Mexico – A list of random things
I just returned from spending three weeks in Southern Mexico and Mexico City. It was my first time in Mexico, aside from once, more than 10 years ago, when I was in El Paso and I walked across the border to Juarez for an hour. I have a lot of mixed feelings about traveling internationally. Here are some notes on what I did and where I went and what I thought. And yes, I like lists. I posted a few photos on my Flickr page.
- I met lots of nice people while I was there. Most of the time I spent with my friend Ramor. He wrote a book in 2006 called Clandestines, and contributes a lot to the website Upside Down World. He also is working on a new book, which I am looking forward to. I also met some people who have this great organization called COMPPA, which helps helps indigenous communities in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras set up radio stations. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s just money. Really.
Yes, every year I post about where I am planning on donating money and encourage you to donate as well. Here’s my post from last year, where I talk about what the financial impact to social movements would be if people gave away just 1% of their income.
Today, I would like to reference, again, this quote from activist and media scholar Sut Jhally , which while it talks about independent media, can obviously be applied to broader social movements as well:
“Independent media have been severely under-funded relative to how much individuals give to the corporate media. If you have cable, and I include myself in this when I think about where I spend my money, my media money, if you have cable or satellite TV or a connection to the internet, you are directly funding corporate media. People think nothing of spending $100 or more a month on cable and the internet. And yet independent media has to beg to get a few scraps. I just did the math on this. It’s sometimes really good to fantasize—fantasy is always a prerequisite for social change—Let’s presume you could get a million people on the Left to take media issues seriously. That’s actually, given that MoveOn has three and a half million members and a lot of other sites have membership in the millions, that is not an unreasonable thing. Let’s say you could get a million people to rethink their media consumption and their media expenditures. Let’s say you could get a million people to spend $100 a month on independent media. If you don’t have a calculator, I’ll do the math for you. That is 1.2 billion dollars. If we act together and if we make the media something that is central to how we think about politics, think of what that would make possible, and how we would aid progressive forces in this country. Why don’t we do that? Because media issues are still seen as secondary.”
We need to start taking the issue of funding seriously. Now.
So, here’s who I will be giving money to this year:
On Anniversaries, Part Two: Seattle
The first Clamor cover, featuring the 1999 WTO Protests
Last year on the anniversary of the 1999 Seattle anti-WTO protests, I wrote “Self-reflection is an important part of developing movements for social change, and I hope that as the 10th anniversary approaches, more long term activists will publish/post their reflections on this critical time.” I am happy that many of them have, and quite a few are linking the Seattle anniversary to the upcoming protests at the UNFCC climate talks in Copenhagen, saying that this is a “Seattle-type moment.” Naomi Klein recently published a widely distributed article on this topic called, “Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up.“
Lessons from Seattle
One of these people is my old friend David Solnit, who I have mentioned a lot before and interviewed for the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest earlier this year. Along with his sister Rebecca Solnit, Stephanie Guillioud, Chris Dixon, and Anuradha Mittal, he has produced a book called “The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle,” which looks at the struggle to claim and control the narrative of what happened there over the last 10 years. I’ve been working with them a bit to help publicize the book, because I think it is important. As David says, what people think happened in Seattle shapes what they believe about protest, direct action, social change movement, corporate globalization and capitalism. David, and many others, believe that the fight against the WTO in 1999 has never stopped, and is linked to continued struggles against corporate power.
The booklet is great. In the section on lessons for organizers, they discuss what made Seattle so successful, including: clear what and why logic; broad publicity/outreach; mass training and mass organization; decentralization; action agreements; open organizing; and media & framing. While the booklet has a lot of historical reflection, it is so focused on helping social movements go forward, confronting myths within the activist community about how Seattle was organized and what made it successsful.
On Anniversaries
Thursday was the anniversary of my dad’s death. Last year, I wrote a post about it a few weeks after he died and always intended to write more, and though I’m not quite sure I’m ready, I don’t feel I can really let the anniversary go by without marking it.
So, on anniversaries. Taking time to do something special or to memorialize a person in some way seems important, but at the same time, it’s not as if I don’t think about him every day. What did happen was that as the day approached I started remembering everything that was going on last year and feeling a lot of anxiety – just remembering the events brought those emotions forward to the present. I think about how difficult his life was in the last few years, when he his body was working against him and he was struggling to find meaning in his life. I marvel at how strong my mom is. I also found it very difficult to talk about with people, but I miss him.
I guess that’s all I really have to say about it right now. The photo here is of my dad as a baby, with his parents, likely taken where they lived in Detroit, Michigan. This photo was probably taken around 1944. His parents were German immigrants who ran a grocery store. They both died before I was born. He had six older brothers and sisters, the youngest of which was 13 years older than him, and many of them have passed away.
