Well, damn. I never really read Clamor Magazine until the latest issue, which has multiple muckraking articles about American Apparel and how the feel-good t-shirt company of choice for so many socially concious t-shirt wearers is actually not that great at all.

I've been meaning to blog about that every since I read that issue a month ago. Now I see that Clamor actually is folding due to financial problems. Sad. It seems like a really great publication.

(via Josh Breitbart's blog)

Brad Will, an indymedia videographer based in New York, was shot dead in Oaxaca, apparently by paramilitary PRI party supporters. The best story on the event I have seen is in Narco News. It's all over mainstream media too, which is horribly spinning it, saying it was a shoot out, gunfire coming also from the side of the APPO barricade (APPO being the teacher's union organization leading the strikes against Oaxaca governor Ruiz that have been going on for months and have shutdown the city).

I didn't know Brad but I knew of him. I can't reminisce about him. In fact the first I heard of him was not a positive anecdote at all. But he apparently did a lot of good work, and a lot of people knew him and are grieving. And I'm sad, even if just in principle. This I fear is a watershed moment for media activism and the indymedia movement. This has never happened before, not quite this way - it's really just incredible, like a nightmare. we all think, those of us priveleged with whiteness and 1st-worldness and with expensive cameras to hold up to our faces, that we have a shelter from being beat up or killed by thugs in corrupt "third world" lands. This has always been an illusion, and it's been proven an illusion before in small ways, but this does it in a big way.

I guess my hope is that this at least has some positive impact in the struggle, and serves to bring to light the horrible things going down in Oaxaca right now, and in larger sense, more of Mexico, and maybe the U.S. will do something, condemn this somehow.

Well, I'll stop there. I can't say anything else useful. There's a page on nyc imc where people are paying their respects.

In response to a callout for help from Indymedia Centers to fund an IMC in Nairobi for the upcoming World Social Forum, I wrote this:

I have very mixed feelings about the Social Forum model, especially
after going to my first one last weekend, the Border Social Forum.

I think Indymedia should only be heavily involved (in terms of time
and/or finances) if it is actively engaged in (constructively)
critiquing the social forums. I see them as fundamentally instruments
of liberal NGOs now, tho they may be rescueable. Therefore indymedia
MUST have a more critical and nuanced view of them than previous
coverage.

Also if there will be an Alternative Social Forum in Nairobi similiar
to the one in Caracas, I would urge very strongly that imcistas get
involved with that and that more coverage is done of it.

Regardless, personally I have way too many things going on in this
hemisphere, especially in january, to go to the WSF or to do
fundraising or other activity around it.

my 2 cents

My father now has a blog. I seem to remember just a year ago him sort of poo-pooing the idea of him ever doing a blog. So many friends have blogs now I sometimes catch myself thinking of friends that don't have them and wondering why they havent posted to theirs in so long.

There are definitely some people I really wish had blogs, really wish I could have a more regular and detailed connection with their lives and thoughts. When will the direct neural RSS-feed get invented?
uugggh. just kidding [shiver].

In other, somewhat related, news, I finally saw Science of Sleep yesterday. It was pretty great, though not quite as great as I was expecting. It's all about dreams, and a guy that's always confusing dreams with reality, which makes it unsurprising that i was left with a feeling of "and it was all a dream" walking out of the theater. But I can't help thinking I wanted a little less dreaminess and more "reality" - the quotes mean that i thought the reality of the film would be a little more fantastic, less "normal world" - I guess I thought the story was going to be a little more science fiction, maybe sort of like Wim Wenders' "Until the End of the World" (which also had a lot to do with dreams), and that Stephane would be a little more of a hero-inventor, and a little less pathetic loser-inventor.

But, I still highly recommend the flim. Best Hollywood fare I've seen all year, I'd say.

Jessica wrote a short but good article in the new issue of the NYC Indypendent about Rising Tide, a new group focused on slowing global warming by slowing its source: fossil fuel use.

"...most other organizations who say they work for climate protection merely promote technological reforms to the capitalist economy, and shy away from demanding deep changes that address the common causes of war, social and economic injustice and ecological destruction."

After 5 days in San Francisco I have now zipped down to the City of Angels on a plane and am ensconced in the Los Feliz home of friends José and Ana. It was an extremely short flight without incident. The Burbank airport is extremely small and convenient to here.

