Vol I, #2 Fall 2005 Justice Rising - Alliance for Democracy · Facilitating Democratic Discourse:...

Justice RisingGrassroots Solutions to Corporate Domination

Fall 2005Vol I, #2

A Publication ofthe Alliance forDemocracy

by Jim Tarbell

Our cultural story determines our politicalfuture. The corporate right understood this

when they financed a bevy of think tanks in theearly 1970s to retake the political dialogue from theprogressive movement of the 1960s. They popular-ized terms like "free trade" to describe the money-powered, global commercial empire that they arespreading across the planet. Starting thirty years ago,corporate-funded foundations began investing over abillion dollars to create media-savvy institutions likethe American Enterprise Institute, the HeritageFoundation and the Competitive EnterpriseInstitute, which provide a disproportionate amountof the experts quoted in America’s mainstreammedia. They also established a stable of media watchgroups like the Media Institute and Accuracy inMedia, which perform the double task of makingsure that American media maintains a pro-corporatestance and convincing the American public that themedia has a pro-liberal bias.

It is a message that the major media ownersappreciate. While terms and technologies of modernmedia are complex, i.e., spectrum (all radiated air-waves), blogs, channels, etc, the ownership is simple.In the past quarter century the ownership ofAmerica's mainstream media has decreased fromfifty to only six corporations and these six haveboard interlocks with almost every major corpora-tion in the country . With an eye to the bottom linethese business groups have become amenable notonly to use the free experts of the think tanks, butalso the corporate video news releases that arebecoming increasingly common.

Now corporate control is reaching into thepublic broadcasting system. Besides the flood of cor-porate underwriting that tax cuts have forced publicmedia to depend upon and the pro-corporate agen-da of the head of the Corporation for PublicBroadcasting, media watchers are concerned aboutcorporate financed programs that are being pushedon public television. The Global Resource ActionCenter for the Environment (GRACE) warns thatMonsanto and the American Farm Bureau

Federation are promoting a 20-part series "celebrat-ing America’s agriculture." GRACE worries that thisagribusiness production will not show the “ugly reali-ty of the excesses that come from the unregulated,large-scale industrialized agricultural system promot-ed by corporate America,” but rather some popular-ized myth of bucolic America.

Fortunately, the “Freedom train,” as John Nicholsof Free Press calls the burgeoning media democracymovement, is on the roll. As he points out, everybodyshould be on board, “because if media is not your num-ber one issue it has to be your number two.” The quan-tity of groups involved is growing exponentially.Cooperation between alternative media allies is creatingnew media venues available to increasingly larger por-tions of the American public. Local media groups arecalling publishers and broadcasters to account for biasedreporting and creating their own new media venues.Diverse groups that have been isolated from media pro-duction are getting their stories out. Political uproarstopped the FCC's media consolidation plan althoughthat fight is not over and everyone has to be prepared tostop plans to piecemeal those changes through.

These stories are in this Justice Rising. Read,learn, enjoy and most importantly, become the mediaand supplant the pseudo-experts promoted by thethink tanks and funded by corporate money. Layclaim to a diverse and realistic American future.

Information and DemocracyCorporate Control and the Rise of Popular Media

“Marketing strat-egy is replacingnews judgmentin many media

outlets.”Ross Gelbspan, Page 4

“The campaign isseeking

enthusiasticmedia monitors

to help docu-ment instances

of fake newsuse.”

Bob Burton,SourceWatch, Page 5

“Eight out of tenbig media giants

share commonmemberships on

boards ofdirectors with

each other”.Peter Phillips,

Project Censored, page 3

graphic: Kjersten Jeppesen

“What do wewant and needfrom the elec-

tronic tools thatup till now haveonly been usedto deceive and

delude us?”DeeDee Halleck,

Page14

by Ben Clark

Last year, community-based activists mobi-

lized in coalition with theDemocratic party minorityof the Federal Communi-cations Commission (FCC)to fight FCC ChairMichael Powell’s attempt tofurther consolidate mediaownership. Demonst-rations, public hearings,

congressional maneuvering and a federal lawsuitfiled by activists eventually rolled back part ofPowell’s consolidation. However, so far, the move-ment has failed to win the more crucial battle ofgaining more spectrum for public use and re-impos-ing public interest obligations on media corporationsthat use public airways and public rights of way todeliver their product to consumers.

The corporations meanwhile are prospering. The$70 billion dollar digital television giveaway of theClinton era is now bearing fruit for the corporateowners of broadcast licenses nationwide. They cannow cram six different signals into their allocated spec-trum but are paying not a penny more to the publicfor the privilege. No new public interest requirementshave been imposed in exchange for this giveaway.Meanwhile cable and satellite corporations are charg-ing the public for content which is already paid for byadvertisers, or even more absurdly, by taxpayers anddonations to so-called public radio and television.

Despite these corporate gains at the FCC, MarkLloyd, a senior fellow at the Center for AmericanProgress and formerly of the Civil RightsCommunications Forum, thinks there's a lot to begained by grassroots lobbying of the FCC andCongress. "Let's not whine about the [$70 billiondigital] giveaway, let's use it as leverage for fightingback,” Lloyd advises activists. He points out that mostmembers of the public are unaware that broadcasters

don't pay for their licenses.Once they find out, hebelieves the public will bein a good place to ask whatlocal communities are goingto receive from broadcastersin exchange for their use ofthe spectrum.

Many media democracyactivists don't share Lloyd'sfaith in the FCC andCongress. They claim thatunrelenting civil disobedi-

JUSTICE RISING

Creating Media Democracy

ence campaigns by groups like Free Radio Berkeleythat broadcast from micro radio transmitters with-out FCC permission forced the government's handon Low Power FM radio licenses and won the onlynew mandate for public service broadcasting passedby Congress and the FCC in decades.

Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project, agroup that trains community organizations on howto set up legal Low Power FM (LPFM) stations,advocates that media activists take on the strugglefor a share of the digital radio spectrum even as theyfill up the small niche created by the legalization ofsome low-power stations. He notes that in Europe,as commercial broadcasters migrate to digital, theentire FM dial is being freed up, with significantspace being allocated to public interest broadcasts.

Andrea Buffa, communications director at theactivist organization Global Exchange in SanFrancisco, considers the direct action and civil dis-obedience part of a much broader fight for mediademocracy in the United States. "The first step is toget people to realize your media system doesn't haveto consist of Survivor, Big Brother, Rush Limbaugh,and Howard Stern,” she says. "Congress and theFCC have sold off the entire media infrastructure tocorporate interests. Our goal should be to get USmedia policy out of the hands of the corporationsand change the [access] architecture so that there aremany ways for people to put on programming rele-vant to the cultural, economic, and political needsof their communities.” She advocates reserving 50%of the digital TV and radio spectrum for non-com-mercial local programming, reinstating restrictionson media ownership, and preserving and expandingopen access on Internet broadband services.

Simply changing the size of the big media cor-poration’s pie slices by fighting media consolidationwon’t change the information diet of peopletrapped inside the US media system. Moving thegrowing media democracy movement into themessy struggle for gaining more spectrum rights foralternative and community media, defending exist-ing allies within the mainstream and making surethat low-income people, communities of color,women and queers are part of the struggle is a tallorder, but it's what we’ll need to win.

Ben Clarke is a member of the board of The MediaAlliance in San Francisco and co-edited the booksSeptember 11 and the US War: Beyond theCurtain of Smoke as well as Voice of Fire:Communiques and Interviews from the ZapatistaNational Liberation Army.

Formula for successThe media democracy movement needs to wage athree front struggle: 1.) Create and win media spec-trum in existing and new technologies that isreserved for non-profit, non-commercial community-based media; 2.) Advance the presence of under-rep-resented and misrepresented communities to createand control their own media image and content; 3.)Defend media workers who break the hidden cen-sorship rules of the existing media so that alternativemedia viewpoints can penetrate the mainstream.

There's a lot tobe gained by

grassroots lobby-ing of the FCCand Congress

graphic: © 2000 Zack Johnson

Facilitating Democratic Discourse: Media Monopoly vs Popular Communications

Big Media Interlocks with Corporate Americaby Peter Phillips

Mainstream media is the term often used todescribe the collective group of big TV, radio

and newspapers in the United States. Mainstreamimplies that the news being produced is for thebenefit and enlightenment of the mainstream popu-lation—the majority of people living in the US.Mainstream media include a number of communi-cation mediums that carry almost all the news andinformation on world affairs that most Americansreceive. The word media is plural, implying a diver-sity of news sources.

However, mainstream media no longer pro-duce news for the mainstream population—norshould we consider the media as plural. Instead it ismore accurate to speak of big media in the UStoday as the corporate media and to use the term inthe singular tense—as it refers to the singularmonolithic top-down power structure of self-inter-ested news giants.

A research team at Sonoma State Universityhas recently finished conducting a network analysisof the boards of directors of the ten big mediaorganizations in the US. The team determined thatonly 118 people comprise the membership on theboards of directors of the ten big media giants. Thisis a small enough group to fit in a moderate sizeuniversity classroom. These 118 individuals in turnsit on the corporate boards of 288 national andinternational corporations. NBC and theWashington Post both have board members who siton Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the TribuneCompany, The New York Times and Gannett allhave members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kindof like one big happy family of interlocks andshared interests. In fact, eight out of ten big mediagiants share common memberships on boards ofdirectors with each other. The following are but afew of the corporate board interlocks for the big tenmedia giants in the US:• New York Times: Carlyle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford,Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers,Staples, Pepsi;• Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola,Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P.Morgan, Moody's;• Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&RBlock, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels;• The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate,Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds,Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo;• News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild

Investments;• GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel,Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, HomeDepot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola,Procter & Gamble; • Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines,Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton,Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo; •Viacom (CBS): American Express, ConsolidatedEdison, Oracle, Lafarge North America;• Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, ContinentalAirlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target,Pepsi; • AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, EsteeLauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton.

Can we trust the news editors at theWashington Post to be fair and objective regardingnews stories about Lockheed-Martin defense con-tract over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe thatABC will conduct critical investigative reporting onHalliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq? If webelieve the corporate media give us the full uncen-sored truth about key issues inside the special inter-ests of American capitalism, then we might feelthat they are meeting the democratic needs ofmainstream America. However, if we believe — asincreasingly more Americans do— that corporatemedia serves its own self-interests instead of thoseof the people, then we can no longer call it main-stream or refer to it as plural. Instead we need tosay that corporate media is corporate America, andthat we, the mainstream people, need to be lookingat alternative independent sources for our news andinformation.

Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at SonomaState University and director of Project Censored, amedia research organization, www.projectcensored.org.Sonoma State University students Bridget Thorntonand Brit Walters conducted the research on the mediainterlocks.

Corporate mediais corporateAmerica, and we,the mainstreampeople, need tobe looking atalternative inde-pendent sourcesfor our news andinformation.

chart: Censored 2006

JUSTICE RISING

by Ross Gelbspan

Given the scope and urgency of theheating of the planet, one would

think that the press would be runningstories about global warming at leastthree times a week.

One of the earliest manifestationsof a warming atmosphere lies in moreweather extremes—longer droughts,more frequent heat waves, more severestorms and more intense downpours.

These events are also playing abigger part in news budgets. Witness therecent heatwave in Europe that claimedmore than 30,000 lives, the prolongeddrought in Australia that has cut cropyields in half, the current drought in

France that triggered water rationing in more thanhalf the country and the increased intensity of hur-ricanes from warming surface waters.

Every time the media covers another weatherdisaster, they should insert a line that says:"Scientists associate this pattern of violent weatherwith global warming."

They don't. And the reason is not hard to find.Climate change threatens the survival of the

coal and oil industries—which together constituteone of the the biggest commercial enterprises in his-tory. The science is unambiguous: climate stabiliza-tion requires that humanity cut its consumption ofcarbon fuels by about 70 percent. In other words,nature is telling us that humanity must switch, verysoon, to an energy infrastructure based on wind,solar, hydrogen and other non-carbon sources.

In its struggle for survival, the fossil fuel lobbyhas targeted the press. The public relations special-ists of big oil and big coal have—for more than adecade—continued to insist that the issue of globalwarming is stuck in uncertainty, in order to ensurethat the press treats it as a subject of debate.

In the early 1990s, the coal industry launched amajor campaign of deception and disinformation,paying a few scientists under the table to say climatechange is not happening. That campaign has beencarried forward more recently by ExxonMobil,which, in the last five years, has spent $13 millionto finance these few climate naysayers.

Because of the industry's insistence on “bal-ance,” the press, for the longest time, accorded thesame weight to the “skeptics” as it did to main-stream scientists. Thus was the US media basicallyconned by the PR specialists of the carbon lobby.

The ethic of journalistic balance comes into

play when a story involves opinion: should abor-tion be legal? Should we have bi-lingual educationor English immersion? Should we sanction gaymarriage? At that point, a journalist is obligated togive each competing view its most articulate pres-entation and equivalent space.

But when a story involves a question of fact, areporter's job is to find out what the facts are. Inthis case, what we know about the climate comesfrom more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countriesreporting to the U.N. in what is the largest andmost rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collabora-tion in history.

The US press today is in a state of low-gradedenial of the climate crisis. The media acknowledgeits existence even as they minimize its scope andurgency. Witness the pattern of coverage that pro-vides occasional feature stories about the decima-tion of the forests in Alaska—but which continuesto ignore the central diplomatic, political and eco-nomic conflicts around the issue.

While the disinformation campaign by the fos-sil fuel lobby explains some of this negligence bythe press, I think one needs to look at the changingstructure of media ownership as well.

With the conglomeratization of the newsmedia, Wall Street is now the tail that increasinglywags the dog. As a result, marketing strategy isreplacing news judgment in many media outlets. Inorder to attract readers and viewers, newspapers,radio and TV news outlets are featuring morecelebrity coverage, self-help articles and trivial med-ical developments at the expense of serious news.At the same time, most news organizations are cut-ting staff, allowing reporters less time and fewerresources to cover complex stories.

Perhaps the US press would do a better job ofcovering global warming if it were only a bit moreentertaining.

Ross Gelbspan was a reporter and editor for 31 yearsat The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Washington Postand The Boston Globe and won a Pulitzer Prize in1984. His articles on the climate issue have appearedin Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation,The American Prospect and other newspapers andmagazines. His latest book, Boiling Point, was ratedone of the top science books of 2004. Gelbspan main-tains the website: www.heatisonline.org. See page 6for DVD of Gelbspan’s presentation to the AfD.

Oil Pressure Corporate PR and the Climate of Denial

The Competitive Enterprise Institute pub-lished this book and has received$1,645,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

The public rela-tions specialists

of big oil and bigcoal have—for

more than adecade—contin-

ued to insist thatthe issue of glob-

al warming isstuck in uncer-

tainty,

"A popular government without popular information, orthe means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, ora tragedy or perhaps both.” James Madison 1822


by Bob Burton

Traditionally corporate public relations cam-paigns devoted considerable effort to devising

strategies to get favorable stories covered and unfa-vorable ones buried. Increasingly they are providingnews outlets with ready to air "news” funded andscripted by their corporate clients.

While controversy raged this year over US gov-ernment funded propaganda projects – such as theuse of video news releases (VNRs) – the overwhelm-ing bulk of the fake news served up by the media ishustling the policies and products of corporations.

While fake news comes in many forms it isoften difficult to detect and even harder to avoid.VNRs, for example, often consist of a PR personposing as a ‘reporter’ presenting a story, completewith ‘interviews’ and sponsor-approved footage.

To cover the possibility that some stations maynot use the pre-packaged version most include theB-roll, the interviews, file footage and suggestedscript so that a local reporter can do the voiceover.Often the soundtrack will also be delivered as anaudio news release to radio stations. Some compa-nies also provide corporate-sponsored photos orgraphics for media outlets for free use on their newswebsites, magazines or outlets.

Central to the success of fake news is the willing-ness of news outlets to conceal from their audiencethe identity of the real producers of their "news."

Why would news outlets use fake news in placeof real news? On its website KEF Media Associatesexplains that cost-cutting in the newsroom has cre-ated the "opportunity” for more VNR's. "Becausemany of the cuts have been among producers andtechnicians whose job it is to fill the newscast time,demand has grown for news content supplied byoutside sources,” KEF states.

How many VNR’s are produced is somethingof a mystery but some suggest it is as many as4,000 a year. The biggest producer of VNRs by faris Medialink Worldwide, a $36 million a year com-pany headed by Larry Moskowitz.

"Each year, Medialink generates tens of thou-sands of broadcast news airings worldwide reaching

billions of viewers, listeners and readers on media asdiverse as CNN, The New York Times, ABC, SkyNews, The Washington Post, BBC, Bloomberg Radio,AOL, Yahoo! and China Central Television, thenational television station of the People's Republic ofChina,” Medialink stated in its 2003 annual report.

In the aftermath of a March exposé by the NewYork Times on the use of government producedVNRs, nervous PR executives participated in aphone teleconference hosted by the PR industrytrade publication, O’Dwyers PR Daily.

While the New York Times focussed largely ongovernment use of VNRs, those participating in theteleconference knew that it was corporations thatbuttered their bread. "Let's remember this debate,from everything I've seen, read, heard, and talkedto, is purely the government,” Moskowitz coun-selled his fellow VNR producers on the teleconfer-ence, adding, "I would hate to see it broaden."

While Congress has supported a one year banon government funding of VNR’s, corporate fakenews has so far escaped unscathed.

Despite Congressional timidity, an importantopportunity for preventing corporate fake news frompolluting news broadcasts lies in a Federal Com-munication Commission review of disclosure stan-dards on VNR’s for radio and television broadcasters.

The No Fake News campaign by the Center forMedia and Democracy and Free Press aims to per-suade the FCC that media networks should discloseall broadcast material provided to them. In order todocument the use of VNRs the campaign is seekingenthusiastic media monitors to help documentinstances of fake news use. With a little effort hope-fully your reward will be the end of corporate PRdressed up as news.

For more information on the No Fake Newscampaign go to http://www.prwatch.org/nofakenews

Bob Burton works for the Center for Media andDemocracy as the editor of SourceWatch (www.source-watch.org), a collaborative, online database on PR andspin that anyone can contribute to.

The overwhelm-ing bulk of thefake news servedup by the mediais hustling thepolicies and prod-ucts of corpora-tions.

Your Corporate News & The No False News Campaign

Easing the ChangesMitigating the RisksDiscover the Power of Video

Strategic Consultants

JUSTICE RISING

“They used to rob trains in the Old West. Now we robspectrum.” Senator John McCain.