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Alcatraz – Prisons as Tourism
My 18-year-old niece, Emily, is visiting this week from Pittsburgh, PA. On Friday, we went to Alcatraz – I haven’t been there since the ’90s, and she really wanted to go. Well, she loved it – I think it was her favorite part of the trip.
In the picture, we’re on the ferry boat heading to the island. The tours, which run every half hour most days, are usually completely sold out. When you get to the island, you can walk around to the different building and see what it would have been like to have been a prisoner or a guard there. The warden and some guards (and their families) lived on the island, some lived in San Francisco. The cellblock features an audio tour with narration from former guards and prisoners. The prison closed in the ’60s.
Why We Protest
Stephen Dubner’s August 20th “How Much Do Protests Matter?” was a well-timed pep talk for activists everywhere. In the lead up to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this month and the United Nations climate meeting in Copenhagen in December, this is a moment to be thinking about our power.
In Dubner’s blog post, he quotes several noted activists and scholars – Chester Crocker, Bernardine Dohrn, Donna Lieberman, Juan E. Méndez, David S. Meyer, and Howard Zinn – on whether (and how) protests have shaped history.
Here are some highlights:
Juan E Méndez:
Ultimately, protest works if it intelligently combines speech with action and a genuine attempt to persuade rather than simply antagonize. Under such premises, protest will continue to be a viable, indispensable ingredient of democracy for generations to come.
My Publicity Workshop
So, I think most of you know that one of my main jobs is as a publicist working with my friends Matt and Justine through our agency, Aid & Abet. Here’s a video of a Publicity on a Shoestring workshop Justine I did in March 2009 at the Women, Action and the Media conference. Here’s the link to part 2 of the video.
Right now we’re also in the process of writing a manual so yes, you too can publicize your own book or project if you can’t afford to hire us to do it for you.
Chevron, Again
OK. Update #1 on all the projects that are overwhelming me at the moment.
On August 15, 2009, there will be a rally and protest at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA. You can find out all the details here. I will be participating and I hope you will, too.
This is not a new issue. I’ve written about it for the last several years (see June 08, May 08, March 08, and March 07)
Chevron is a huge corporation that needs to lead the way in building a sustainable energy future and be a good neighbor to the communities that surround its facilities here in Richmond and around the world. There is a broad coalition of community-based groups that are opposing the expansion/re-tooling of the Richmond refinery to refine heavier crude, and are being portrayed in the media as environtmentalists causing the community jobs. The groups need the help of the larger community to win this fight – for their future.
Three things we can do:
Security Culture
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
OK, Apparently, I am too inept to imbed a video into this blog. But, here’s the link to the MSNBC story I want you to watch.
Yes, I know that Shane, Sarah, and Josh’s detention in Iran is really upsetting. I don’t really know them and don’t know what they were doing there, but my thoughts are with them and the people that care about them right now. You know, a very obvious comment on the problems with borders.
But what I really want to talk about right now is the news story I posted above from MSNBC. I’ve been going back and forth with a few friends about Facebook and whether it’s a good thing or not, why some people choose to use it and some people don’t, and all of the arguments center around whether it’s a good idea to have so much personal information out there where you can’t control it, or you have no idea who is seeing it.
In this story, the reporters show the Facebook page of one of the people, reading aloud their status updates. I think most people believe that only your “friends” (approved people) can see these status updates, but really, not, if they are being broadcast on national TV. How is this possible with Facebook’s privacy settings? Well, all it takes is one of your approved “friends” to show your page to the news. Or, who knows. Maybe Facebook isn’t all that private. Of course, the story also showed and read from the individuals’ personal and professional websites.
Operation Bite Back
Last night I saw Dean Kuipers read from and talk about his new book, Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado’s War to Save American Wilderness at Diesel Books in Oakland.
So, I haven’t read the book yet, and when I do, I’ll review it for Ampersand. But, I wanted to shout out about it because Dean’s talk was so great.
The book is essentially the story of Rod Coronado’s life in activism, written from Dean’s experience covering Rod’s actions and animal/environmental activism for years as a reporter with the LA Times.
During his talk, Dean gave a brief overview of how the government has used different legislation such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the Patriot Act, and Terrorism Sentencing Enhancement, how those pieces of legistlation are related and how they have developed and worked over time, using Rod’s experience as an example. Dean is knowledgeable and talked about how this legislation has influenced the “Green Scare” cases. In his talk, Dean said that he felt that this has had a chilling effect on activism, and that mostly experienced activists have attempted to steer clear of actions that could be covered by these laws, while the legisltaion has primarily served to sweep up younger, less experienced activists who are looking for an outlet for their frustrations. Dean also discussed often controversial definition of “non-violent direct action,” and in general did a great job of navigating and discussing objectively a lot of the complex issues – is direct action effective? do animal releases or arsons help animals? is media coverage of activism worth it?
