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Blog Space by david goodman* (unless otherwise noted) |
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Essays and writings by: Musician and activist DAVID ROVICS Historian, teacher, radio producer MARC STERN Activist, politician, teacher, GRACE ROSS |
* Executive Producer & Founder, Independent Broadcast Information Service * Managing Editor/Producer Boston Community Reporters Project |
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Random Ruminations May 10, 2008 || dg Driving west along Alewife Brook Parkway recently, through an area called The Alewife - a swath of road and shopping centers where Cambridge, Arlington, and Watertown, MA seem to overlap - I was struck by a crazy thought. There's this bridge, just before the Alewife Train station on the "red line." And on one side of this bridge there are three very large, block rectangular apartment buildings. Many people who depend upon some form of government subsidy live in these buildings. On the other side, built much more recently, are a set of buildings housing luxury condominiums. I guess you can assume many of the residents who live here earn more than the median income for the Boston area. The two developments literally face each other across the bridge. And I was just thinking that these folk may share something important that they themselves are not self consciously aware of. On one side the residents live in constant fear of losing their Section 8 Housing vouchers. On the other side, the people live in constant fear of their businesses going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Both have the economy and government social policies to blame, in part, for their troubles; what economist Paul Krugman, in his columns for the NY Times and a 2003 book, refers to as "The Great Unraveling." Wouldn't it be remarkable if some enterprising activists brought these two sets of residents together to discuss their similarities? And to start breaking down those artificial barriers such as race and class that divide people? There's precedent in the work of the Boston-based "Dialogues On Ethnic and Racial Diversity" project. And other groups I'm sure. With the Federal (and to some degree the State) government running amok, the economy much more an enemy than a friend these days, and the environment at a crucial tipping point, isn't it time to set aside petty social constructs and start seeing other citizens as colleagues and collaborators rather than some distant people living on the other side of the bridge? |
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Nobody pays us to do this... May 06, 2008 || dg When people ask what I "do," I tell them that I'm an independent radio producer. When their eyes glaze over, I add "freelance journalist." When they ask "what paper do you write for," I give up. Proving my value to society, if you will, is not made any easier by the fact that I walk, talk, and work just like a real journalist but only get paid for a tiny fraction of the audio and written stories I generate. Most of my imagination and creativity is poured into the weekly public affairs program "RADIO with a VIEW," which I co-produce at non-commercial college/community radio station WMBR, Cambridge. Because WMBR is all-volunteer and no one gets paid... well you see where I'm going with this. Adding up all my expenses - gasoline, AA batteries, phones, insurance, rent on my tiny studio office, etc. - I've been paying quite a bit out of pocket over the years, to do, or be, a radio producer. [Mother's Day approaches, so at this point, neglecting to mention the debt I owe to my wife Jeanne Goodman and forgetting to recognize her enormous patience with me and my career, would be tantamount to declaring my intent to commit suicide.] A major challenge and one I've been grappling with for more than 20 years, is the expectation in community radio that people should simply "be happy to be on the radio." The idea that they actually might be considered "workers" deserving of salary and benefits has been anathema amongst both station managers and financial benefactors. Most producers, disc jockeys, technicians, writers, copy readers, and others, are expected to willingly join the "volunteer culture" that persists throughout community media. Despite many, many individual testimonials to the stress and crushing pressure of trying to hold down a day job (several in some cases), and change the world through radio, this culture of "everyone else first, you last" maintains its grip on the "industry." There are some obvious and compelling reasons for this. Community media would be hard-pressed to survive if everyone was paid a living wage. In recent years for example, the Women's Technical and Industrial Union has issued reports that estimate it takes $54,000 to support a family of four living in Boston. That's with no luxuries at all, such as restaurant dining and going out to movies. It's hard to imagine (W--- or K---, insert your favorite community station here) paying even a small staff that amount. Funders, seeing and hearing the passion of community and student members of these stations, have learned over the decades that volunteerism is "the way" and the only way. I'm not suggesting that volunteerism is a bad thing inherently; just that there are other ways of assessing what constitutes work and fairness. And that an evaluation of the impact on people who love what they're doing but can't live financially in a primarily capitalistic economy, MUST become part of the culture of non-commercial and independent media. When asked who our heroes are, many