Funferal

IIMPR session 1

Earlier today I saw a reference online to the possibility that the Democrats will back Bernie Sanders to become US Senator for Vermont. Bernie is, of course, the independent US Representative for Vermont (and the state’s only member of the House).
This evening he’s talking at the IIMPR conference here on campus. As usual he’s giving a rousing speaker. He’s also one of the few speakers you’ll see use the terms ‘socialist’ and ‘working class’ freely at a talk in the US – or at least a talk with an audience of more than 20 people. He has ranged through the lack of coverage of labour leaders or the labour movement in US media and is now talking about media concentration specifically. I’ve been grabbing some video, and a friend has got some audio, which I’ll put up shortly, and I’ll continue updating this entry as the discussion continues – other panellists include Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman.
Update:Naomi Klein has just begun her talk in self-deprecating style, and has started with discussion of rendition and torture. “We have this crazy debate in this country on whether torture works.” She argues that Americans understand the role of torture in other countries – to break people down, personally and as a community – but essentially have a blind-spot in relation to American torture.
She sees Guantanamo as a synonym for ‘disappearing.’ She argues that torture works – but not to get information. Argentinians situating torture centres downtown – so people enough to be frightened, but not enough to bring people to justice.
She’s now discussing what she calls a ‘scandalous’ New York Times story on the Salvadorization of Iraq. She calls it scandalous because it’s not an exposé but what she sees as a planted story (about the ‘counter-insurgency forces’ in Iraq). She also talks about the ‘reality TV show’ featuring prisoners confessing on TV (on a US sponsored network) after obviously being tortured.
Update 2:Bob McChesney is now introducing Amy Goodman, and began by taking some time to, appropriately, bring attention to the work done by my fellow student Victor Pickard, who has brought this IIMPR conference together. In introducing Amy he’s talking about the role of the independent journalist in “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.”
Amy has begun by bringing attention to independent media in Urbana-Champaign, starting with Randal Cotton’s (successful) campaign to get Democracy Now onto public access TV in Urbana. (Incidentally, Champaign doesn’t have public access TV partly because their council thinks the Urbana station, which people can also get in Champaign, is enough.)
She’s now talking about the history of the IMCs. I’m guessing she’ll get to mentioning the recent purchase of the Urbana post office building by our IMC here in town. Yes, she’s talked about the purchase (and gave a shout out to Radio Free Urbana).
She’s now talking about the history of Pacifica and other independent outlets.