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Amy Goodman Talk
updated: Oct 21, 2012, 2:26 PM
By Robert Bernstein
Here are my photos from the
event with Amy Goodman on Saturday.
Amy Goodman is one of the last real journalists doing the hard work of covering
the news that matters. Her daily program Democracy Now began in 1996 and now
airs on hundreds of radio stations and is available free on-line.
She is on a one hundred city "Silenced Majority" book tour with co-author Denis
Moynihan. The book details stories of vital importance to all Americans that
receive little or no coverage in the corporate media. Most importantly, these
are often stories of how ordinary Americans are able to work together, to fight
for a better community, nation and planet.
Goodman and Moynihan attended a breakfast fund raiser Saturday morning for KCSB
radio at the Casa de la Raza. They wanted to hear from attendees what we are
working on and what we care about.
The event was then opened up to the general public for a free talk.
One of the biggest obstacles to progress in this country is the corporate
control of political campaigns, especially since the Supreme Court's "Citizens
United" ruling. The Court has ruled that campaign money is the same as free
speech and that corporations are people. Meaning that corporations are free to
spend unlimited resources to support candidates who will serve their interests,
rather than serving the public interests.
The situation is so extreme that television ads in swing states now are selling
at four times the standard rate, driving out regular advertisers. It also
creates a conflict of interest where media outlets benefit from this torrent of
money and oppose public financing of elections, as occurs in other countries.
Billionaire David Koch is personally financing Romney and other Republican
campaigns. Goodman was covering the Republican convention and was curious what
Romney would do as he passed Koch just before his speech. She directed her
videographer to record the Jumbotron screen. As it turned out, the corporate
media cut out the feed just as Romney shook Koch's hand, but Goodman came away
with this suppressed clip.
That is the history of Democracy Now. They were covering the Occupy protests
when the corporate media ignored it, right under their noses in New York City.
They covered the Copenhagen Climate Change convention that was all but ignored
in the corporate media. Not just the speeches by the attendees, but interviewing
those shut out of the convention.
While Anderson Cooper cowered at an "undisclosed location" during the uprisings
in Egypt, Democracy Now's reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous covered it live in the
middle of Tahrir Square as events were unfolding.
Ironically, Sharif was violently arrested and injured covering the 2008
Republican National Convention in the US, while Mubarak in Egypt had never
harmed him at all.
At that 2008 Republican Convention, he Democracy Now reporter Nicole Salazar
were arrested while wearing press credentials simply for trying to cover a
peaceful protest and interviewing the protestors about their substantive issues.
When Goodman went to inquire on the arrest she, too, was arrested.
Protestors at such events are banished out of sight in hopes they will be
ignored. Goodman's Democracy Now was breaking through the barrier of
suppression.
Why so much suppression? Because when the people do organize, they have power.
Even though Occupy was shut down, they have succeeded in a public relations
campaign that money can't buy: Every American now knows what it means to say "We
are the 99%".
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