<nettime> THE NEW YORK CITY INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER RESPONDS TO THE DEATH

[onto <onto@riseup.net>]

http://publish.nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77958.html

THE NEW YORK CITY INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER RESPONDS TO THE DEATH OF BRAD
WILL


October 29, 2006
New York City


Brad Will was killed on October 27, 2006, in  Oaxaca, Mexico, while
working as a journalist for the global Indymedia network. He was shot in
the torso while documenting an armed, paramilitary assault on the
Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, a fusion of striking local
teachers and other community organizations demanding democracy
in Mexico.

The members of the New York City Independent Media Center mourn the loss
of this inspiring colleague and friend. We want to thank everyone  who
has sent condolences to our office and posted remembrances to
www.nyc.indymedia.org. We share our grief with the people of our city
and beyond who lived, worked, and struggled with Brad over the course of
his dynamic but short life. We can only imagine the pain of the people
of Oaxaca who have lost seven of their neighbors to this fight,
including Emilio Alonso Fabian, a teacher, and who now face an invasion
by federal troops.

All we want in compensation for his death is the only thing Brad ever
wanted to see in this world: justice.

	* We, along with all of Brad's friends, reject the use of further=20
state-sponsored  violence in Oaxaca.

	* The New York City Independent Media Center supports the demand of=20
Reporters Without Borders for a full and complete investigation by
Mexican authorities into Oaxaca State Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's
continued use of plain-clothed municipal police as a political
paramilitary force. The arrest of his assailants is not enough.

	* The NYC IMC also supports the call of Zapatista Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos "to compa=F1eros and compa=F1eras in other countries to
unite and to demand justice for this dead compa=F1ero." Marcos issued thi=
s
call "especially to all of the alternative media, and free media here in
Mexico and in all the world."

Indymedia was born from the Zapatista vision of a global network of
alternative communication against neoliberalism and for humanity. To
believe in Indymedia is to believe that journalism is either in the
service of justice or it is a cause of injustice. We speak and listen,
resist and struggle. In that spirit, Brad Will was both a journalist and
a human rights activist.

He was a part of this movement of independent journalists who go where
the corporate media do not or stay long after they are gone. Perhaps
Brad's death would have been prevented if Mexican, international, and US
media corporations had told the story of the Oaxacan people. Then those
of us who live in comfort would not only be learning now about this 5
month old strike, or about this 500 year old struggle.

And then Brad might not have felt the need to face down those assassins
in Oaxaca holding merely the ineffective shields of his US passport and
prensa extranjera badge. Then Brad would not have joined the
fast-growing list of journalists killed in action, or the much longer
list of those killed in recent years by troops defending entrenched,
unjust power in Latin America.

Still, those of us who knew Brad know that his work would never have
been completed. From the community gardens of the Lower East Side to the
Movimento Sem Terra encampments of Brazil, he would have continued to
travel to where the people who make this world a beautiful place are
resisting those who would cause it further death and destruction. Now,
in his memory, we will all travel those roads.  We are the network, all
of us who speak and listen, all of us who resist.


The New York City Independent Media Center
www.nyc.indymedia.org
4 W. 43rd St., Suite 311
New York, N.Y. 10036
USA / EEUU
212-221-0521


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