community radio people start by listing Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Over and over, I hear producers as well as listeners cite Amy's work ethic as the pinnacle of journalistic enterprise. Believe me, I have no doubt she works hard - she and her staff are paid salaries, as they should! - and that she has many remarkable accomplishments to boast about. (Disclosure: about 12 or 13 years ago, I applied for a job as producer with Democracy Now!) But based on interviews I've read, her life is so completely devoted to the radio and TV versions of her program and her book tours, it's easy to imagine Amy living within a caged existence, devoid of pleasures found in family, recreation, and travel outside of work. And yet, Democracy Now! is the standard by which me and all my colleagues in community radio are judged and expected to meet. It is demanded of us in countless ways. I have no problem staying up all night on the Saturday before my Sunday morning show. But for the volunteer "wages" I get paid, I just can't suppress the idea that I'm being exploited. This summer, my hope is that the FCC will rule in favor of a non-profit organization I am helping to start a new non-commercial, educational radio station. We're competing with five other applicants so our prospects are somewhat mixed. But my vision includes paying workers - content makers, technicians, support staff - a living wage. I also want to erect a wind turbine and solar panels as a way of supporting the environment and our business in a sustainable way. I figure, if you can't dream big, why dream at all. |
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For an inspiring and lovely spin on how to approach supporting independent radio and media producers, please read AIR Executive Director Sue Schardt's essay on the website of the "Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media." |
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My response to the "Greenwash Guerillas" Pie in the Face of Thomas Friedman Episode April 28, 2008 || dg |
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Today, I received an email from a group calling themselves The Greenwash Guerillas. On Earth Day, last week (April 22) they ran onstage where NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman was about to give a speech and threw pies in his general direction... Their leader refers to himself as Colonel Custard... |
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Dear Colonel Custard: I have to say, that in theory, I appreciate what you are doing in terms of uncovering hypocrisy and disingenuousness. But that was the worst example of guerilla pie throwing I have ever seen. It embarrassed the two of you much more than Friedman in my opinion. In 1977, a student and acquaintance of mine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook threw a shaving cream pie at the university's President with much greater effect AND got away with it. On the other hand, I think there needs to be a hybrid set of tactics used by environmental and anti-war groups that lie somewhere between the boardroom boutique politics of the major environmental organizations and the vandalism perpetrated in the name of the ELF. On April first, I covered a protest in Copley Square, Boston, where four women locked themselves to the front door of a Bank of America branch as a way of stopping business as usual. (In this case, the bank’s investment in companies that build and maintain coal-fired plants.) I wrote about the protest on Open Media Boston, the news and culture web portal currently in development in Boston. Passersby mostly walked away from the scene, some turning their heads at the commotion of more than a dozen police officers using a power saw to cut through a bicycle lock around a woman’s neck. Others yelled at the demonstrators for disrupting their ability to withdraw money from the ATM. To the extent this type of civil disobedience was repeated throughout the country and covered by blogs, community radio, cable access TV, as well as the commercial press, the message will gradually seep through the collective consciousness that many Earthlings are “mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” Let’s establish at least one thing however: merely videotaping a pie in the face incident and posting same to YouTube will not be enough to change the world. The video becomes a curiosity; an artifact for sideshow observation like the bearded lady and the man with no arms. The carnival atmosphere will be interrupted slightly by charges that the gatekeepers at Google/YouTube censored the video by removing it from their site. But its appearance on CNN.com and the Greenwash Guerilla’s own site will keep the merry-go-'round spinning, so to speak. Friedman will survive this episode. He may even find the time to write about it in his next book. ("The Yugo and the Kumquat Tree" anyone?) It's still unclear whether or not the human race will survive such atrocities as war, greed, rapaciousness of the world's resources, and global climate change. |
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Civil liberties lawyer, and rights activist Harvey Silverglate weighs in: Boston Phoenix "The Free For All" |
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20 year old man shot and killed in busy, bright Jamaica Plain Park April 22, 2008 || dg A lot was going on in Boston yesterday. The weather was spectacular, the Red Sox finished a four game sweep of the Texas Rangers and once again Kenyan Robert Cheruiyot won the Marathon. And again, gunfire erupted and a young person was mortally wounded.
