Last weekend at Dry River we had the honor of hosting Miguel, a Brazilian Indymedia videographer, and his new film, "Brad, One More Night At the Barricades," which tells the story of Brad Will, his (activist) life, and the "movement of movements" that he was a part of.

The film was really well-made, and really thought-provoking. It was told in a personal style, with the narration of Miguel tying it together with his own personal take on his murdered friend, along with the interviews with other friends of Brad, and it did a great job of depicting that feeling, which I have felt, of wondering, in a dangerous situation, when you should stop filming and take action to protect your own self. True, there was a lot of "riot porn," but overall it was a very thoughtful and powerful addition to the library of Indymedia films that try to tell the story of this struggle we're all in... Furthermore, it had the effect of softening some of my objections to the whole Oaxaca/Brad martyr/hero phenomenon.

I was going to call this post "Rich White People With Cameras Protecting Poor Brown People From Even Richer White People With Guns." But I thought that seeing that headline before reading some of the context of my thoughts would be a little too inflammatory.

It's complicated, but basically, Brad Will was one of a type of indie-journalists, a group that I'm a sometime member of too: privileged, globe-travelling white media activists, touching down in "oppression hot spots," nominally to try to document injustice and the fight against it, and get that documentation out to people who need to see it. I do that, I've done that, along with hundreds of others. And with each person, each member of this privileged group, their story is different, and the extent to which they pursue that mission with integrity is different, and varies over time, too.

Brad was no hero, and neither am I. Did I fly to Guatemala 3 years ago to go to school and improve my spanish so that I could interview the mothers of murdered girls in Juarez without an interpreter? Yes. Did I also go to Guatemala to escape winter and the boredom of everyday existence? Yes. Are there many young rich white kids with camcorders that travel to activist mobilizations with sometimes more ulterior motives than virtuous objectives? Yes.

There were similar, shall we say, complications in Brad's life, even personal imperfections I've heard about that I will discretely refrain from detailing here. However, overall, after seeing Miguel's film, I feel like Brad had a level of dedication and integrity that puts him at least at some level above the average in this group I'm talking about. He truly put his body on the line many times over the years in many places, from the Lower East Side to the Pacific Northwest to Northeast Brazil, before that day in Oaxaca where he filmed his own death. I believe now that his heart was in the right place, and though he made some mistakes, he made them for the right reasons. (Still, though the desire to not make a hero of Brad was mentioned in the film, its biggest shortcoming, I feel, is not following up on this desire quite enough.)

Greta and I talked about this with our friend Kai, a freelance photographer from Germany who has spent years in hotspots like Palestine, Iraq, and Kosovo. Do you ever think, as I do, I asked him, that it might be more effective to send or bring cameras to the oppressed peoples whose struggles you document, something like the Chiapas Media Project, and enable them to tell their own stories, instead of making trip after trip to these far-off places to tell their stories for them?

No, he said with confidence. Because white internationals won't be killed, at least not as often, and by their very presence they protect the people they're with. In fact, he said, "When in a place like that I always go with at least one other white person, so that if they kill me, at least he will witness it. 500 Palestinians claiming that I was murdered doesn't count, but one fellow white journalist does."

So what we came up with is this: Yes, we're privileged. But the mission before us is to use that privilege with integrity and purpose, as tools - tools that are a shield and a magnifying glass to protect from and reveal injustice. There are, for each of us, flaws and contradictions and failings in the day to day living of this mission, and there are people, frankly, that try harder than others. I now think Brad was probably one of those that tried at least somewhat harder than most.

Still, he shouldn't be made into a martyr, or an icon. I still flinch whenever I see his photo on the banners of indymedia sites. Honoring his memory is one thing, but making him into some sort of permanent patron saint of the Independent Media Center, turned into a logo next to a red star, is not appropriate. We do Brad an injustice by iconifying him, turning him into a symbol, just as my previous disapproval with him was really a disapproval of a stereotype that he came to symbolize for me, before Miguel's film taught me enough about him to de-symbolize him, make him real - a real person, with real dreams, commitments, desires and shortcomings, and real beliefs that he voiced in real words that had real pauses and "umms" and "uhs" in between them.

Thanks Miguel. Great job.

So I got peeved this afternoon when after I posted to a social list I'm on a last-minute announcement about an event concerning Prisoner Support and Solidarity, at Dry River tonight, this person wrote back:

On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:32 PM, nmyers@igc.org wrote:
Wait a muinute...don't forget that tonight is the special showing of the
film "Taxi to the Dark Side" at the Loft. 7:00.
Please come and have your potluck and films another time.

The nerve of some people. How ridiculously lame! So I replied:

Nancy,
Night life, or activism for that matter, in Tucson isn't, or shouldn't be, IMHO, a competition, and my announcement didnt say to skip your screening at the Loft, so I quite resent that you seem to think that your event is more important than anything else and that you seem to think that it's okay to actively discourage people from doing something else. The event at Dry River has been planned for months and is at least as worthy of people's attention and attendance. A tunnel-vision, zero-sum, cuthroat jockeying for the time and interest of your fellow community members is not the way to treat other community groups that are or should be allies.

