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Journalism

The Radicalism Of ‘Race Today’

In 1974, former Black Panther Darcus Howe became editor of Race Today, transforming it from a formal academic journal, run by the institute of Race Relations, into a campaigning collective whose activities extended far beyond journalism. Race Today morphed into the Race Today Collective, forging a holistic approach to activism that weaponised journalism as a powerful campaigning tool. This symbiosis, coupled with the Collective’s consistently global and intersectional outlook, pioneered a new form of anti-racist campaigning as well as a new era of radical journalism, reaching a pinnacle in 1981 with the Black People’s Day of Action. Darcus Howe’s Race Today emerged directly out of the British Black Power movement. Members of the Collective Farrukh Dhondy, Leila Hassan, Mala Sen, and Jean Ambrose had all been part of Black Power groups, from the Black Panther Party to the Black Unity and Freedom Party.

Support Craig Murray: Locking Hands

We had a phone call this morning from HMP Edinburgh, asking us to briefly relapse our retirement again to put out a request on behalf of Prisoner 157095 – better known to you and us as our friend Craig Murray, the only person on the planet to now or ever have been imprisoned for the undefined and extremely selectively prosecuted pseudo-crime of “jigsaw identification”. Craig is doing okay a week and a half into his eight-month sentence in Saughton and is being treated well by both staff and inmates, but was recently informed that he is not eligible for early release on an electronic tag (which might have seen him out by the end of next month) because he’s a civil prisoner rather than a criminal one.

Multiple Mainstreams

I suppose I’m meant to care how “the left” talks about race and class. I fit the profile; I’m a black female journalist. My stories since the early 2000s have featured men and women made invisible or marginalized by society, sometimes by their own communities, and certainly by newsrooms. But as a news gatherer, I’ve always tinkered on the borderlands of mainstream and progressive journalism, the left’s gathering space. I never fully committed. That’s because early in my career I settled on an important distinction: it’s not how you talk about class and race that matters; it’s to and for whom. Audience determines how. Left conversations about race and class rarely center my folks as their audience: the precarious middle-class, working-class, and working-poor residents of my Brooklyn street; recent immigrants; and native-born Americans like them.

Murray’s Last Words Before Prison

I want to make one or two points for you to ponder while I am in jail. This is the last post until about Christmas; we are not legally able to post anything while I am imprisoned. But the Justice for Craig Murray Campaign website is now up and running and will start to have more content shortly. Fora and comments here are planned to stay open. I hope that one possible good effect of my imprisonment might be to coalesce opposition to the imminent abolition of jury trials in sexual assault cases by the Scottish Government, a plan for which Lady Dorrian – who wears far too many hats in all this – is front and centre. We will then have a situation where, as established by my imprisonment, no information at all on the defence case may be published in case it contributes to “jigsaw identification”, and where conviction will rest purely on the view of the judge.

On Contact: The Trial Of Ghislaine Maxwell

On the show this week Chris Hedges talks to investigative journalist Nick Bryant about the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, held at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center and denied bail, will be tried this fall on sex-trafficking charges for allegedly recruiting and grooming teenage girls to engage in sex acts with the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein. She is reputed to have procured teenage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004 and allegedly paid the girls hundreds of dollars in cash after each encounter with Epstein. Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 in what authorities ruled was a suicide, although a doctor hired by Epstein’s family to conduct an independent autopsy has disputed that conclusion.

Glen Ford, Veteran Journalist And Founder Of Black Agenda Report, Dies

Glen Ford, a veteran broadcast, print and digital journalist who hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on TV before going on to found the Black Agenda Report website, has died, according to reports. He was 71 years old. Ford’s cause of death was not immediately reported. Several sources announced his death late Wednesday morning, including Margaret Kimberley, an editor and columnist at Black Agenda Report, the weekly news magazine that offers commentary and analysis from a Black perspective which Ford launched and served as its executive editor. Condolences began pouring in on social media once news of Ford’s death broke.

On Contact: The Life And Work Of Susan Sontag

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the writer and intellectual Susan Sontag with her biographer Benjamin Moser. Susan Sontag, who wrote about art, feminism, politics, celebrity, style, homosexuality, illness, fascism, and war, was that rare species in American society – an intellectual celebrity. She traveled to Cuba as a naive political pilgrim, North Vietnam during the war, now older and more skeptical, and was in Germany when the Berlin Wall was breached and eradicated as a barrier between East and West Germany. She was in Sarajevo when the city was being hit with hundreds of shells a day and under constant sniper fire from the besieging Bosnian Serbs. An average of 10 people were killed in the city daily.