San Francisco was great, for the most part. The two screenings went really well. One was attended by less than I expected, and one by more, so things evened out, I guess. The first one had some music beforehand by 2 of the musicians who did the soundtrack. So it was interesting because some fans of theirs came, and then there were people who came just to see the film, and I'm happy to kind of mix up those 2 demographics and jostle some expectations. Sadly most progressive activist types are culturally regressive, in my experience, so the music was a little "challenging" to some people. oh well.

It was really nice being back in SF. I got to spend one great afternoon at the beach with a friend. Put my DVD on consignment at 3 different places. Saw several people again that I like to spend time with. Sadly one person that I most wanted to see refused to see me, and that made me sad. She's my ex who has continued being my good friend for 4 years since we broke up, but now it looks like we won't be friends anymore and that sucks. I only got a couple hours of sleep last night because I was upset about that and talking to other friends about it all night. Tough times.

Well, now to explore the neighborhood. I want to see if I can impress myself with L.A. this time. I lived here for a year, 10 years ago, and didn't like it, but I think I just didnt go to the right parts, maybe.

Chris from NYC Indymedia writes on his blog about citizen journalism a lot. The other day he wrote about the idea that citizen journalism is really still quite a priveleged activity, and that even a lot of people who can do it just are not going to do it. He quotes lots of bloggers and also Subcommandante Marcos saying in 1997:

The world of contemporary news is a world that exists for the VIP's-- the very important people," Marcos said. "Their everyday lives are what is important: if they get married, if they divorce, if they eat, what clothes they wear, or what if they clothes they take off-- these major movie stars and big politicians. But common people only appear for a moment-- when they kill someone, or when they die." One of the original hopes of Indymedia was that it would empower the very people who were being increasingly ignored by the corporate press to cover themselves, to "be their own media." And while, as Josh Breitbart notes, the citizen's media revolution has succeeded, the poor and marginalized are still being left behind.

Read the rest, it's interesting, if you're interested in the topic.

If my blogging software permitted, this post would be marked not only in the personal category but in every other category that I've defined, and more. That's because this entry is about how many different things I'm involved with and how that's a problem.

But before I get too far into that I will link to a post i just published on another blog that I seldom use, on the delete the border site, relating recent news about arizona border crossing deaths and stuff.

Now I move on into saying this: I'm doing too much and I need to figure out how to jettision some stuff if i intend to feel better about myself and stay sane, because very little of it is getting done in a quality way. Here's the list, or everything i can think of now:

1. dry river
2. no more deaths media work
3. arizona indymedia
4. panleft (i've just agreed to be a board member! argh! what am i thinking!?)
5. Root Force
6. new Tucson "border radicals" group
7. my juarez film - setting up the tour in july
8. War Tax Resistance video projects
9. editor of Indymedia Newsreal
10. bolivia computer project
11. a newish relationship that's very important to me and needs lots of care.
12. work, for a new job with lots of annoying bueaucratic obstacles to being paid what i'm supposed to be, not to mention lots of work that requires my creative and thougtful input.
13. green scare - at least this will be over after the event we're having this saturday.

The most important things are 2, 7, 11, and 12. A few other things are impossible to get rid of right now. The rest I need to just tell people "sorry, I can't be there." Sigh.

The nice thing, though is that, as usual, just making a list of everything makes it seem like a lot less of a problem. so, yay....

Just heard about a new book by Bob Ostertag, who was the first other artist I ever hosted on my website, Detritus.net, starting back in 1997. He's a professor at UC Davis now, and I didn't even know he was working on this book. since I know him exclusively as an electronic music composer, it was a big surprise to find out about this. tho I know that he took 10 years off from music to be a freelance journalist and activist in central america back in the 80s. (In the early 90s he released a CD that is one hour or so long piece made of a sample of a small boy in El Salvador talking and crying while burying his dead father who was killed by death squads. It's still one of the most heart-wrenching pieces of music i've ever heard. )

Anyway, looks like a good book, tho it seems to be only historical, not about present trends like indymedia. chronologically it only goes up through the 70s or so.

Saw a story about a pirate radio station basically in my home town, on Phlegm's blog (out of Urbana, Illinois), getting hassled by the FCC due to complaints from Clear Channel and Cumulus. And they're fighting back in interesting ways!

I say basically because it's in Bettendorf, one of the the 4 Quad Cities. I grew up in Davenport, the other quad city on the Iowa side of the river.

Who woulda thunk, pirate radio there? One set of my parents live in Bettendorf and they said it's been big news there.