That pretty much says it all.

I've been asked for suggestions about fundraising for Denver IMC's coverage of the DNC this summer. They need twelve thousand dollars, apparently.

Not that I know anything special about fundraising. However, I actually think covering the DNC and RNC protests should be deemphasized, as should be the protests itself - the more media coverage of these things there are, the more sexy they seem and the more protesters will come to them and future iterations - But these mass mobilizations are a dead and tired and wasteful tactic, IMHO, and especially the party conventions, because, for one reason, for the last several elections the nominees are already chosen beforehand, and the conventions are just theater...

As far as funding goes, if possible the people that are still committed to the tactic should pay for it, but here's an idea: maybe there are some folks who could be persuaded to NOT come to Denver, and could send money instead that they would have spent on travel, that could fund local activist organizing and local indymedia coverage. If 24 people who would have spent $500 flying to denver just stayed home (or 50 that would have spent 250, or whatever, you get the idea), they'd not only have enough to cover the $12K, but they'd save literally tons of greenhouse gases...

Or at least use your carbon credit money, if you believe in that bullshit, to fund green media projects in Colorado. Or whatever, but let's just do SOMETHING different, folks, cuz this shit is tired!

Well, I'd heard some rumors, but today it became true. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is going to use the waiver power given to him under little-known section 102 of the RealID Act to ignore all laws on the entire U.S.-Mexico border, so that the department can go ahead and build the border wall and not have to deal with any more legal challenges.

As of March 17, there were 309 miles of fencing in place, leaving 361 to be completed by the end of the year to meet the department's goal. Of those, 267 miles are being held up by federal, state and local laws and regulations, the officials said... building in some areas requires assessments and studies that

• steev's blog

I've been using Good Reads a lot to review books and get tips from friends of good stuff they're reading.

Last week I read a book called "Unmarketable." It has a detailed and workable plan for resisting and totally destroying all commercial marketing everywhere and then in fact eradicating corporate consumer culture completely! It's a great book!

April Fools.

No, actually, the book was kind of underwhelming.

A lot of it is old hat to me, the copyright stuff, etc, but it documents some very recent developments in marketing that are extremely disturbing.

If you've already read books like Conquest of Cool, No Logo, Captains of Conciousness, or been reading zines like Stay Free!, this is not going to be a really useful or revelatory book.

Overall, i was disappointed because the book doesn't really provide many solutions. there's a chapter at the end called "taking dissent off the market", but it only provides one example, and a pretty tepid one, of people trying to fight and answer these latest trends in marketing. it also didn't address a fundamental question: why do some people not "get it"? Why do people, even people involved with "underground" or DIY expression, not "get" that it's a political act, and that you're helping to dilute and destroy integrity every time you go over to the other side? I guess it's just like every other political issue - some see the problem, others are just living blissfully stupid and happy. And I suppose some might say that about me (like maybe some think i'm a blissfully stupid idiot for not agreeing that fighting for impeachment of Bush is vitally important and worthy of my time).

Anyway, the book mostly just created a sense of hopelessness, and a depressed feeling that the only way to really prevail over corporate hegemony is some sort of a Fight Club style destruction of our entire civilization. sigh.

author: Anne Elizabeth Moore

name: Steev

average rating: 3.37

book published: 2007

rating: 3

read at: 2008/03/01

date added: 2008/04/01

shelves: politics

Yesterday I was biking home after videotaping a yoga class for a client (and friend), and I noticed a couple dozen people, many who I knew from my neighborhood, digging holes in a vacant lot a couple blocks from my house. There was a huge hand-painted sign ready to be installed that said "Ramona-Magon Memorial Garden and Autonomous Community Park". Wow, I thought, that is so cool. You see, this vacant lot was city property, and it was about to be in the path of a huge new road project that has been a hot battle for years.

Greta and I came back a little later and grabbed some shovels to help out. I took some photos. People were putting in benches, planting native plants, digging water basins. The idea was to put something else valuable to the community there, obstructing the construction project.

My arms are still tired from chopping up caliche (the hardened desert earth that is so common around here) and shovelling dirt, but it felt good to be part of the project. This was a perfect example direct action that I would wholeheartedly embrace. Even if it gets destroyed and doesn't stop the highway, I feel like it is still effective, because planting plants and generating the kind of constructive, barnraising kind of positive feeling is a great thing for the community, even if it is only temporary.

Anyway, I wrote an article on Arizona Indymedia about it. Read more. Look at more photos.

author: George Orwell

name: Steev

average rating: 4.01

book published: 1949

rating: 5

read at:

date added: 2008/03/30

shelves:

review:

author: William Golding

name: Steev

average rating: 3.58

book published: 1954

rating: 3

read at:

date added: 2008/03/30

shelves:

review:

author: George Orwell

name: Steev

average rating: 3.71

book published: 1945

rating: 4

read at:

date added: 2008/03/30

shelves:

review: