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