We Can Defeat The Corporate Media’s War On Independent Journalism

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about my experiences over the past two decades working with new technology as an independent freelance journalist, one who abandoned – or maybe more accurately, was abandoned by – what we usually call the “mainstream” media. Looking back over that period, I have come to appreciate that I was among the first generation of journalists to break free of the corporate media – in my case, the Guardian – and ride this wave of new technology. In doing so, we liberated ourselves from the narrow editorial restrictions such media imposes on us as journalists and were still able to find an audience, even if a diminished one. More and more journalists are following a similar path today – a few out of choice, and more out of necessity as corporate media becomes increasingly unprofitable.

Gabriel García Márquez And Magical Internationalism

Sometimes what is obvious hides what is important. Gabriel García Márquez is best known as the craftsman par excellence of the genre ‘magical realism’, rather than his profound passion for the profession of journalism that led him to traverse—with the eagerness of a chronicler and a vallenato rhythm in his step—countless cafes, newsrooms, and continents. Gabo, or Gabito, as he was known to his friends in Aracataca, a town camouflaged among the banana plantations of Colombia’s Caribbean coast, produced a journalism that few recognize, journalism militantly committed to a national and global context. International affairs, and in particular the people that rose up against US imperialism, were the ink for his pen.

Julian Assange Wins 2020 Gary Webb Freedom Of The Press Award

Julian Assange, the imprisoned and maligned publisher of WikiLeaks, has been awarded the 2020 Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award by the board of the Consortium for Independent Journalism, publishers of Consortium News.  Assange is incarcerated in a maximum security prison in London awaiting a hearing later this month on an extradition request by the United States. He has been charged 0n 17 counts under the U.S. Espionage Act of possessing and publishing classified material that revealed prima facie evidence of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.  For practicing the highest order of journalism–revealing crimes of the state–Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. prison–a life sentence for the 48-year old Australian. 

US Journalists Form Unions To Survive ‘Hedge Fund Vampires’ And COVID-19

Many of these unions have sought representation from the NewsGuild, a branch of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They include editorial staff, who recognize the shared working conditions of an industry in crisis. By forming regional guilds, workers are able to form a network separate from their publications’ overly corporate culture, allowing them to establish shared demands and speak candidly about dwindling job opportunities, racist hiring practices, shrinking newsrooms, and scarcity myths promoted by fat-cat executives. Much of this activity is unreported at the national level, but workers have publicized their actions on social media. Members of the New Yorker Union, for example, have detailed their negotiations with Condé Nast since their January 21 work stoppage. Management has been slow to propose methods of achieving a better work-life balance, and weeks of bargaining sessions have become public record on Twitter.

Who Is Alexei Navalny?

Compressed into a two-minute soundbite, the story of Alexei Navalny and the recent protests that have erupted across Russia seems simple enough. The Russian opposition figure who recently survived an attempt on his life — an alleged poisoning delivered via Novichok-laced pants — was arrested and convicted of breaching his bail conditions in a process that can be fairly described as unjust. In response, his supporters took to the streets across the country in protest. Ask a Russian, like Katya Kazbek, and they will tell you something different: things are way more complicated than they seem.

Glenn Greenwald On His Resignation From The Intercept

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald quit his job this morning. In a bizarre, ironic, and disturbing commentary on trends in modern media, the celebrated reporter was forced to resign after writing a story criticizing both the Biden campaign and intelligence community — only to have it spiked by the editors of The Intercept, the news outlet he co-founded six years ago with the aim of preventing pretty much this exact situation. “The irony,” Greenwald says, “is that a media outlet I co-founded, and which was built on my name and my accomplishments...

National Security Journalism Is On Trial

Few American media organizations seem to have noticed, but the U.S. Justice Department has spent the past few weeks trying to persuade the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to extradite Julian Assange to the United States to face charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. The hearing is scheduled to wind down at the end of this week. At this point Assange has alienated pretty much everyone, including many erstwhile supporters, and few people on this side of the Atlantic seem troubled by his indictment or by the possibility that he will be extradited, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

RIP Andre Vltchek: ‘Western Imperialism Is World’s Biggest Problem’

André traveled relentlessly from one battle field to another, from one conflict zone to a war zone. He exposed innumerable atrocities committed around the world, mostly by western powers. He never wavered from revealing the truth. From Afghanistan to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan to Argentina, Chile, Peru to Hong Kong, to Xinjiang, the Uygur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China – André was there.
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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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