deforestation with his art, in an amusing way.

It’s unfortunate that the Young Lords are not as well known among broader public as the Black Panthers. The group was arguably more progressive for its time. Patriarchy and other oppressions within the Young Lords started to break down quickly when members challenged those hierarchies inherited from society. The Lords had deep roots in and support from the “El Barrio” community.

Which makes the New York Lords’ sudden and swift decline all the more puzzling. Why did the group fall apart after just two years of success? What can radicals learn from the Young Lords?

I cannot find any audio or video from Sunday’s forum online, oddly, to help answer those questions. You can hear Democracy Now co-host and Lords co-founder Juan Gonzalez speak on his experience in this interview.

I attempted to answer the question posed above myself last year in a paper for a ‘Radical Social Movements’ class. I’m posting it online now, to share it with y’all and Google’s indexer. The paper is entitled “The Young Lords: Examining Its Deficit of Democracy and Decline. Read it here →

An opening summary paragraph is below, but consider reading the paper itself. It analyzes the Lords’ rise and fall in some detail.

The New York Young Lords broke under the weight of unrelenting police harassment and infiltration, compounded by a series of tactical missteps that ignored the main source of their strength – their support from the Puerto Rican urban poor. These communities were oppressed and ignored, rather than represented, by social institutions. The Young Lords stepped into that vacuum and restored a sense of pride and togetherness to “El Barrio” in East Harlem. But the leadership of the organization subsequently turned its focus away from the direct action campaigns that inspired unprecedented solidarity in the ghetto. The group’s paramilitary structure was over-dependent on the charisma and cooperation of a few leaders and failed to recognize the voices of the Young Lords’ rank and file members. An attempt to open a revolutionary front on the island of Puerto Rico proved to be a fatal mistake, spreading the organization too thin, diverting resources from community programs, and initiating an acrimonious factionalism in the leadership from which the Lords would not recover. With much of the original leadership resigned or exiled, a hardline Marxist clique took over the Lords and it disintegrated.

Link to full paper. Also see Vivirlatino’s reflection on the Young Lords Party and Democracy Now’s coverage.

What are the lessons of the Young Lords’ history in your opinion? Critiques of the paper? Hit me up in the comments.

This started out as a story for Free Speech Radio News but didn’t make it into today’s newscast. I’ve heard of the Flash player not working for a few folks. Listen to the MP3 if that’s the case for you. Cross-posted to Houston Indymedia, now featured on Indymedia.us.

A Fort Hood soldier faced a military trial today for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, one week after another member of his unit was sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to go to war. Sergeant Travis Bishop was convicted on all charges and sentenced to one year in prison, loss of pay, and reduction in rank.

Unlike Victor Agosto, who resisted deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that the war is unconstitutional, Bishop is a conscientious objector. He opposes all wars because of his Christian faith. I spoke with Bishop on Friday evening before he was sentenced.

“Jesus is very vocal about non-violent conflict resolution. Jesus is very, very anti-war. You can tell from all his sermons. As far as my state of mind I feel good. I feel better about facing prison because of that belief than going to Afghanistan and coming back a quote unquote ‘American hero.’”

Bishop says he realized he could file for conscientious objector status only days before his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan in March. He left the sprawling Killeen base for one week and is now charged with going AWOL and disobeying orders.

Desertion rates among the Army ranks rose 80 percent between 2003 and 2007. With tens of thousands more troops now headed to Afghanistan, anti-war activist Cynthia Thomas says G.I. support networks are crucial. She co-founded the Under the Hood Outreach Center and Cafe in Killeen.

“Our soldiers know here at Fort Hood that if they choose to be a soldier of conscience and resist orders to deploy that we are here, that they have the support, that we have this network here in Killeen. It’s really amazing sometimes when you have all these boys in here, sometimes they just come into sleep, to get away from the base…”

Bishop said he wouldn’t be able to resist deployment orders without the support from the local coffeehouse.

“Under the Hood has been incredibly good to me. They said no matter what my decision, deploy or not deploy, they were going to support me. I don’t think I’d have been able to do this at all, just by my lonesome. I don’t.”

Bishop said he hopes his decision will inspire other troops to question their service in the military. Last week supporters of Victor Agosto from across Texas gathered at Under the Hood cafe and rallied across from Fort Hood. [Chants from rally]

They’ll rally outside the base again for Travis Bishop this evening. Ansel Herz, Austin.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia.

