[Imc-radio] headlines

[Sarah Lazare]

hi all,

here are some headlines.

sarah

Via www.ucimc.org

Over 2000 people are expected to converge on St. Louis from May 13-15 to 
learn, strategize, network, and build momentum to fight for better media at 
the National Conference for Media Reform. There will be presentations from 
grassroots organizations and well-known journalists like Naomi Klein, Juan 
Gonzalez and Amy Goodman, plus opportunities to learn how to fight for media 
accountability in your community. The St. Louis IMC will be hosting an IMC 
convergence area at the Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP), a radical 
community center.

Early registration for lower-income activists is $60 and there are 
scholarships available for registration and travel expenses. People of 
color, women, youth, GLBT, Indymedia participants and all grassroots media 
activists are strongly encouraged to apply for scholarships, especially in 
cases where moderate amounts of money can get whole car, van, or bus loads 
of people to St. Louis.

Via us.indymedia.org
A national Day of Action was held Wednesday, Feb. 16, in support of 6,000 
members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) who work at U.S. 
Bridgestone/ Firestone (BFS) tire-making facilities. Union members and 
supporters across the country demonstrated at Nissan dealerships, where many 
BFS tires are sold on new cars, urging support for a fair union contract at 
the tire company.


Workers at eight USWA-represented facilities have been working since April, 
2003 under an expired labor agreement. The parties have been unable to reach 
an agreement on a new pact, including a plan for BFS to reinvest in American 
facilities. Other major tire companies aside from BFS have already 
negotiated agreements with the USWA.

Workers need a fair union contract with Bridgestone/ Firestone to maintain 
decent living standards and long-term job security, said Leo W. Gerard, USWA 
International President.

Nationwide protests at Nissan dealers are the latest phase of this contract 
campaign at BFS, which has included demonstrations at major auto shows, car 
races, farm shows and at hundreds of BFS-owned Mastercare Service Centers 
across the United States.


Via Chicago independent media
CHICAGO - The Chicago Department of Transportation has denied a second 
permit application filed by anti-war activists who want to march on Michigan 
Avenue on March 19, the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a 
department spokesman said Wednesday.
A city hearing officer earlier this month upheld a department denial of an 
application filed by the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism. The group 
last week filed a revised application, still seeking to march on Michigan 
but eliminating plans to march on State Street on the way to Federal Plaza 
in the Loop.

The revised plan, which called for a route on Michigan from Walton Street to 
Adams Street, then to Federal Plaza, still would have disrupted too much 
traffic, department spokesman Brian Steele said.

Via: www.indymedia.org
Three members of an Oaxacan state-wide alliance, COMPA (Oaxacan 
Anti-Neoliberal Popular Magonista Coordination) have been arrested as part 
of an escalating campaign of repression and human rights abuses by the PRI 
state government against an increasingly mobilized indigenous population.


The arrests took place the same afternoon in which members of COMPA were 
scheduled to meet with the PRI party governer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, under the 
advisement of Dr. Jose Luis Soberanes, the president of the CNDH (National 
Commission on Human Rights) as part of an ongoing investigation of human 
rights abuses committed by armed state forces against the people. This 
meeting was taking place less than a month after a massacre in the community 
of Santiago Xanica on January 15, during a communal work day, in which three 
community members (also part of COMPA) were shot and arrested.

The three arrests, which took place hours before the scheduled meeting, are 
clear maneuveurs in a long campaign of repression against autonomous 
movements in the state. As with the Zapatistas in neighboring Chiapas, 
international solidarity may become a vital component in the survival of 
this potent movement against the neoliberal agenda attempting to advance in 
this resource-rich region.

Continuing coverage at Austin-IMC and CMI-Mexico

Via Michigan IMC:
An intense battle is being fought out right now over whether anyone will be 
allowed to express ideas that challenge the U.S. empire, its operations, its 
motives and its official history.
With growing insistence, rightwing "cultural warriors" have demanded that 
college campuses be purged. And now this whole campaign has been kicked onto 
the national political stage. Fox News is on the case, and two Republican 
governors have demanded that radical professors be fired.
The focus of this moment has been Ward Churchill, a long-time political 
activist and author. Churchill is a professor at University of Colorado (UC) 
and head of the Ethnic Studies Department there. He is a Native American who 
has worked closely with the Colorado American Indian Movement and the 
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He has written, edited and co-authored 
many books, including Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against 
the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement and A Little Matter 
of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas: 1492 to Present.
Last fall, Churchill accepted an invitation to speak at Hamilton College in 
upstate New York on February 2, 2005,. The topic was prisons and Native 
American rights. The sponsor was Hamilton’s Kirkland Project for the Study 
of Gender, Society, and Culture and their "Class in Context" speakers 
series.
Churchill combines his scholarly knowledge with a radical perspective and an 
often shocking style of delivery. And for exactly those reasons, he has been 
in demand, speaking at dozens of colleges over the last few years. His 
professional focus is exposing the genocide and current oppression of Native 
American peoples.
This time, however, a highly organized ideological and political assault 
broke out—demanding that he be prevented from speaking. In the method of all 
witch hunts, the target quickly widened, surrounded by rumors and crude 
distortion: Who invited him and why? Who in high places has allowed such 
things to go on? What other professors, on other campuses, share his radical 
views?
Active in the attack on Ward Churchill from the beginning was David 
Horowitz, the notorious intellectual hitman for the right wing—who has 
formed a network of campus brownshirts (perversely called "Students for 
Academic Freedom") to target progressive professors, disrupt their classes, 
record their remarks, and use the conservative mass media to brand them as 
"America haters"
This campaign is aimed at every prominent academic voice who criticizes the 
U.S. system and policies. And it is aimed at the very idea of academic 
ferment and dissent, which is despised by the rightwing forces as an 
incubator of critical thinking, radicalism, and challenges to the status quo 
in every sphere of intellectual endeavor and society.
The stakes here are extremely high. And this is not yet well understood by 
many forces who need to be intensely engaged in this battle.