The Commons are all the creation of natureand culture that we inherit jointly and freely andhold in trust for future generations. The media andthe airways are such commons. They began as natu-ral commons but became financially valuablebecause of cultural changes.

Media usually refers to an organized means ofdistribution of fact, opinion, and entertainmentsuch as newspapers, magazines, films, radio, televi-sion, and the World Wide Web. It is a form of masscommunication or mass media.

The airways (the broadcast spectrum) are partof the commons and are owned by the public.Therefore the public should have control over thisresource and any revenues that it raises. The RadioAct of 1927 said: in exchange for free licenses, pri-vate companies would broadcast programs serving

"the public interest, convenience and necessity.”The airways themselves would remain public prop-erty, with the Federal CommunicationsCommission acting as trustee. Broadcasters grewlarge and profitable under this arrangement, whiletheir public interest obligations were reduced.

In the 1980s the FCC dropped the FairnessDoctrine which required broadcasters to air bothsides of controversial issues. In 1995 Congress gavebroadcasting corporations still more free spectrum,supposedly for digital TV. Now broadcasters have anew plan to "propertize” the airwaves with owner-ship assigned to them. Under this plan, the freetemporary licenses broadcasters received in 1995would become permanent entitlements: propertythey could now sell [probably to cell phone compa-nies] and pocket the windfall. If the FCC treatedthe airwaves as a common asset, it would lease mostof them at market rates for limited terms to thehighest bidders. The billions of dollars raised couldbuy free air time for political candidates, fund non-commercial radio and TV and help education andthe arts. This is not a new idea. In the 1990's,Congress auctioned off cell phone frequencies, rais-ing billions of dollars for the federal treasury.

But if parts of the commons are sold or leasedat a price, they are changed from a common into acommodity. The newest battleground on this is theweb. Activists are struggling to keep the internetfree and creating open source software in the publicdomain. Using technologies like WiFi [wirelessfidelity], high speed internet access could be avail-able to everyone for almost nothing. And with newdigital technology, soon signal interference (which isthe rationale behind exclusive leases of the broadcastspectrum) could be a thing of the past. Then theairwaves, too, could be an open access commons.

Though most of us would agree that returningthe media to the commons is the right idea, corpo-rate managers will not give up their grasp on theairwaves willingly. The Telecommunications Act of1996 allowed for massive and unprecedented corpo-rate media consolidation and deregulation thatcaused significant harm to our democracy and cul-ture. Congress has said it will revisit theTelecommunications Act in 2006. The Act of 1996promised more competition and diversity, but theopposite happened. Citizens, excluded from theprocess when the Act was negotiated in Congress,must have a seat at the table as Congress proposesto revisit this law. We must demand the media bereturned to commons.

Jan Edwards is the creator of the "Timeline ofPersonhood Rights and Powers” and has spoken on cor-porate personhood across the country. She is a memberof the Redwood Coast AfD. Contact her at [email protected].

graphic: Matt Wuerker

Rights & Wrongs by Jan Edwards

Media Commons

We must demandthe media be

returned to com-mons.

Envisioning a Better World DVDs Great for TV, Meetings or Event showings!

The North Bridge AfD Chapter’s two-session forum Envisioning a Better World inMay 2005 featuring renowned speakers Ross Gelbspan and William Rivers Pitt arenow available on DVD. The DVDs are $10 each plus 60 cents shipping. Make outchecks to North Bridge Alliance and mail to same at: 221 Monsen Road, Concord,MA 01742.•A Journalist’s View of the Climate Crisis by Ross Gelbspan, author of twobestselling books on climate change, The Heat is On and the recent Boiling Point:How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the ClimateCrisis, And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. The talk gives an encyclopedicoverview of the current climate crisis and then offers three well thought out,practical solutions.•Corporate Control of the Media by William Rivers Pitt, International best-selling author of The War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Knowand The Greatest Sedition is Silence, and writer for the online journaltruthout.org, Pitt speaks forcefully about the silence of the major media onissues of critical importance.


by Ben Clarkewith 2004 research by Sakura Saunders

For 83 years the triangular relationship betweenthe National Association of Broadcasters (NAB),

Congress, and the FCC has put the public on thereceiving end more uniform content deliveredthrough more channels. Founded in 1922 with amembership of 16 radio stations, by the year 2000the NAB had annual revenues of more than $35 mil-lion, and claimed to represent 85 percent of the net-work TV stations and 40 percent of all independentand public TV stations in the United States.Broadcast industry critics, campaign finance reform-ers, members of Congress, and the NAB itself allagree that the NAB and its members are one of themost effective lobbies in Washington. They havespent tens of millions of dollars on campaign contri-butions and lobbying expenses to push their policiesthrough Congress and the FCC.

Common Cause points out that NAB members“control how, and if, members of Congress appear ontelevision.” Continuing a twenty-year trend that hasseen advertising expenses skyrocket, the total spentfor political ads in 2004 was over $1.5 billion. Atroughly the same pace that advertising revenue hasgrown, broadcast TV coverage of substantive electoralissues has dwindled. NAB spokesperson, Jeff Yorkclaims that politicians prefer advertising to independ-ent news coverage because, “They can control themessage when they buy advertising. They have lesscontrol when it's live news.” York also argues thatpoliticians refuse free airtime because they are afraidto confront their challengers.

Last year, broadcasters donated $3,592,069 tocandidates. Over the past three years the big fiveMedia companies, Disney (ABC), News Corp (Fox)GE (NBC & Telemundo), Viacom (ABC), TimeWarner (CNN & WB) plus the NAB have spentover $79,740,000 on lobbying. Contributions, lob-bying, all expenses paid junkets, and above all favor-able spin during the ever smaller news hole inwhich news issues are framed, are the payback pro-vided by the broadcasters to the politicians.

Norman Solomon, media analyst for the mediawatchdog group FAIR, points out that Fox New’sparent, NewsCorp had a large stake in the deregula-

tion rules because they already ownedmore stations than the rules allowed.Fox provided vehemently pro-war newscoverage and editorials in the periodbefore the Iraq invasion. Solomon com-ments, “This is the typical Karl Rovestrategy of helping out those who further the agendaof the administration.” In another example, GeneralElectric profited handsomely from its governmentcontracts in Iraq. Meanwhile it owns NBC andspent over $45 million dollars on lobbying in 2003alone.

Common Cause also points out the members ofthe NAB “have the power to control how issuesaffecting their own operations are covered.” Recently,the NAB used its considerable influence to stop botha proposal to tax television broadcasters’ analog spec-trum and to stop a $1.9 billion assessment in spec-trum fees on corporate users of unauctioned spec-trum. They helped defeat legislation to curtail direct-to-consumer advertisements of prescription drugsand maintained the blockade against Low Power FM.The NAB's biggest single financial coup was the $70billion giveaway of digital television bandwidth dur-ing the Clinton years. They supported the increase inmedia consolidation proposed at the FCC last year,and opposed almost any requirement on broadcastersto address the lack of diversity of station employees.

Not surprisingly, the paucity of meaningfulcampaign coverage and public affairs and publicinterest programming in general is a direct result ofthe successful lobbying by NAB members to keepcommercial television for commercials. The FairnessDoctrine and the broadcast license renewal require-ments to provide serious documentation of publicaffairs offerings were eliminated during the Reaganadministration. What the NAB touts as public serv-ice programming is a “congressional families PSAproject featuring spouses and children of membersof Congress.” The NAB and its members have suc-cessfully expropriated a public resource—thenation's airwaves—and use that resource to furtheran economic, political, and cultural agenda contraryto the public interest.

Media Money TriangleCorporate Media, Congress, and the FCC

The NAB...expro-priated a publicresource—thenation's air-waves—and usethat resource tofurther an eco-nomic, political,and culturalagenda contraryto the publicinterest.


Federal Marshals, armed to the teeth, storm private residences confiscating micro-radio transmitters, computers,and CD collections. Twenty-nine million dollars worth of lobbyists swarm the halls of Congress and the FederalCommunications Commission to press for legislation allowing ever greater consolidation of the media and telecom-munications industry.

Welcome to the world created by the unholy alliance of corporate media, the FCC and Congress.

by Joe Davis

Recognizing that democracy must be based on thefree communication of truthful information about

the issues that confront our society, the NationalCouncil of the Alliance for Democracy has given highpriority to a Media Reform Project as a crucial elementin working toward our mission “to establish truedemocracy, and to create a just society with a sustain-able, equitable economy.” The project will focus on:1. Reducing the concentration of the media that

allows commercial interests to dictate the contentof news and information and limits the diversityof views presented.

2. Challenging corporate control of national mediapolicy made possible by campaign contributionsand massive lobbying efforts, which promote pri-vate interests rather than the public good.

3. Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine that wasdesigned to protect the public’s right to equalaccess to all points of view, but was eliminatedduring the Reagan Administration.

4. Ensuring that local stations serve the interests ofthe communities in which they operate.

5. Stopping Bush administration proposals to drasti-cally reduce support for public broadcasting.

Action at the federal level will focus onCongress and the FCC. Changes at the local level

JUSTICE RISING

We were pleased by the generous comments we received onthe first issue of Justice Rising, which dealt with Creating

Honest Elections. Like all issues where corporate power is involved, this is an ongo-ing story. Nancy Matela at [email protected] continues to put out a daily newsbulletin on this important topic if you want to keep updated. Citizens involved inreforming the electoral process in Ohio have collected 350,000 signatures to putthree constitutional amendments on the ballot that would end partisan corruptionin the elections there. Meanwhile the August issue of Harpers contains an articletitled None Dare Call It Stolen: Ohio, the Election and America’s Servile Press. In thatpiece Mark Crispin Miller takes American mainstream media to task for ignoringthe obvious evidence of a stolen election in Ohio.

