Independent Media in a Time of War Amy Goodman
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Sacred Heart University Review Volume 24 Issue 1 Sacred Heart University Review, Volume XXIV, Article 1 Numbers 1 & 2, Fall 2006/ Spring 2007 March 2010 Independent Media in a Time of War Amy Goodman Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview Recommended Citation Goodman, Amy (2010) "Independent Media in a Time of War," Sacred Heart University Review: Vol. 24 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol24/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SHU Press Publications at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sacred Heart University Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Independent Media in a Time of War Cover Page Footnote Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now! This talk, on one of the subjects of her book (co-authored with her brother, David Goodman), The Exception to the Rulers (Hyperion, 2004), was presented at the Tenth Annual Media Studies Symposium at Sacred Heart University on April 20, 2005. This article is available in Sacred Heart University Review: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol24/iss1/1 Goodman: Independent Media in a Time of War A MY G OODMAN _________________ Independent Media in a Time of War How many of you have heard or watched Democracy Now? Well, I come from Pacifica Radio, which was founded fifty=six years ago by a World War II conscientious objector named Lou Hill. When he came out of the detention camps, he said there has to be a media outlet that is not run by corporations that profit from war. but run by journalists and artists, and that’s how Pacifica was born. Not run by corporations, as George Gerbner, founder of the Cultural Environment movement says; not run by corporations that have nothing to tell and everything to sell, that are raising our children today. And so the first Pacifica station went on the air in 1949, KPFA, followed by KPFK in Los Angeles and WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York city in 1960. We’ve just celebrated our forty-fifth anniversary. In 1977, WPFW in Washington went on the air, and in 1970 KPFT in Houston. Those are the five Pacifica stations. When the Houston station went on the air, it’s the only radio station in the country whose transmitter was blown up twice in the first year of operation, blown up by the Ku Klux Klan. And when the exalted Cyclops, or was it the Grand Dragon—I often confuse their titles— admitted responsibility, he said it was his proudest act, because I ———————— Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now! This talk, on one of the subjects of her book (co-authored with her brother, David Goodman), The Exception to the Rulers (Hyperion, 2004), was presented at the Tenth Annual Media Studies Symposium at Sacred Heart University on April 20, 2005. Published by DigitalCommons@SHU, 2007 1 Sacred Heart University Review, Vol. 24, Iss. 1 [2007], Art. 1 2 AMY GOODMAN think he understood how dangerous Pacifica is, dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves. And when you hear someone speaking from their own experience, that breaks down stereotypes and caricatures that feed the hate that fuels these groups. It’s very important we be able to hear people speaking for themselves, especially in a climate in this country when whole populations are demonized: always African-Americans, now Muslims, Arab-Americans, people of South Asian descent. And when you have a media, the networks, where the average sound bite is eight or nine seconds, what can be said in that amount of time, especially when the most common people on the networks are a very small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us? These populations that have been demonized hardly get a chance to speak for themselves. And why is that important? When you hear someone describing where they come from, what their religion is, who their communities are, even the debates within their own communities, it changes your view. I mean, you might say, “That sounds like my Uncle Henry,” “It sounds like my sister,” or “That sounds like my grandfather.” And that changes the way you behave toward perhaps someone or a group of people. We all know about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq, but I think that it began long before the first low-level soldier laid a finger on the first Iraqui person. I think somehow these soldiers felt they had a kind of permission. I’m not talking about the chain of command: that has to be investigated right to the top. But it’s a permission from being raised here at home in a media culture where whole populations are iced out. And if they’re demonized and if you only hear media that acts as an amplifier for those in power that are doing the demonizing, it makes it a little easier to treat them as subhuman. It is so important we have a media for everyone. In the 1950s, the great singer-writer-activist, Paul Robeson, was white-listed from almost every public space in this country, but he knew he could be heard over the airwaves of Pacifica Radio. James Baldwin debating http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol24/iss1/1 2 Goodman: Independent Media in a Time of War INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN A TIME OF WAR 3 Malcolm X over the effectiveness of the lunch-counter sit-ins in the South, civil disobedience, knew they would be broadcast over WBAI. It is so important we have a media that brings us history. I come from Ground Zero. You all live somewhat near there, but I come from blocks from where the towers of the World Trade Center once stood. On September 11, at 9:00 in the morning, we were doing our broadcast—we now do it at 8:00. The first plane hit the first tower at 8:42. The second plane hit the second tower at 9:03. We were already in the midst of our show, and we were doing a special that day on the connection between terror and September 11, 1973, the day Salvador Allende died in the palace, the Chilean president, as the U.S.-backed Pinochet forces rose to power, the Nixon-backed, Kissinger-backed, ITT-backed Pinochet forces rose to power in Chile. September 11 is not the first time September 11 was connected to terror. September 11, 1990, Guatemalan anthropologist, Myrna Mack died at the hands of U.S. backed-security forces in Guatemala. September 11, 1977 in South Africa, Stephen Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness movement, was being beaten to death in the back of a van by U.S.-backed apartheid forces. He died in the early morning hours of September 12. September 11, 1971, the Attica uprising began, in upstate New York at the prison: prisoners protesting prison conditions. Two days later, then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller called out the New York State troopers and they opened fire, killing eighty-eight men, including guards, and wounding hundreds of others. September 11, 2001 is not the first time that terror came to our soil. Ask any African-American about slavery. Ask any Native American about what’s happened in this country. But September 11, 2001 was a horrific moment. Three thousand people incinerated in an instant. We will never know how many people died on that day, because those who go uncounted in life go uncounted in death, and they’re the undocumented workers who worked at the World Trade Center. We should know their names. We should know their stories. That’s what dignifies a life. Published by DigitalCommons@SHU, 2007 3 Sacred Heart University Review, Vol. 24, Iss. 1 [2007], Art. 1 4 AMY GOODMAN We stayed at the firehouse where we work, a hundred-year-old firehouse that’s been converted into a community media center just blocks from Ground Zero. In those next days, we were the closest national broadcast to Ground Zero. We were within the evacuation zone. Most of the people were being cleared out, but we knew we had to keep broadcasting. We could see that the war machine was gearing up in Washington. And we started to broadcast the voices of those who lost loved ones, but who were saying that retaliation is not the answer, people like Rita Lasar, who lost her brother Abe Zelmanowitz on the twenty-seventh floor of the World Trade Center. Abe was working next to his best friend, Ed, who was a paraplegic. They worked for Blue Cross. And even as Abe’s brother was screaming to him on a cell phone to get out now, he said, “As soon as the emergency workers come out and help Ed down, I’ll go out with them.” They died, with so many others. And then there was Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez, who lost their son Greg Ernesto Rodriguez above the hundredth floor of the World Trade Center. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. Six hundred and fifty- eight of one thousand and fifty of their workers died there. Rita heard that President Bush a few days later gave his National Cathedral address and invoked the name of Abe Zelmanowitz, invoked the story of Abe, and called him a national hero, and she said “No.” And she wrote a letter to the New York Times.