On Monday, scores of neighbors, commuters, and school age kids on vacation, were walking and playing along the Southwest Corridor Park in Jamaica Plain, near the Stony Brook Orange Line station. About 75 yards from the front entrance of the train station, bordered by Amory and Lamartine Streets, a basketball court was filled with young people hanging out. Just after 4:00pm, a 20 year old man was shot – in the head according to a report on boston dot com - and the tranquility of this diverse and lively Boston neighborhood was shattered. On WBZ TV last night, reporter Beth Germano identified the 20 year old man as Luis Troncoso. Following the shooting, Troncoso was taken to Brigham and Women’s hospital where he died. No other details about the victim or his assailant were available immediately. State and Boston police continued searching the park for evidence late into the evening. This was the second shooting in the neighborhood in the past few days. Friday evening, two people were wounded in an apparent drive-by shooting on Centre Street near the Jackson Square T station. In the interest of full disclosure, I live in this neighborhood (about three blocks from the basketball court) and have participated in citizen watch events with the Brookside Neighborhood Association. My kids, 15 and 11, and their friends, play nearby. I feel safe comparatively, always trying to keep in mind that families in other parts of the city have had to keep their kids virtually locked up in their homes in order to protect them. We get a lot of car break-ins; a recent spate of tire slashings along with other property damage had people worried, but homicides are rare enough to seem part of some distant place. But it’s worth mentioning several recent murders of local youngsters which remain unsolved. In January, Carlos Sierra, an eighth grader at my daughter’s middle school on Centre Street, was killed near his home in Dorchester. In January 2007, a 13 year old sixth grader, Luis Gerena, was shot and killed near the Jackson Square T. I’m sure there have been other, less well publicized violent crimes in the area. Yesterday, while waiting for State Police officials to issue a statement to reporters, (they never did and referred all questions to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office) I approached a young man who had walked close by the crime scene out of curiosity. He declined to give his name but agreed to answer a few questions. He predicted “a not so fun summer” as long as shootings continued in neighborhood parks. Asked what he thought the city should be doing, the 15 year old said, “gun control needs to be more targeted” in order to stop guns originating outside of Massachusetts from getting into Boston. He said he plans on finding ways to travel outside the city this summer in order to play basketball without the fear of violence. According to the website of the national organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (Boston Mayor Tom Menino serves as Co-Chair), there are 30,000 gun deaths every year; 12,000 of which are homicides. According to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms statistics noted on the site, 60 percent of guns used in crimes can be traced to just one percent of gun dealers. If this is the case, it seems state and local authorities ought to be able to turn off the tap and do exactly the type of targeted gun control mentioned by the young teenager. John Rosenthal, co-founder of the Newton, MA based organization Stop Handgun Violence, says federal gun laws must be made significantly more strict as a crucial step in stemming the more than 80 deaths by gun Americans suffer every day. Speaking before the Boston City Council in July 2007, Rosenthal said “there is no common sense when it comes to gun laws in this nation.” “Today, the equivalent of a Columbine and Virginia Tech massacre will take place. Eighty to ninety Americans will die from firearms today … there are only two products not regulated by the national Consumer Product Safety Commission: tobacco and firearms. Firearms lead to thirty to forty thousand gun deaths a year. If you multiply that by thirty years, that is more Americans killed by firearms in the United States than all American servicemen and servicewomen killed in all foreign wars combined.” It’s not recognized officially by any elected group of politicians, local or national, but every time someone is shot to death on our streets, or in our parks, the domestic war becomes a little more horrific. On the web: Mayors Against Illegal Guns http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/home/home.shtml Stop Handgun Violence http://www.stophandgunviolence.com/ Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley |
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Opportunity But No Motive
Thank goodness for Pacifica Radio. I needed the audio from the Winter Soldier hearings last month so I browsed over to the streaming mp3 feed from Pacifica's website, connected my Marantz solid state recorder to the computer, and left it on all day, both days. For those of us who wanted to listen (and see) and capture the hearings, it's not as though we had many choices. Other than Pacifica, and The Washington Post newspaper, and of course the website of sponsoring organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, the hearings virtually were ignored by all other national (and most locally based as far as I can tell), media outlets: TV, radio, and print. Politically oriented websites from both the left and right perspectives weighed in but most of the conventional press chose not to report on the 2008 version of war veterans speaking out about their experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and back home in the U.S. Most glaring, perhaps, is the New York Times: a search of their website and archive turned up a few articles about John Kerry and the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings, but not a word on the events at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD. This particular Saturday night, while preparing for Sunday's "RADIO with a VIEW," I did a simple internet search using Google News and my own local "paper of record" The Boston Globe's web portal, Boston dot com. Typing in "winter soldier" resulted in the following top entries:
Google News: (in descending order)
Boston dot com:
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(NOTE: 3.16.08 2:00am - there was not a single word in the Boston Globe Newspaper on the veteran's testimony heard this week - david) (NOTE update: 3.17.08 3:00pm - The Sunday Boston Globe did cover the local showing of the hearings which took place in Cambridge, MA. The article was located below the fold on the front page of the Metro/Region section. I didn't have a chance to look at the paper before running out to WMBR - david) |
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Greg Guma, former Editor of the Vermont-based news magazine, Toward Freedom, as well as a former Executive Director of Pacifica Radio, points out on his blog that "for the most part, the mainstream media ignored the groundbreaking event. As of March 17, CNN, FOX News, ABC News, CBS, and MSNBC had provided no coverage." So calls for a more attentive fourth estate following the near lock-step approach the media took in support of the Bush administration in the months and days before the invasion of Iraq seem to have fallen on deaf ears (and minds). Or maybe the idea of veterans telling gritty stories about America's failings just isn't sexy enough. Any of them sleep with a prostitute (or an intern) perhaps? Bare their privates getting out of a Humvee?