This brings us to this second issue of Justice Rising and the role of an imperi-al press that in many ways has become a central power broker in the expandingglobal commercial empire. The empire will be the topic of our third issue ofJustice Rising—Global Commercial Empire vs Popular Democracy. In December, theMinisters of the World Trade Organization meet in Hong Kong and a monthlater the World Social Forum will meet in regional gatherings across the planet,including one in Caracas, Venezuela. It is a confrontation at the heart of ourglobal future and at the center of our hopes to survive without catastrophe sweep-ing the planet. If you want to contribute, email [email protected]. The deadline isOctober first.

Let us know your thoughts on these issues. Letters to the editor will be a greatway to stay updated on past themes and future possibilities.

Justice RisingJustice Rising14951 Caspar Road, Box 14

Caspar, CA [email protected]

Jim TarbellEditor and Layout, Justice Rising

JUSTICE RISING is a publication of The Alliancefor Democracy, whose mission is to end the domi-nation of our politics, our economics, the environment,and our culture by large corporations. The Alliance seeksto establish true economic and political democracy and tocreate a just society with a sustainable, equitable economy.

The Alliance for DemocracyP. O. Box 540115

Waltham, MA 02454Tel: 781-894-1179

Email: [email protected]

Nancy Price and Cliff ArnebeckCo-Chairs of the AfD National Council

Copyright ©2005Alliance for Democracy

AfD’s Media Reform Project

include renegotiating cable contracts, establishingmedia watch groups and creating our own media.

Alliance members and concerned citizens mustbe informed and ready to challenge:• the FCC when they attempt to increase concentra-

tion of media ownership;• the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when it

advocates reduced funding for National PublicRadio and the Public Broadcasting System;

• privatization of broadband Internet access;• elimination of low-power FM radio stations;• further limitation of diversity and public control of

the media through Congressional enactment of anew Telecommunications Act in 2006.

All of us, as concerned citizens, should:• monitor and understand the ownership patterns of

our local media;• be cognizant of alternative sources of information;• participate in creating a truly diversified democrat-

ic media that broadcasts information crucial to ourself-governance;

• promote public access TV, local control over cablenetworks, listener-sponsored radio and televisionbroadcasting and alternative local media.

For more information contact Joe Davis [email protected].


to Moyers, Senator TrentLott of Mississippi protest-ed that the CPB “has notseemed willing to deal withBill Moyers.” Moyers askedto confer with the CPBboard three times, but“they wouldn't meet withme,” he said.

Tomlinson denied on Fox News that he hadany conversations with any Bush administrationofficials about PBS. The New York Times reportedthat Tomlinson had solicited Karl Rove to help himkill a proposal to put people with local radio andTV experience on the CPB board and that further-more, on the recommendation of a BushAdministration official, Tomlinson hired, as a seniorCPB staffer, Mary Catherine Andrews, who, whilestill reporting to Rove, set up CPB's newombudsperson's office.

Reportedly, when Tomlinson's CPB boardcommissioned two public opinion surveys aboutPBS and NPR, which showed high public regardfor public broadcasting's quality and balance, CPBrefused to release them. Evidently members of theHouse of Representatives butted headfirst intothose same public attitudes this year when an initialmove to cut funding for public broadcasting wasslapped down by a bipartisan House majority.

Moyers, speaking at the recent NationalConference for Media Reform, said: “A free press isone where it's OK to state the conclusion you're ledto by the evidence,” but the “rules of the game”permit Washington officials “to set the agenda forjournalism.” While putting out NOW, he said,“What people know depends on who owns thepress—we keep coming back to the media businessitself, to how mega-media corporations were push-ing journalism further and further down the hierar-chy of values, how giant radio cartels were silencingcritics while shutting communities off from essen-tial information, and how the mega-media compa-nies were lobbying the FCC for the right to growever more powerful.

“Without public broadcasting,” Moyers said,“all we would call news would be merely carefullycontrolled propaganda."

Ronnie Dugger, founding editor of The TexasObserver and co-founder of AfD, has written fourbooks and hundreds of articles for Harper's Magazine,The Nation, The New Yorker, The AtlanticMonthly, and other periodicals.

by Ronnie Dugger

Kenneth Tomlinson, who has a long career work-ing for official US propaganda agencies, is now

the chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting(CPB). After consulting the White House, but with-out consulting or informing his fellow board mem-bers, Tomlinson hired for CPB an obscure right-wingpolitical operative, and paid him just over $14,000 inUS taxpayer money to judge the politics of BillMoyers' NOW program on PBS. The operative dulyreported back classifying guests as “anti-Bush,” andcalling Chuck Hagel, the occasionally moderateRepublican senator from Nebraska, a liberal. Under

Tomlinson, the presidentof CPB is a former co-chair of the RepublicanNational Committee.

PBS, as a result of theTomlinson-led board'sexpenditure of $5 million,now airs a talk showentirely produced and con-trolled by the editorialpage editors of the WallStreet Journal. “Among the

big major newspapers, the Wall Street Journal has noop-ed page where different opinions can compete withits right-wing editorials. The Journal's PBS broadcastis just as homogeneous—right-wingers talking to eachother,” Bill Moyers said in a speech on May 15th.“Why not $5 million to put the editors of The Nationon PBS? Or Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! Youbalance right-wing talk with left-wing talk."

The Bush Administration's penetration of pub-lic broadcasting via Tomlinson is the latest in a seriesof egregious episodes in the past few decades land-marking the corporate and conservative penetrationand shaping of the mainline media. These include:• the short-shrifting of election reporting, calibrated

inversely with the relentlessly escalating prices andnecessity of candidate-bought on-air political ads;

• Congress' stinginess in funding public broadcast-ing matched inversely to the ever-increasing com-mercialization of PBS and NPR;

• the supplanting of the Edward R. Murrow traditionsof TV journalism by the cost-cutting and money-making values of corporate media conglomerates;

• the loud arrival and apparent acceptance ofRupert Murdoch's Fox News network on thepublic airways as a flimsily-disguised propagandamedium for the Republican Party.

In Washington, Moyers said last spring, heheard that the PBS funding authorization was goingto be held off “until Moyers is dealt with.” According

The Politicization of Public Broadcasting

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, for-mer head of Voice ofAmerica now Chairs CPB.

Patricia de Stacy Harrison,Former Co-Chair of the Rep-ublican National Committee isnow President of CPB.

"What peopleknow dependson who ownsthe press.”Bill Moyers

JUSTICE RISING

Media Reform Confere

Bob McChesney welcomes Bill Moformance outlining the politicizatiwhich may force him “out of the anchor chair.”

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and AfD co-chair Nancy Pricecelebrate the effort to end corporate domination.

AfD members Jim Tarbell, Sue Skidmore and Rick LaMonica

AfD Videographer Martha Spiess takes her place in the confer-ence video pool.

Gathered at the gateway through which the American Empire passed to conquerIndigenous, Spanish, English and Russian lands, 2500 media reformers in May

2005 took on the task of taming the imperial press that now urges global conquestby a commercial empire spearheaded by American corporate interests and militarymight. Six AfD members joined the optimistic throng. Opening the show, JohnNichols, the exuberant impresario of Fress Press declared that we were all on thefreedom train and the media is the key. Because, as he pointed out, “if media is notyour first issue, it absolutely has to be your second.” Then Josh Silver, Free PressExecutive Director reminded the crowd that, “We have blocked the FCC, stoppedSinclair, stopped the payola pundits and changed the cable franchise rules. We are

Cultural Diversity vs. Free Trade: A Call to ActionDealing with the upcoming WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong this December, Peter

Grant, Canada’s premier communications lawyer and author of Blockbusters and TradeWars spoke of the need to stop the commodification of cultural goods. A litany of gov-ernment measures/laws including public broadcasting and foreign ownership policiesare threatened by international trade laws. Mary Bottari of Public Citizen pointed outthat media issues on the table also include audio-visual and communications services,radio/TV/sound recording, transmission/news services, and photo services. She pointedout that while the media corporations are at the table and reporting the news, the pub-lic interest is not. Meanwhile, Garry Neil from the International Network for CulturalDiversity pointed out that UNESCO is overseeing an international convention that willprotect each country’s right to maintain media policies that promote cultural diversity.Holding Media Accountable through Policy and Activism

David Brock, who has been a John M. Olin Fellow at the Heritage Foundation andan editorial page writer at the Washington Times reported that the right-wing take overof the media is increasing and now a false article moves from print to radio to TV toInternet. Brock has set up Media Matters to analyze and fact check the content of spe-cific media outlets. They have called publishers and broadcasters to account on falseinformation and have been successful in getting retractions. They post their findings atmediamatters.org and encourage journalists to speak out and challenge publishers totake responsibility for content.

Recognizing that communication is a human right, unbalanced public programmingcan be challenged by initiating public debate when the licenses of radio and television sta-tions come up for renewal.