Yesterday the 10-week-long occupation of the Ssangyong automotive plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, by striking workers was broken by a final, violent police assault. When Ssangyong went bankrupt and announced the firings of thousands of assembly-line workers, they armed and barricaded themselves inside the plant. I spoke with Loren Goldner, an author writing a book on the Korean working class who visited the factory in June, on Friday about the situation. The workers’ struggle has received stunningly little attention in the US corporate and alternative press. He was speaking to me from New York City. Please share and re-broadcast.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia and libcom.

Update: The podcast does not convey the “epic,” in the BBC’s words, nature of the final four-day fight the workers put up against the police. Below are pictures and videos collected from Youtube and libcom.org.

Protests coordinated by United4Iran were held in over 150 cities yesterday around the world in solidarity with the movement against the Khameini and Ahmadinejad government.

Update: Thanks again to Pouya (Flickr) for sharing his photos of the event. I’ve packaged some of Pouya’s pictures together with my audio report in the video above .

MP3. Feel free to share and re-broadcast. Transcript with links and more information below the jump.

This is a Mediahacker.org podcast recorded on July 26, 2009.

Thousands of people around the world hit the streets yesterday to say, “We have not forgotten Iran.” In June allegations of widespread fraud in the presidential election triggered a grassroots Iranian uprising in Tehran and other cities. The Iranian government unleashed a torrent of violent repression on the movement. While cell phone-images of dying and injured Iranians have faded from television screens, Iranian-Americans here in Austin, Texas, say the crisis is not over.

[Audio]

Most of Faye Amanifar’s family lives in Iran. She’s lived in Austin for the past twenty years. She said the Iranian protests are not about the election itself or the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

[Audio]

About 200 [maybe 300?] people joined Faye in marching from City Hall over the bridge to Auditorium Shores at dusk. [Audio] Snehal Shingavi, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, said democracy in Iran could only come from a grassroots movement.

[Audio]

When the now-disputed president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was last in the United States, he famously said this:

[Audio]

W. H. and his partner drove three hours from Houston to attend the rally.

[Audio] [More information at http://www.irqr.net.]

Darkness fell shortly after the green-colored mass of marchers crossed the bridge. With just one light illuminating a makeshift stage, two young men played traditional Persian music for the crowd. [Music]

This has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, I’m Ansel Herz in Austin.

Extended video on Youtube and more photos at Pouya’s photostream.

This was my second time traveling out to Hutto. Transcript and more information below.

[Chanting]

“I’ve known about this place, this is just my first time coming here. When I first got here, I actually felt like crying because I felt so angry that they would do this to people. Everybody talks about peace in the world and stuff, but this has nothing to do with it…”

18-year-old Yvette Garza joined about a hundred people from around Texas on Saturday afternoon in Taylor, a forty-minute drive from Austin. For the third year in a row, activists marked World Refugee Day with a march across town to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detention center holding undocumented families, including at least 100 women and young children. Jose Orta, a Taylor resident, said the corporate-run facility should be shut down.

“They are incarcerated. And those children have done nothing, nothing wrong. They are non-criminals. Yet they are in a medium-security prison. No matter what you call it – you can call it a detention facility or a residential facility, whatever. It is a medium-security prison, and T. Don Hutto’s got to go!”

[Marching]

“People started making profits for people wanting to make money off of people’s misery.”

Conrado Acevedo, an activist with the indigenous coalition ‘Defense of Our Mother,’ traveled from Houston.

“They used to let ‘em go and then they would show up in court, which was the more humane way. But now when you put people in jail, especially a mother with kids, I mean that’s totally uncomprehensible in a supposedly democratic society. So we’ve been coming here for two years…”

[Sound]

The march eventually spilled onto an field alongside the facility. Marchers raised their voices, hoping the kids inside would hear them.

The group rallied for another few hours with music and speeches in the blazing sun across from the detention center. They vowed to continue protesting until the facility is closed and the families are released.

It’s June 22, 2009, this has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, and I’m Ansel Herz.

