A new article in Inc. Magazine about Craig Rosebraugh is actually really good and balanced. It really captures well the contradictory characteristics of Rosebraugh, a famous and controversial figure in the activist bubble of Portland. The ELF spokesman who now owns and runs a fancy vegan restaurant. The revolutionary that fires his employees when they try to organize.

The article has provoked some interesting discussion in the local IMC. I know people in this town that idolize him. Indymedia people who will voluntarily cloud their vision and values in order to stand in solidarity with Craig, because they respect him so much as a radical. I've always had mixed feelings about his work, his anti-nonviolence message backed up with years of research and convincing arguments. And it's been really really fascinating that someone who seems to be such an extremist is such a combination of conflicting values and activities.

I was just referred to a really cool sound toy. Beware, you might find yourself spending a few hours playing with it before you know it. Check out the other work the creators have made, also.

(thanx jon!)

Today the WTR conference ended. It was good, though there was a packed schedule with no time for anything else. I shot about 12 hours of footage, including 7 interviews. There was another, for-hire pro crew there that shot about 16 other interviews, with lights and a real nice pro dvcam camera. They were locals just paid by the organization to do the interviews and hand the footage over to NWTRCC, they're not themselves working on a doc. But there was lots of talk during the conference about media, how much a new doc about war tax resistance is needed and so I think it's going to happen. I won't neccesarily be me making it, but I might, and I will be thinking about that and about what I will propose to them, in between all the other things going on. It would be great if NWTRCC could find funding for such a film.

So tonite I'm staying and hanging out with my friend Alex Rivera, a great guy and much more accomplished filmmaker and documentarian than I who lives in Brooklyn. I look forward to showing him the Juarez doc and getting thoughts on it.

Flying home tommorrow.

Today I'm going to New York City for a strategy conference on war tax resistance this weekend. I'm being flown out there to videotape it and do interviews. This is a continuation of a project I've been slowly working on for 2 years now to produce a documentary about war tax resistance. I already have about 20 hours of interviews with various people, and I plan to tape a lot more at this event. It is a rare opportunity, because WTRs from all over the country will be there, and some of them are almost legendary, old-timers who've been doing WTR for 25, 30 or more years. So it will be good to get them on tape.

What does "strategy conference" mean? Well, we'll be discussing what to do within the WTR movement. How to grow it, what the goals should be, what methods would be good to get to those goals. I've thought this kind of planning is pretty important for some time, since the movement or tactic seems pretty limited, and yet it seems to be such an obvious, excellent, and satisfying tactic. In this capitalist world, what better way to attack any enemy than through their cashflow? And yet it seems that the method is not very popular, even amongst supposedly really dedicated, earnest peace activists ( I say supposedly because I really think that if you're paying your taxes that go to the military, you are working against your own anti-war activism, no matter what other forms that may take). I have a feeling that a certain segment of peace activists actually do practice war tax resistance, but in a quiet, private way. But in order to grow the movement and hence have a bigger impact, it has to be more public.

So this is the kind of thing that's going to get discussed, and I look forward to the conference.

I'm glad I can post this from the Portland airport, by the way. They now have wireless access over almost the whole length of all the terminals, and a nice intro page that pops up when you first launch a browser that shows you where you're connecting from on a map of the airport.

I'm declaring my Juarez doc to be at "release candidate" stage - In other words, it's done, unless I notice some glaring mistake or glitch. I will sigh a big sigh of relief if i watch it a couple times and don't see something crying out to be fixed.

The last few days have been a haze of waiting for final renders and wandering the industrial wasteland around where the studio is, looking for sustenance while the clouds dump drizzle on the city. Right now i'm waiting for the DVD of the final video to render. It's frustratingly slow to turn a DV file into a muxed mpeg2. I wish I understood why. There's almost nothing slower in my computing world.

If only there was internet at the GAVEL (the studio) then i could while away the waiting getting and sending email, doing other stuff needing to get done. I had to bike over here to the Back to Back cafe where they have a computer, while my laptop sits in the video dungeon working away...