A litany ofgovernment

measures/lawsincluding pub-lic broadcast-

ing and foreignownership

policies arethreatened byinternational

trade laws.

photo: Jim Tarbell

photo: Jim Tarbell

phot

o: N

ancy

Pric

e

photo: Jim Tarbell


Media Activism 101People are organizing around breaking through the corporate media by creating

their own media using internet, community technology centers, story-telling and videoand radio diaries.They are also confronting corporate media by monitoring. There is aneed to change the rules: focus on policy, legislation, use of new technology, electronicprivacy rights and intellectual property. Look at: grassrootscable.org and hearusnow.org.Citizen Pressure and Media Policy

Democratic legislators have formed a Future of American Media Caucus to takeback America’s media. Congressman Bernie Sanders, who is running for US Senatorfrom Vermont, accuses the media of trivializing issues and ignoring the concerns of mil-lions of working Americans. He foresees the collapse of the middle class as people worklonger hours for lower pay. Since this is not the reality portrayed on TV, they think theyare alone, blame themselves, and become depoliticized.FCC Past and Present

Federal Communications Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelsteinjoined past commissioners Nicholas Johnson and Gloria Tristani for a fascinatinginsight into the workings of the FCC. They all thanked people for who participatedin the great outpouring of opposition to media consolidation, but they warned thatthe fight is not over. Both Commissioners Copps and Adelstein predicted that therewill be piecemeal attempts in the coming year to increase the dependence on market-place mechanisms for media regulation, though these mechanisms have gutted thepublic good of the media. They emphasized that they need people to support themwhen those battles arise. It will only be with public participation that they can winthis fight.

nce Meets in St. Louis

ho gave a fabled per-public broadcasting,g chair and back into the

Independent Congressman Bernie Sanders exhorts that poverty isa moral issue not covered in our media.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein rocks out with thePatti Smith Band.

hering momentum for the coming key policy battle to rewrite theecommunications Act in 2006”. Then the convener of the gathering, BobChesney came on stage and exuded over the sold-out house and exclaimed thatre were hundreds if not thousands of more people who wanted to come.

With that, three days of information sharing, networking, planning and partyingan in earnest with a long list of workshops, forums, speeches and movies. It is allilable at www.freepress.net. But if you do not want to download the whole thing,

ur intrepid Alliance reporters, Joe Davis, Joanna Herlihy, Martha Spiess, Nancyce and Jim Tarbell wrote summaries of the events they attended and synopses ofir reports appear below. Contact [email protected] if you want the complete reports.

There will bepiecemealattempts in thecoming year toincrease thedependence onmarketplacemechanisms formedia regulation.

photo: Jim Tarbell

photo: Jim Tarbell

Videos of ConferenceWorkshops

1.Cultural Diversity vs. Free Trade: A Call toAction (90 min.). Multinational entertainment compa-nies and media conglomerates, “free trade” policiesand profit-driven globalization. With James CountsEarly, Peter Grant, Mary Bottari, and Garry Neil2. The FCC Past and Present (90 min.) Pressing issuesat the FCC, how citizens can best engage in the regula-tory process. With Gloria Tristani, Jonathan Adelstein,Michael Copps, and Nicholas Johnson

Two programs are available DVD-R or VHS format,$15.98 donation to cover costs—each, check made outto “mspiess/afdmedia", 7 Tidal Brook Rd, Freeport, ME04032, Any additional funds obtained over postage/costwill be forwarded to Alliance for Democracy.

JUSTICE RISING

by Chris Calder

If good information is the drinking water ofdemocracy, then what’s coming out of the mass

media’s tap these days is pretty gross. We all needgood media filters to get enough of the fresh, cleanstuff to survive. With one exception, the followingbooks written over the past decade constitute a how-to kit on building, or strengthening, our media.

My favorite is the 1997 book Wizards of MediaOz, by prolific media critics Norman Solomon andJeff Cohen. It’s light—meaning the authors can makeyou laugh while telling you how you’re beingscrewed—yet packed with meaningful examples ofhow the mainstream media work hard winning heartsand minds to the corporate agenda. Solomon andCohen serve up bunches of tidbits like: Ted Koppelacknowledging proudly that, as a reporter in Vietnam,he was privy to the secret bombing of Laos longbefore it became public; George Will fiercely resistingpublic disclosure that his wife was press secretary forthe Dole presidential campaign in 1996; or NPRrefusing to divulge how much money it receives frombig sponsors like Archer-Daniels Midland, Wal-Martand Merck, “as a courtesy to our underwriters."

Digging deeper into the why’s and how’s of thesituation is Ben Bagdikian’s The New MediaMonopoly. Bagdikian is a former editor at theWashington Post and dean emeritus of UC Berkeley’sSchool of Journalism, yet his writing and sense ofmission retain the fire of the unbought. I’ll letBagdikian’s website say what his book’s about: “Fivehuge corporations... have been a major force in creat-ing conservative and far right politics in the country.They have...produced a coarse and vulgar culture thatcelebrates the most demeaning characteristics in thehuman psyche—greed, deceit, and cheating—as alegitimate way to win.” Bagdikian’s fighting spiritalone makes Monopoly a worthwhile read.

Trust Us We’re Experts, one in a series of booksby PR watchers Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber isa sharp look at how modern “news” has at least oneparent in the public relations industry. It starts with aninvaluable, chilling account of the creation of “PR” inthe US during (and for) World War I. We read WalterLippman’s cold-eyed explanation of why the republicwas no longer safe in the hands of the people, andhow Edward Bernays, renowned “Father of PublicRelations” as well as nephew of Sigmund Freud, firstplied the backdoors of the human psyche in the serviceof Big Business. This leads inexorably to the presentday conjurings by Monsanto, Philip Morris, Merck, etal. Trust Us shows very clearly why taking the productsof mass media for truth is much like confusing aChicken McNugget with a live chicken.

If you want a detailed look at the nexus of big

Media Books From the Shelf

money and big media, get Networks of Influence,published by the Center for Public Integrity. Thiscomprehensive guide gives facts and figures on everysignificant media company in the US–who ownsthem, what outlets they control, which politicians theyfund. For researchers into the topic, Networks is amust. It will also tells who to write about the qualityand content of your local paper, radio or TV station. Itmay be dry, but Networks is the straight stuff.

Now for the exception. Our Media Not Theirs,a small booklet by leading activists RobertMcChesney and John Nichols, is media criticism thatmakes this reviewer ask, ‘Why bother?’ OMNT is anindictment of the corporate media, which claims tooffer a new way of fighting back, but delivers littlebeyond a discussion of something called the “ThirdLeft,"—nothing more than a new label for old tac-tics. It reads like a legal brief, and assumes that soundlogic will receive a fair hearing. This is belied bydecades of a logical Left getting the crap knocked outof it. Very little is fair about the national media orpolitics in America today. Who cares less about fair-ness in media than its owners or, unfortunately, agreat many of its soundly-indoctrinated consumers?OMNT made me cry out for a moratorium on care-fully plotted argument and, instead, a rain of blister-ing satire on the porcine Karlrovians who would col-onize our minds.

On the other hand, The Future of Media is aninspiring essay collection on media activism, with apractical “action guide” at the end. Especially finecontributions include Mark Lloyd’s account of slyand often racist techniques of misinforming the pub-lic; John Dunbar’s dissection of FCC subservience tocorporate masters; Jeff Chester and Gary Larson’spolitical history of the Internet; plus varied takes onthe threats and possibilities the present mediamoment affords. The action guide offers things like ahow-to look through TV and radio stations’ publicinterest files, and expiration dates for broadcastlicenses, cluing readers in to the best times to rampup the pressure. Editors Robert McChesney, RussellNewman and Ben Scott have forged a righteous toolfor raising awareness and a little hell.

Speaking of turning up the heat, there’s Be theMedia, a guide to creating your own radio program(or station), newspaper, music label, film etc. It’sendorsed by activists far and wide as an effectivesource, and is available at www.bethemedia.com.Though we are all voracious consumers of ideas, wealso have a few of our own.

Chris Calder is a freelance journalist and formersmall-town newspaper editor in Northern California.

The action guideoffers things like

a how-to lookthrough TV andradio stations’public interest

files.


by Kate Sims

In the mid ‘90s, the big media companiesmarched themselves over to the FCC and said,

“It should not be our responsibility to keep thepublic informed. Our main obligation is to ourshareholders to broadcast news and entertainmentas quickly and cheaply as possible. Let’s get rid ofthose pesky restrictions against mergers and acquisi-tions and let us do whatever we need to do to makemoney. Trust us, it’ll be better for everyone in thelong run."

Of course the FCC (initially) folded like ahouse of cards. But a few plucky and dedicatedindividuals saw the folly in such thinking andbegan to warn about the dangers of these trendsand the consequences for our democracy. Today,what began as a few voices in the wilderness hasbecome a thunder of voices calling out for a reformof our media system and a return to the principlesthat established the FCC in the first place.

With the St. Louis Media Reform Conferenceof 2005 under our belts, the pace of media reformactivism has picked up a momentum that the origi-nators of the movement could only have dreamt ofa few years ago. People across the country, from allpolitical backgrounds, are expressing a desire tobecome a part of this history-making event.

