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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Honor the memory of Brad Will
Wednesday 06 December @ 16:07:37 |
 by ED FELIEN
Brad Will was an independent journalist who went to Oaxaca to cover the teachers' strike. The strike had gone on for over six months. For the past 25 years there had been a teachers' strike every fall. In the past it had lasted for about two weeks. The government made some kind of promises (which they seldom kept), and the teachers went back to work. This year it was different.
Since that May, the teachers occupied the Zocalo, the city square. By May and June they had taken over some municipal buildings in some of the smaller towns near Oaxaca. They built barricades to prevent police raids. They were urging the organizing of popular assemblies at every level, "No leader is going to solve our problems," they said.
On Aug. 1, APPO (the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) took over television and radio stations. The right wing struck back and armed men murdered six unarmed APPO supporters at the barricades one night.
On Oct. 27 Bradley Roland Will was standing at the barricades with Professor Emilio Alonso Fabian and Esteban Lopez Zurita. They were unarmed. A right-wing death squad attacked and killed the three of them. The attackers have been identified by Will's videotapes as PRI (The Institutional Revolutionary Party—the corrupt party that has ruled Mexico for 70 years) urban paramilitaries. The person who killed Will was probably Pedro Carmona, a former PRI mayor of Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Santa Lucia del Camino.
There had been more than a dozen additional murders by the Death Squads in the past few weeks. Last week, our reporter in Oaxaca said, "Reporters are being targeted. Anyone remotely connected to the popular resistance movement is being disappeared. Neighbors are denouncing neighbors and family members to the police, for being 'sympathizers.' 'Pirate radio' City Station, broadcasting on the AM band, is calling for removal by death squad of all foreigners from Oaxaca." He said hundreds of people have been "disappeared off the streets, forced into an unmarked dark sedan with no license plates by men in plain clothes."
He pleaded, "Please don't turn your back on us. Please don't be silent. Join your neighbors in denouncing the reign of terror in Oaxaca. Write letters to anyone you think might make a difference. Go to a demonstration. Brad Will is dead, along with dozens of Oaxacans. More are dying every day. Please act before it is too late."
By Monday of this week, things had almost returned to normal in Oaxaca. The mayor had been in hiding for five months. He's back at his desk. The ZĂłcalo is getting a fresh coat of paint, the shops are open and tourists are once again welcome. Police arrested one of the APPO organizers and a judge released two of the men involved in the murder of Brad Will.
Whether things will ever return to the innocence of a year ago is quite another question. The teachers and their supporters will not easily forget. Their revolution may have been postponed. It has not been defeated.
And what was the response of the major media in the U.S. to this struggle? They ignored it. It was a non-event.
The corporate media claims objectivity. It says it is neutral. It just reports the news. "All The News That's Fit To Print," claims the New York Times. Rather, it seems, it's more like "All the news that fits the agenda of the American ruling class and its fascist allies throughout the world." As Paolo Friere said—you can't be neutral in the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. To be neutral is to side with the oppressor.
The Star Tribune is owned by the McClatchey Corporation. They are the second largest newspaper company in the U.S., according to their own website. The Pioneer Press is owned by Media News Group which owns 54 daily newspapers in 12 states. City Pages is owned by New Times publishing group that owns 17 "alternative" weekly newspapers in most major cities. None of these corporate conglomerates sent a reporter down to Mexico City or Oaxaca to cover probably one of the most important struggles in North America in the last 40 years. And, yet, Pulse, which is a financial dwarf compared to these giants, had two reporters in Mexico. It's not money that prevented the corporate press from covering this story, it was complicity in the plan to smother this story and wait for it to die out and go away.
By their silence, the corporate media are indicted as the lapdogs of fascism. Sure they bark and yip a bit when history knocks at the door, but when their master says, "Be quiet," and slips them a doggie bone, they settle down with their treat and congratulate themselves on being alert watchdogs of the public welfare.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
VIVA BRAD WILL! ||
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