Cross-posted to Youtube and to HIMC. Learn more:

• T. Don Hutto blog
• America’s Family prison short film by Matt Gossage
• “The Least of These” film
• More pictures at Houston Indymedia

2000: A tight presidential election is decided by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, cutting short a ballot recount process in Florida. The winner of the popular vote and probable winner in Florida, Al Gore, promptly concedes.

2004: In Ohio the Secretary of State chairs the state campaign of the incumbent President Bush. Lower-income communities and people of color complain of long lines in polling stations. Kerry quickly concedes. Karl Rove denied having anything to do with the death by plane crash of Michael Connell, a Republican “tech guru,” before his scheduled testimony about alleged manipulation of electronic voting machines in Ohio. His family wants the truth..

But hey, no election is perfect. The United States is the greatest democracy in the world, after all. No big deal.

Unlike, say, that country over there we didn’t invade. That fundamentalist theocracy run by that crazy guy who wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ (actually a mistranslation) with nukes, Iran (say ‘eee-ron’ not ‘I-ran’). When an American journalist was recently jailed by the Iranian regime on bogus charges for weeks, big media were all over the story.

Now the incumbent Ahmadinejad has claimed victory in Iran’s presidential election, but supporters of the opposition candidate have alleged electoral fraud.

See, in a mature democracy like ours, we’d agree to put an end to the bitter election season. The opposition concedes, and America moves on.

But Iran is so backward and authoritarian. The opposition candidate is still contesting the results! Even the U.S. government is concerned with the integrity of the election.

Oh, and Iranians – women, men, young and old – are taking to the streets in huge numbers in mostly non-violent protest. As you can see in this video, Iran is severely lacking in modern democracy.

Thankfully, the corporate media isn’t showing much of this trivial news. There’s nothing for us to learn from or about Iran. Even as a close follower of the press, I didn’t grasp the scope of these protests until today. Darn those blogs and alternative news outlets.

Previously on Mediahacker: Media oblivious to police attack on Iraq vets. Because veterans come home to be honored with rhetoric, not to protest and be heard.

Update: Cartoonist Matt Bors nails it below.

Update: The Southwest Workers Union is calling for a phone blast directed at Amnesty International and the Haitian Consulate in Haiti to stop Rama Carty’s deportation (info). Also, here (MP3) are excerpts of my interview with Sarnata Reynolds, Refugee Program Director at Amnesty.

From my story in today’s Free Speech Radio News headlines (listen here):

An update to a story FSRN has been following about a hunger strike at a Texas Immigration detention center… Human rights groups say they are concerned about an immigrant detainee who was suddenly moved to Louisiana for deportation yesterday. His tranfer comes after he spoke with representatives of Amnesty International at the Texas detention center where he was leading the hunger strike. FSRN’s Ansel Herz reports.

39-year-old Rama Carty has lived in the United States since he was 15-months-old. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has never been to Haiti, where his parents are from, but he is scheduled to be deported there in about one week. For the past month Carty has helped lead a hunger strike at the Port Isabel Detention Center near Brownsville, Texas. After speaking with Amnesty International staff earlier this week, Carty was woken up Wednesday by prison guards and informed he was going to be transferred. Sarnata Reynolds, the Refugee Program Director at Amnesty International USA, describes what followed.

“We were told by other immigrants in the detention facility that an altercation took place and that there was a use of force by the immigration guards. His early morning transfer after he had spoken to us seemed to have a chilling effect on the immigrants that we spoke to that day. There was a lot of fear that he had been moved and transferred quickly because he had spoken to us.”

Community activists who spoke to detainees in the facility say Rama Carty was threatened, beaten and removed for speaking out about the conditions inside. Anayanse Garza with the Southwest Workers Union told FSRN she is worried about escalating repression of other protesting detainees inside the Port Isabel Detention Center. Ansel Herz, FSRN, Austin.

Listen to the excerpts of my interview with Anayanse Garza below (MP3).

I’ll try to upload my interview with Sarnata Reynolds from Amnesty Intl soon. Garza says individuals and groups around the country need to put pressure on Homeland Security, particularly Special Advisor on ICE and Detention & Removal Dora Schriro, to stop Rama Carty from being deported to Haiti. Get on it, folks!

• Previously on Mediahacker: Activists hold vigil for immigrant detainees on hunger strike
• Listen to Renee Feltz’ interview with Rama Carty from April here.
• For more information, see the Southwest Workers’ Union press release from earlier today here.