It's
a frightening thought to imagine what happens to our democracy when
nobody trusts journalists any longer. [The internet? Please. I believe a
few major sites do proper fact checking (including this one!) but a great deal
of the information found on the web is unreliable at best.] |
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For an amazing take on progressive media and the people who would sow distrust in same, please read the essay by David Rovics posted here... |
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But that is exactly what's happening because people can't make heads or tails of the media. Every day we receive messages that trumpet the fact that the consuming public can't get enough so-called reality TV and revealing celebrity news. And viewer ship - at least compared to serious journalistic endeavors - bears this out. But the vast majority of the world's citizens never will lay eyes upon Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or Brad Pitt. Yet, as Senator Barack Obama somewhat awkwardly tried to point out recently, they know that the economy and the state of the world generally, suck. So detached from the true meaning of their day to day lives are the news and entertainment programs watched by most Americans, people have come to see TV, radio, the internet, and to some degree newspapers as a world of fantasy. Democracy requires informed citizens. Anything else results in what Frances Moore Lappe calls "soft democracy." It's hard enough for people - not trained from an early age in the art and science of critical thinking, and the crucial need to consume many sources of information - to devise informed opinions on their own. But when the media environment is filled constantly with distracting, manipulative, and fabricated sounds and images, the playing field tilts enormously in favor of those who would suppress challenges to the status quo. Such as the government and military leaders who should have been listening to the soldiers and veterans testifying at Winter Soldier 2. The testimonies that very, very few people of any political or social standing heard. |
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The Counterfeiters: Discussing, debating, and yes, arguing political points with my friends is one of my favorite pastimes. I've been known even to change my opinion once in a while. But I will never change my mind on the death penalty... No one, not an individual nor a state, should have the power of life and death over another human being. (We can certainly debate the abortion issue. I believe life - as a legal concept - begins somewhere in the middle of the second trimester. And if my wife puts me on a respirator I'll kill her.) The Nazi's, of course, felt altogether differently about the Jews, gays, and war prisoners they had locked up in their concentration camps. In Die Falscher (The Counterfeiter), the 2007 Oscar winning film by Austrian Director Stefan Ruzowitsky, the main character, Salomon (Sally) Sarowitsch, a Russian Jew living in Berlin, is arrested for counterfeiting and sent to a prison camp. After suffering the tortures of a concentration camp and constant fear of a beating or bullet from one of the German overseers, he is taken by cattle car train to another camp; where he is introduced to a massive counterfeiting operation run by the same Nazi who arrested him years earlier. (For an historical view on this real event from the perspective of Adolf Burger, the man who wrote the memoir the film is based upon, you can start here). The men in this camp; featuring soft mattresses, better food, and fewer beatings, are forced to use their printing and engraving expertise to create millions of English pounds and American dollars. The money, they are told eventually, will be used to buy supplies for the German war effort and to destroy the allies' economies with bad currency. And therein lies the theme that calls me to write about this film: an exploration of free will, choice, and the power over life and death manifest in those choices. Sally and his fellow prisoners must meet deadlines or die. Many of these men have family members who already have perished in the gas chambers. They want to live but they don't wish to help the Nazi's. Burger sabotages the printing of the dollar and as the deadline nears to show progress or be shot, Sally must decide whether or not to save his men by revealing Burger's actions to the Germans or break his oath to never "squeal on a mate."
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March 14-15, and April 19, 2008
|| dg