So who does one go to for good, understand-able, reliable, organized information about mediaand its reformation? Here are some of the resourcesthat I have found particularly helpful.1. Free Press: www.freepress.net or www.mediare-form.org: You cannot begin to inform yourselfabout media activism without first accessing thewisdom of Robert McChesney, the ‘JohnnyAppleseed’ of the modern media reform movement.In 2002, together with John Nichols and JoshSilver, McChesney put together a well-organizedand comprehensive website. Based out ofNorthampton, MA, it has a very readable history ofbroadcast media in the US and a very helpful“Beginner’s Guide to Media Reform.”2. Reclaim the Media: www.reclaimthemedia.org.Based out of Seattle, WA, this website probably hasmore media reform information per square inchthan any other, but it is also very easy to follow.Take a look at their “About us” page to get a quicksense of who they are and what they do.3. Prometheus Radio Project:www.prometheusradio.org. Based out ofPhiladelphia, this website provides fascinating

information about Low Power FM (LPFM): whatit is, why it is so controversial, and how peoplethroughout the world are using it to create theirown media and to get the word out about what ishappening in their communities.4. MediaAlliance: www.media-alliance.org. Basedout of San Francisco, Media Alliance is one of theoldest media reform organizations in the country.Their staff travel all over the country speaking onmedia issues, their website features many re-sources and links, and, true to their name, theywork to build alliances with other activist organi-zations to heighten awareness of media issues inthe general population.5.Independent Media Center: www.indymedia.org.One cannot discuss media reform in the new centu-ry without mentioning the Independent MediaCenter (IMC). While members of the IMC may bemedia reform activists and advocates, the IMC itselfis not a media reform organization, it IS mediareform. I highly recommend going to their webhomepage, clicking on “about” to find out moreabout their origins and then on “Frequently askedquestions” to find out how you can get involved.Then, go back and click on the city nearest you tofind out what people in your area are writing about.

All of these websites have many more links andresources than I can possibly list here. The bestthing to do is to log on and poke around for your-self until you find the project and approach thatinterests you the most.

Kate Sims is the Research Coordinator for ProjectCensored at Sonoma State University.

Resources forReform

The best thing todo is to log onand poke aroundfor yourself untilyou find theproject andapproach thatinterests you themost.


JUSTICE RISING

must sign with cable providers have developed intowedges to force the cable corporations into providingchannel space and funding for local channels. On“Direct Broadcast Satellites” (DBS) activists havewon a provision that requires all program services todevote 4% of their channel space to non-profit, edu-cational and cultural programming. This has enabledchannels such as the University of California, theUniversity of Washington and Free Speech TV, anactivist channel from Boulder, Colorado, to thrive.Perhaps the most recognized use of this space is thedaily news program, Democracy Now! which uses theFree Speech satellite live broadcast to distribute theirone hour program to community PEG channels andgrassroots radio stations.

These creative outlets are not just nodes of alter-native and diverse voices, but they are also more andmore inspiring their constituents to take part in criti-cal activism towards the structure of corporate media.The sold-out media reform gatherings in 2003 inMadison, Wisconsin and this spring in St. Louis havegiven impetus to a new media activism. There is anew-found sharing of resources and activities. Fairnessand Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is collaboratingwith Paper Tiger Television and Prometheus RadioProject on similar local conferences. The Nation andFree Speech TV are working together on taping“keynote” speeches at progressive gatherings aroundthe country. Deep Dish TV is making premium DVDsets on the war in Iraq for fund-raising sales onPacifica radio channels. Prometheus Radio Project iscelebrating “barn raisings” in which local communitiesinitiate micro radio stations. Indymedia is streamingvideo of the anti-globalization actions in Scotland,which are picked up and transmitted on DemocracyNow! to over 350 radio and television channels aroundthe United States. There never has been this sort ofdynamic synergy before. Collaboration and “mutualaid” have prevailed and helped alternative mediadevelop into a strong asset for progressive movements.As the US moves into high definition and digital sig-nals, it is an opportune time to rethink theBroadcasting Act and begin to define our “interests,conveniences and necessities.” What do we want andneed from the electronic tools that up till now haveonly been used to deceive and delude us?

DeeDee Halleck is a media activist, the founder ofPaper Tiger Television and co-founder of the DeepDish Satellite Network. She is Professor Emerita at theUniversity of California, San Diego and the author ofthe recent book, Hand Held Visions: The ImpossiblePossibilities of Community Media.

by DeeDee Halleck

In 1943, the FederalCommunications

Commission (FCC)received an application for

the transfer of the “Blue Network,” wholly ownedby RCA (NBC) to American Broadcasting (ABC).Edward Noble, owner of American Broadcasting,sought to assure the FCC of his adherence to thevague, but beneficial sounding, defining phrase ofthe 1927 Radio Act, “the public interest, conven-ience and necessity.” He included on his applicationa policy whereby: All classes and groups shall havetheir requests, either for sponsored or sustainingtime, seriously considered “in accordance with truedemocratic principles."

That sure is a long way from NBC these days.The airwaves, satellites and cable lines form a corpo-rate blockade of trivia and greed that have “manufac-tured consent” as Ed Herman and Noam Chomskydescribed several years ago. The fact that the admin-istration was able to hoodwink the US public intobelieving their lies about Iraq is due in a great part tothe role of the corporate media in creating the fearand jingoism that has sent us off to war. While thetroops were being loaded on to their humvees, thechannels of the US presented the “Fear Factor.” One

also wonders in accordancewith what “public interest,convenience and necessityand democratic principles”are nubile young starletsconvinced to consumebuckets of earthworms onreality TV.

But there are channelsthat attempt to fulfill thesort of civic promise ofthat idealistic rhetoric. Thepublic, educational andgovernment (PEG) accesschannels, the grassroots lis-tener-supported and microradio stations and theinter-active internet sitessuch as Indymedia havecreated a dynamic potentialfor citizens' media. Thisactivity has taken advan-tage of the infrastructurewhich has been developingslowly, but with focus, forseveral decades. The cablefranchises that each town

Community MediaIn our “Interest, Convenience and Necessity”

People-Powered TV by Bill Haff

This spring, Independent World Television launchedstage two of its five-stage plan for an innovativeinternational news service. By 2007 programmingwill be available on satellite, digital cable, publicstations and the Web.

The brainchild of Canadian TV producer PaulJay, IWT will be financed by MoveOn-style individualdonations, so its editorial staff will be free of corpo-rate and government influence. Jay, a seasonedCBC-TV and film documentary producer, has usedhis connections to establish a comprehensive busi-ness plan. Now IWT looks forward to developing anetwork of supporters, and aims to inspire half amillion people to contribute approximately $50each in 2006, allowing IWT to go on-air in 2007.

IWT's founding committee is an impressivewho's who of activists and progressive commenta-tors, from Amy Goodman to Gore Vidal. As it con-tinues its outreach, IWT will no doubt add morenames to the roster of distinguished associates.IWT's fundamental mission is to provide news to mil-lions of everyday people, who are increasingly disen-franchised and ignored by the corporate media.

Learn more at www.iwtnews.com and spreadthe word.

Collaborationand “mutual aid”has prevailed and

helped alterna-tive media devel-op into a strong

asset for progres-sive movements.

DeeDee Halleck and TanBaskaya in Istambul,recording the WorldTribunal on Iraq for the firstglobal transmission by theDeep Dish Network.


The Door Is OpenPublic Access TV Offers Ample Opportunity to get YourMessage Out

by Elizabeth Swenson

If you ask activists which form of media has theleast value, most will say television. But television

offers one of the few forms of media that is freefrom corporate influence: public access channels.

Public access television, available through cableonly, serves as an electronic town square. Any oneperson or organization can use this medium tocommunicate with others in their community.Access channels do not have a political point ofview. They see themselves as the guardians of freespeech, and fulfill their purpose when they havewidespread community use and support.

The more than 2,000 community access chan-nels in the United States got their beginning in the1960s as cable television spread. In the 1970s, feder-al law incorporated the proviso that communitiescould require cable companies to provide accesschannels and allied funding. That era ended in 1996when the cable industry was successful in getting theFCC to drop the funding requirements. Althoughcommunities may still negotiate for public accessfunding, they are dealing with giant corporations,and depend on local support to win that battle.

Public access channels do not receive federalfunding, but depend on local government and cablesubscribers. At opposite ends of the budget spectrumare centers with million-dollar plus budgets andoperations with ten thousand dollar minus budgets.

Some community channels produce programs,but the main source of their programming comesfrom local independent producers and local resi-dents who submit videos made elsewhere. Centersteach how to make television, lend equipment tothose trained to use it, and will often facilitate orhelp with productions.

The local AfD chapter uses Fort Bragg’s publicaccess Channel 3 to sponsor Democracy Now! andshows videos of their monthly speakers at least fourtimes over the month. The tape then goes into theAlliance’s library, available for anyone to borrow.

Recently, Channel 3 played a significant role intwo local elections. During the campaign forMeasure H—the county ordinance that bans thegrowth of Genetically Modified Organisms(GMOs)—the AfD sponsored a debate betweenPercy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer sued byMonsanto, and a local mayor speaking against themeasure. Percy presented convincing arguments forkeeping the county free from GMOs, while theopposing speaker floundered. The video of the

event was shown several times on Channel 3l byrequest, and measure H, the first such law to bepassed in the country, passed by a large majority.

During the 2004 city council campaign, thethree candidates participated in a debate thatChannel 3 cablecast live and then replayed severaltimes. The sharp differences between two of the threecandidates were revealed in the debate, and its airingeducated voters in ways that would not have hap-pened otherwise. The long-shot candidate, and anAfD member, won.

