Bradley Roland Will

international | crime and justice | news report

Tuesday October 31, 2006 12:27

by Obit

Photojournalist /Squatter/Musician -Protestor

The death has occured of an indymedia NYC photojournalist and activist in Oaxaca Mexico.
He was shot by forces loyal to the Governor of Oaxaca as he was videoing in the zone of the
popular uprising led by the APPO- The Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People.
We have all seen the photos of the assassin, the downed photographer and the scenes
in NYC of Erin Siegel Indymedia photographer/Reuter photographer being arrested and her
camera confiscated. The Protest at the Mexican Consulate was a solidarity and celebration
of Brad Will's Life. Others have died this week in Oaxaca, members of the APPO and
the medium for Broadcast of the APPO, the Radio Universidad was attacked and put off Air.
In all this the activist and writer has died and brought the truth of the lawlessness of the federales
who are sponsored by the US into our community. It should not have taken a death to do this.

The indymedia Community all over the world is in a shock of grief. The front pages
of the network are dominated by the face of a man that we did not know personally
but we knew his work because it is our work. We represent voice and community
in the teeth of the Oppressions of the Globalised corporations who take from us,
leaving us debased. The lawlessness in Oaxaca is a vicious cycle of Repression and
abuse of a people who demanded rights for their families. The uprising has been
going on some time and sometimes it made it onto the Irish site and sometimes
it did not- but it was there , floating on our radors.

Another example of the debasement and abuse of a people. The criminalisation
of a community. We know about that from our reporting of Rossport, The Lebanon
and individual cases where the isolated person or community has no voice
because of the wealth of the people whom he takes on. So we give him a voice.
We saw this on RTS where small groups of people are battered by the Gardai
and years later some of them get justice, more often the cases thrown out of
court and the cops promoted. Oaxaca was on the radar, the recognition by
a community of activists that it is another example of corruption and violence.

Then people started dying.
Then the Radio got cut off.
Then we see the body of a young man on the street and the alarmed faces.
We see the red-shirted killer, in the pay of the forces of the federales- US supported.
We reel back because this is us- this is what we do -and we should not see a
comrade dying in trying to record the truth of it.
We know that he was killed because his film-work stood out.

There is sorrow, and there will be anger.
We send our condolences and we face into the next fight .
Oaxaca is on the map-it always has been, but it takes a sacrifice of this magnitude
for us to recognise the humanity of an ordinary community, like Rossport ,
to have become violent because of the corruption endemic in the authorities
there. A corruption that we must learn to identify and resist in our own communities.

Solidarity to the APPO.
Solidarity To the Community of Oaxaca.
Solidarity to Radio Universidad.

Condolences to the Family of Brad Will.
RIP.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/or/2006/10/77777.html

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Comments (8 of 8)

Not impressed

by Not An Emotional Vampire

Tue Oct 31, 2006 17:40

Your "News report" is now days old. It reports no new information (that is "News"). It makes overblown emotional statements about the "indymedia community" "worldwide" being "in shock". Maybe you are, and I'm sorry for you if you are, but you know nothing about the emotional state of the rest of us. Unless you were a close personal friend of Brad Will then you appear to be availing yourself of a cheap opportunity to emote. Please don't. It's disrespectful to the dead and annoying to me. Frankly I find this sort of commentary disgusting.

In any event what you wrote is perhaps appropriate for a comment on one the pre-existing stories on Brad Will, but it's hardly of such an original character that it deserves to be placed on the same level as his own reportage.

Big Words/Small Man/Woman

by Cock ......Robin

Tue Oct 31, 2006 17:52

Avail of the internet to construct and change.It's called 'Fur Coat, no Knickers' when
one becomes emotionally impotent. Look at the activists in Ireland and realise
that despite trollism people make changes, tell stories and inform- someone
died doing this and instead of obit, a re-assertion of the community value of
voice is enabled. You are whether you like it or not a member of a community
and an activist.

and when you get tired-you can stop.

Thats what indy/IMC is about- join RTE.

Not Impressed

Tue Oct 31, 2006 17:57

No, RTE and BBC is where you'd get this sort of stuff. You're writing about non-News in a pompous non-factual manner. It's like mainstream reportage of the death of Princess Di or some other crap. It's worthless and your presentation is arrogant and insensitive. Make your own tragedies.

U.S. government spreads disinformation to world press

by Bronterre O'Brien

Tue Oct 31, 2006 18:02

U.S. embassy press release Sept. 24::

"Teachers, students and other groups have engaged in increasingly violent demonstrations in and around Oaxaca city for several months". The U.S State Department is saying that the source of the violence is the striking workers and their supporters.

Brad Will, in his last communique from the barricades to Indymedia, shows this to be false: the people had erected barricades to protect themselves from the deadly violence of State-sponsored death squads. Brad remarked that the bullet holes in the peoples homes reminded him of Amadou Diallo's front door.

Now in its latest press release the U.S Mexican embassy says: " It appears that Mr. Will was killed during a shoot out between what may have been local police...and the Peoples Popular Assembly of Oaxaco" (APPO).

Note that the State Department is saying it 'may' have been local police, but they are quite sure that it was Appo. The Peoples Popular Assembly has stresssed the non-violent nature of their protest. And reports from the barricades make this clear.

Postings from Oaxaco on Indymedia and reports on Democracy Now, October 30, 2006, show clearly that Brad was not killed in a supposed 'shootout' between the non-violent Peoples Assembly and (perhaps) the local police: he was murderd by a state-sponsored death squad.

Why is the U.S government lying about the source of the violence in Oaxaco and about who is responsible for the political murder of Brad Will and his companeros? Why is it giving a fictional account to the world media which they in turn parrot?
Because the U.S government and the class it represents fear the militant protests of the risen people in the global struggle for justice. . Brad Will has now been murdered in this struggle. It is fitting that Indymedia pay tribute to his life and mourn his death. And to continue to pursue the real story rather than ruling class propaganda.
In Ireland especially, with revisionist pseudo-historians infesting the mainstream media, it should be stressed that the struggle of truth against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
What they couldn't kill continues to organize.

The Radio was taken out too

by Cock Robin

Tue Oct 31, 2006 18:31

Three activists from APPO were shot. They were targetted because of what they do
and what they write.

The Photographer covering the protest at the Mexicam consulate was arrested
and charged, her equipment removed -the recorded stuff gone.

The man was photographed full-face shooting the activist.
The photographer accompanying Brad was shot too-but survived.

People get very angry faced with the reality of the targetting and murder
of an activist and begin trolling, because they know that this has catalysed
the issue of freedom of Information in the absence of controls-which right
wing administrations are working very hard to institute against that info
reaching our communities.

A troll on this site has objected to an obiturary of a working activist, who
died as a result of the federales (funded by the US) attempting to violently
suppress a people.

Campaigns to highlight the attempts to control info are running through
the Digital Rights Ireland Group and the Amnesty 'Irrepressible info' campaigns.
Google is allowing the Chinese admin to censor, whilst fund-raising in the
US administration for a female right-wing candidate who is interested in
'freedom of speech'

Who murdered Brad Will- the same people who refuse to stand up and recognise
that our rights to impart information are being threatened with erosion?

Not Impressed with Trolling

by Not an Emotional Vampire

Tue Oct 31, 2006 18:54

A troll on this site has objected to an obiturary of a working activist, who
died as a result of the federales (funded by the US) attempting to violently
suppress a people.

If you're referring to my objections to your posting of your scrambled opinions as "News" when this story is already covered on the newswire and your opinions are not News then you are wrong.

I am not attempting to troll. I am attempting to do several things. The first is to object to your self-privileging of your opinions as news. The result of your post on a topic which already exists is that you are diverting attention from that much more information-rich, organised posting, and also driving other news stories off the limited space at the top of the newswire. That behaviour is arrogant beyond belief. The impression of arrogance is compounded by pompous, overblown language of your post which asserts knowledge of other people's emotional states. The distinct impression left is that you're out catching a nice emotional wave created by the murder of someone. I find that cheap and offensive.

NYC Indymedia has already dedicated their front-page to the events in Oaxaca and the death of their close-personal friend and colleague. It would be fitting and appropriate to briefly direct people to that coverage. Standing (metaphorically) on Brad Will's coffin and shouting about the risen people, or "trolls", or in fact doing anything apart from directing people briefly and respectfully to the NYC Indymedia page is vile.

If you weren't a friend or colleague you have no knowledge of the situation beyond what is relayed third hand to you. You're bolstering your ego with someone's death and at the same time hiding the actual sources of information about it.

This has been done and I stand on no-one's coffin

Tue Oct 31, 2006 20:29

I stand on no-one's coffin. I published a report by 'person' and linked comments
during the course of these two days. The issue here is that the 'obit' was to
finish it and I claim the right as any one does who is a member of the activist
community and contributor to say that he deserves to be remembered as an
activist- if that is offensive. I would remind you that persistent criticism without
full facts is equivalent to trolling and dishonours the dead. we are community
because we share an ethos and you are nit-picking an obit.

The use of a pseud or multiple pseuds on the sites is part of what we do.
Look up the 'person' articles and comments and realise that this is part of
the same process- a wish to commerorate and a desire to link in with other
communities. I did not, as other writers who did not know him claim
anything outrageous. when the pieces that are scattered around this site are
collated it will become quite clear that an obit is as much part of the
reportage as the eye-witness reports, the video and the numerous
messages of support and sympathy of the whole community. It
is not wrong to be a part of the community when one of the instigators and users
of this service has died.it is a recognition of mutuality.

I will not provide the link to the 'person' reports- you can discover that by yourself.

Unimpressed with verbiage and evasion

Tue Oct 31, 2006 20:36

You continue to evade the central issue: you published your opinions as "news", you decided not to add your opinions to the already existing stories on the newswire about this topic. You did not know Brad. You (probably) cut and pasted the piece by Bronterre O'Brien from the NYC Indymedia front page.

You are hiding other people's news by posting your third-hand digestions. Claiming the license of sacred commemoration is what is disgusting. Have you no shame? No respect? No intelligence?

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Bradley Roland Will

Comments (8 of 8)