Channel 3 has alsoshown such documentariesas End of Suburbia andHijacking Catastrophe. Thechannel fills gaps in localprogramming with a varietyof satellite programs such asUCTV (public lectures, per-formances, educational pro-grams from the University ofCalifornia), Classic Arts pro-gramming, and sometimesFree Speech TV.

Given the currentpolitical climate, the sur-vival of public access tele-vision is threatened. Thetelecommunications indus-try seeks major changes incurrent FCC regulations,and bills to do this arealready in committee onboth federal and state lev-els. Among the proposedchanges are the eliminationof not only franchise feesbut also franchise agree-ments. There is, however, alarge and growing move-ment to stop these unwisecorporate moves. For moreinformation, visit the website of the Alliance forCommunity Media(www.alliancecm.org).

Elizabeth Swenson is direc-tor of MCCET, PEG AccessChannel 3, Fort Bragg, CA.

iChannel Surfing toDemocracy

by Don Baham

Oh that the tube could magically produce the suste-nance of a people's democracy. If I had such agrandiose fantasy when I decided to become a com-munity-access cable television talk show producerand host, it was completely out of my awareness.

What I had in mind was a glimmer that my life-long impetus to speak out for truth and justice in theface of their opposites might be facilitated by thatinstrument of lethargy and propaganda—television.

To my surprise, I just needed to attend a seriesof free classes at the Portland, Oregon public accesschannel studio to become certified. Then I wasasked to host a half-hour interview/talk show. Ithought: “Well, can I be another Larry King,Charley Rose, or Bill Moyers?” Pretty quickly Ithought: “No, but I can be me—a Don Baham.” Sothat's how “Conversations with Dr. Don” cameinto being. The show provides a forum for individ-uals to talk about the things that they think areimportant and that the mainstream media coversinadequately or not at all.

I've been producing and hosting a weekly showfor one local access channel and a bi-weekly show onanother. Each show is broadcast on a regular schedulemultiple times per week. The show is also aired on fivestations across the country.

Expenses are minimal and tax deductible. I getto feature the Alliance for Democracy as often as Ichoose. I get to meet a lot of interesting and funpeople. So, go down to your local communityaccess TV studio and become a free speech,democracy-loving guerrilla—like me.

Don Baham is a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, aHumanist Minister, and a CertifiedTransactional Analyst.

JUSTICE RISING

by Jonathan Lawson and Susan Gleason

Want to do something about the terrible media inthe US, or in your town? You're not alone. In a

just, democratic society, media should be fair, inclusiveof multiple perspectives, broadly informative, and inde-pendent of powerful interests. It should encourage andenable us to participate as citizens. But the Americanpublic understands that our media are failing these basictests. One recent poll shows that we believe, by a strik-ing three-to-one margin, that news media are “ofteninfluenced by powerful people and organizations.”

Media-savvy progressives urge each other not totrust the corporate media; meanwhile, RushLimbaugh and his fellow travellers find daily audi-ences completely prepared to lap up their endless jere-miads against the “liberal media.” This shared senseof media's failures may seem disheartening, but it isfertile ground for effective activism which can turnpublic discontent into community empowerment.Media organizing: start local

Social movement-style organizing focused onmedia has come into its own in the past severalyears. Its rise has been fueled by the growing real-ization that media as an issue underlies all otherstruggles for justice, because of the media's powerto frame public debate. By organizing at the locallevel around media issues, grassroots activists canengage people's media grievances where theyalready are—and place the tools of media activismdirectly at the service of long-term social justicestruggles for a more just society.Choose your remedy• The most basic form of community media

activism is media literacy education—communitymembers helping each other to become moreinsightful, critical media consumers—to readbetween the lines of the New York Times, CNN orNPR to identify institutional filters or biases.

• Media watchdog projects apply and extend medialiteracy skills by tracking news coverage on partic-ular outlets or by issue, seeking to identify pat-terns of selectiveness or bias.

• Community media, whether radio, TV, newspapersor internet-based, allows regular folks to find theirown voices, sidestepping mainstream filters tospeak unpopular truths or tell marginalized stories.

• Training in media strategies offers real power tocommunity groups struggling to get their voicesinto the media.

• Media policy advocacy uses lobbying and commu-

nity organizing to change the legal and regulatorystructures (such as media ownership rules) thatplace invisible limits on what we see and hear.

Identify community needsBefore launching into one or another of these

types of projects, local organizers should assess themedia interests and complaints of social changegroups. Often, groups working on criminal justiceissues, the environment, or other issues, will alreadyhave articulate critiques of local and national media.Youth organizations or immigrants’ rights groupsmay have critiques others haven't considered.

What are the most pressing local concernsregarding the media—the need for more fair andaccurate coverage, more media analysis anddebunking, or the inclusion of more diverse com-munity voices? And what about access to creatingand distributing community media content? Doesyour community desperately need its own commu-nity radio or public access TV channel?Allies, resources and opportunities

There are many natural allies for media activistorganizing. Unions representing media and com-munications workers have much to lose as mediaownership consolidation heralds unionbusting andthe downsizing of local news departments. Localchapters of NOW, the ACLU, and other humanrights groups may have pre-existing programsaround media issues. Almost everywhere you canfind independent media makers already engaged increating alternatives to the corporate media cartels,including community broadcasting, newspapers,blogs or Indymedia centers. Organize local events topull these folks together. Host media-critical speak-ing events and discussions, at which potential mediaactivists can meet and network. Collaborate withothers to organize a conference or public hearingabout community media needs. Introduce mediaand democracy panels, workshops, and speakers toother events and conferences already being planned.

Susan Gleason and Jonathan Lawson are co-directorsof Reclaim the Media in Seattle. Susan is also mar-keting and outreach manager with YES! Magazine;Jonathan works in public affairs for the WashingtonFederation of State Employees/AFSCME

Local Organizingfor MediaDemocracy

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by Theodora Ruhs

Our nation's discourse takes place in the media’scollage of sound and images. However, partici-

pation in this discourse is highly limited to a privi-leged class of people with access to both the means ofproduction and the media space in which to displaythose productions. It is further limited within themass corporate media by the denial of voices andviewpoints different from those that correspond withcorporate sponsorship. This means that there are a lotof people unable to participate.

Youth are noticeably absent from public dialogue.A large portion of America’s youth (18% of which arecurrently living under the poverty line) does not haveaccess to the means to create their own media.

With a goal to create a more inclusive and trulyrepresentative democracy, we need to level the play-ing field and give everyone the education to be bothmedia producers and successful navigators of themeanings encapsulated in those productions. Thatis the start, but these things alone will not giveequal access to our modern public sphere. Therealso needs to be a fundamental change in how ourmedia systems are operated to allow for morediverse content from a wider range of voices,including the young. Many young people are veryactive in virtual online communities, which provesthey have a lot to say. Most people, however, are notgoing to be looking at livejournal.com.

The place to start is community media. Thisforum can give young people visibility where itcounts most, where they are most likely going to beable to help promote change: in their local commu-nities. It is up to media activists to make sure thishappens. Here is a plan that can get high schoolkids involved.1.) Find a way to invite them to join in. (2.) Ask themto choose a topic that they feel is important in theirlives and in their communities. (3.) Ask them toresearch this story in as many different venues as theycan. (4.) Do they see any differences between stories in

different venues, i.e. different newspapers, TV news,radio, mass media, independent media, etc. Why? (5.)Do they feel that there is any part of the story that hasbeen left out, or emphasized by different venues?What are they? Why? (6.) Give them a camera or amicrophone or both and teach them to use the equip-ment. (7.) Send them out in to the community to dointerviews and observations in order to discover thestory for themselves. (8.) Discuss ways to put gatheredmaterial together into a cohesive piece. Have themprepare scripts and/or storyboards. (9.) Give themcomputers and editing software and teach them toedit. (10.) Give finished work to local communitymedia outlets. Ask outlets to give the kids a chance totalk about the work they did. (11). See what happens.

There is a need to teach young people to bemedia producers and givethem a sense that their voic-es are valid within our pub-lic discourse. With the ener-gy only young people pos-sess, they will be eager tospeak out and help createchange. There are severalprograms such as theEducational Video Center(EVC) in New York Cityand Youth Radio inBerkeley that are workingtowards this goal. This is agrowing movement but itneeds to be much larger.This should be part of theregular activities of everyhigh school student. Tolearn to participate in sucha way will prepare them tobe active citizens for the restof their lives.

Theodora Ruhs recently grad-uated from NYU with anM.A. in Media Ecology. Shewrote her thesis on mediaeducation and adolescentdevelopment, using mediaeducation to deal with iden-tity struggles for adolescentsby giving them a voice and aplace within community.She has been involved inindependent and communitymedia for the last six years.

Creating a Role in the Media for Youth

Radio on Corporate Powerby Jim Tarbell

Corporations and Democracy on KXYX & Z in Philo,CA grew out of a kitchen table conversation afterthree of us attended a Program on Corporations,Law and Democracy workshop on RethinkingCorporations, Rethinking Democracy. That wasseven years ago and we are still at it every twoweeks. It is a great educational device and makesfantastic radio. It offers local people the opportunityto participate in national debates via phone call-ins.We can call almost anyone we ever wanted to talkto and just the theme of the show gets them on theair. We have interviewed Howard Zinn, HelenCaldicott, Ralph Nader, Robert McChesney and hun-dreds of others. We cover local corporate issues andhave produced live broadcasts from the streets ofQuito, Ecuador, the Dade County Jail and theRepublican National Convention in New York City

The show has helped start multiple Alliancechapters, educated thousands of active citizensand created a broad awareness of corporate powerissues that affect us both locally and international-ly. It helped organize a couple of busloads of peo-ple to go to the WTO demonstrations in Seattle in1999 and has been invaluable as an educationaltool in elections.

We had little radio experience when webegan, but we learned quickly. Anybody can do itand we heartily recommend that more people giveit a try. Listener-sponsored radio stations, LowPower FM radio stations, local AM and FM radiostations are all looking for good radio and the timehas come to spread the word about corporatepower. If you would like help starting a program wewould be happy to help. Email us at [email protected].

Youth Media Online• The Educational Video Center, www.evc.org/ •Youth Radio, www.youthradio.org/ • Youth MediaCouncil, www.youthmediacouncil.org/. • Centerfor Media Literacy, www.medialit.org/. • The NewMexico Media Literacy Project, www.nmmlp.org/ •Alliance for a Media Literate America,/www.amlainfo.org/. Additional list of resourcesand programs can be found on the Free ChildProject’s website at www.freechild.org/YouthMediaOrgs.htm.

JUSTICE RISING

by Howard Ward

“Revising our current assumptions is the beginning ofthe Democratic Revolution” - Lawrence Goodwin

The Alliance and like-minded activists couldgreatly aid their effectiveness by joining an

already growing coalition building a Dialoguemovement, which is bringing people together inlocal communities, online, and around the globe.This conversational technique uses new forms ofdialogue that enable us to explore and inquire intothe many challenges we face, in a more profoundand effective manner. Dialogue is about seeing,exploring and learning together. The action that isappropriate will then come out of the clarity andunderstanding that occurs in the dialogue.

We will never create a “movement thatcoheres” until we move away from our traditional“adversarial” forms of communicating with oneanother and begin using a “cooperative-dialogue”approach. The simple fact is that debate and argu-ment are miserable failures for creating a cohesivemovement. Einstein summed up the situation whenhe said, “Problems cannot be solved at the samelevel of awareness that created them. We must learnto see the world anew.” Margaret Wheatley, one ofthe many people doing excellent work in this areapoints out that, “All social change begins with aconversation.” We may be running out of time withour current form of conversation. The choicesbefore us boil down to either continuing to use afragmented and defective approach, which isn'tproducing the results we desire, or using our collec-tive wisdom in dialogue.

Riane Eisler suggests that we stand at the thresh-old of a new integrated politics of partnership. DavidKorten points out that new levels of human potentialare being held back by the persistence of culturalmyths that lead to dangerously distorted interpreta-tions of physical and social reality. Francis MooreLappe says the solution we seek is 'not' a model, it'sa path—and the key to that path is dialogue.

Fortunately, a dialogue only needs the willing-ness of the people involved to try dialogue, a large

room and copies of dialogueguidelines. Put the chairs in acircle and you are ready to gofor two to two-and-a-halfhours. Meeting frequency andsubject is whatever the groupchooses. Anyone who familiar-izes him or herself with theprocess can facilitate, althougheveryone should co-facilitate.

The following suggestions come from theEugene Oregon Dialogue Group at http://dark-wing.uoregon.edu/~mears/about.html

1) Dialogue starts from a willingness to be tenta-tive about what you know. 2) The focus of dialogue ison 'what is' rather than ideas or opinions. 3) You canparticipate by verbally or silently sharing perceptions.4) Dialogue is letting the issue unfold in affection andmutual respect. 5) When a reaction arises, neither sup-press nor defend it, but suspend it in the mind and inthe group, keeping it constantly available for observa-tion and questioning. 6) Dialogue is 'being together'and 'seeing together' in an unfolding relationship.

In general, our conversations with our fellowcitizens who hold views contrary to ours tend tofocus on assertions which we try to defend or con-vince the other person of. This doesn't work forchanging understanding because the focus of eachperson is on proving a point rather than listeningand understanding. It draws attention away fromlooking at the reality together. As DanielYankelovich said so well: “Dialogue forces partici-pants to reconcile their views with their most basicvalues, it obliges them to confront their own wish-ful thinking, and it exposes them to a variety ofways of seeing and framing issues—an indispensa-ble way to escape polarization and gridlock.”

In order to learn together and help bring abouta change in understanding, we need a differentapproach: An approach that gives everyone achance, in a “safe environment,” to confront theirown wishful thinking; An approach where we askquestions of each other and truly listen and exploretogether. That approach is cooperative dialogue.

For more information see The Bohm DialogueProposal at www.muc.de/~heuvel/dialogue/dia-logue_proposal.html and the National Coalition ForDialogue & Deliberation at www.thataway.org/re-sources/understand/models/models.html. I am alsoavailable by e-mail to answer questions or to offersuggestions at [email protected].

Howard Ward participated in the David BohmDialogue/Seminars given in the late 1980s in OjaiCalifornia and has been active since that time organ-izing and promoting Cooperative Dialogue.

DialogueCreating a Democratic Revolution

Tapestry of the CommonsAn interactive exploration of Private Property andCommon Wealth. Build the tapestry and present theconcepts to your community, or request a presentationfor your AfD chapter. Now in the internet commons onthe AfD website, www.thealliancefordemocracy.org.

We will nevercreate a “move-

ment thatcoheres” until

we...begin usinga 'cooperative-

dialogue'approach.

2004 National Conference on Dialogue andDeliberation


In 1776, while Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henryand John Adams wrote and talked about freedom,

slaves in the American colonies were trying toescape to ships bound for Britain. Such facts areabsent from standard American histories. The publi-cation of history, and the selection of what aspectsand interpretation of history will be taught inschools, has long been a place where powerful inter-ests have struggled to keep a lid on “people's histo-ry.” There may be no better example of a victory forthe side of the people than the recent publication ofSlave Nation, by Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen.

According to Slave Nation, in 1772 there was nomomentum toward independence in the Americancolonies of Great Britain. A judge in London changedthat. The anti-slavery movement in England had beenhelping slaves. One slave, the African-born VirginianJames Somerset, had escaped his master in Londonand had then been recaptured. The anti-slavery groupgot a writ of habeas corpus, claiming the abductionhad the status of a kidnaping. Lord Mansfield, thejudge, asked the slaver to free the slave, hinting strong-ly that English law forbade slavery, and that all slavesbrought to Britain might have to be freed if an officialruling on slavery was made. The slaver refused,demanding the return of his “property."

In June 1772, in what is known as theSomerset case, Mansfield ruled that any person set-

ting foot on English soil became free, no matterwhat the prior status of the person. Slave Nationdemonstrates that the Somerset case led directly tothe Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In 1772 Virginia was the most populous and pros-perous of the American colonies. Its wealthy elite weretobacco growing slavers. Its leading politicians consistedlargely of such slavers who were also lawyers. They wereshocked by the Somerset decision. These Virginiansbelieved their way of wealth was at stake. They decidedin March of 1773 to create a Committee ofCorrespondence to begin communicating with othercolonies. Their goal was protection from Parliamentarylaw in general and any freeing of the slaves in particu-lar. Among the plotters were Thomas Jefferson, PatrickHenry, Richard Henry Lee, and the most influentialdrug-lord-slaving family in Virginia, the Randolphs (afamily Jefferson married into).

But they were careful not to use the word slav-ery in their public propaganda. Instead they createdthe phrase “ancient, legal and constitutional rights”to include the right to own slaves. This became acode in the South for maintaining slavery.

Slave Nation tells a compelling story and providesenough detail to convince open-minded readers of itsconclusions. Much of the proof is in 50 pages of foot-notes in the back of the book. The question of slaveryand its place in America is taken through the Articles ofConfederation all the way to the writing of theConstitution, which made slavery a national institution.

The Somerset case (but not its implications inthe colonies) is covered in greater detail in anotherrecent book, Though the Heavens May Fall by StevenWise. Those who want to see how the anti-slaverymovement succeeded in Great Britain will also wantto read Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild.

William P. Meyers is the author of The Santa ClaraBlues: Corporate Personhood Versus Democracy. Heserves on the Point Arena, CA school board and the boardof the California Center for Community Democracy.

Slave Nation

Name

Address

Phone

Email

$50 membership.$35 regular membership.$25 tight-budget membership.Monthly sustaining member @ ———/mo.I want to be a member but can’t afford adonation now.————— additional contribution.

Chapter affiliation ________________________________________________________________Method of Payment (circle one): Mastercard Visa Check Money OrderCard#________________________________ Exp. Date________________________ Signature_________________________

Please clip and return to The Alliance for Democracy, P.O. Box 540115, Waltham, MA 02454-0115

JOIN NOW! BEGIN THE CHANGEMembership includes a subscription to JUSTICE RISING

graphic: Peter Veres

History Notes by William P. Meyers

The publicationof history, andthe selection ofwhat aspects andinterpretation ofhistory will betaught inschools, has longbeen a placewhere powerfulinterests havestruggled tokeep a lid on“people'shistory.”

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Vol I, #2 Fall 2005 Justice Rising - Alliance for Democracy · Facilitating Democratic Discourse:...

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Transcript of Vol I, #2 Fall 2005 Justice Rising - Alliance for Democracy · Facilitating Democratic Discourse:...