On Monday October 27th 2008, the 2nd anniversary of Brad’s murder, Friends of Brad Will in Mexico, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and Portland held press conferences and rallies to publicize our cause and our new demands.

In New York, Free Speech Radio News covered the hunger strike and protest. Photos are online at nyc.indymedia.org.

In Houston, activists met with press and representatives from the Consulate. Read: Houston Indymedia coverage, hear: KPFT radio news coverage.

In San Francisco, Friends of Brad Will gathered at the Mexican Consulate to remember Brad and the people of Oaxaca and issued a statement of demands to the Mexican Consulate. Coverage on indybay.

In Portland, The Friends of Brad Will, along with supporters of Oaxaca, gathered in front of the Mexican Consulate to call for justice in the case of Brad Will’s murder by Mexican paramilitaries, and justice for the people of Oaxaca. Coverage on Portland Indymedia.

In Mexico, actions were covered in El Universal (in Spanish), and the LA Times blog.

In Uruguay, activists issued a solidarity statement (in Spanish).

By John Gibler

On October 27, 2006, Brad Will stood on Juarez Avenue in the municipality of Santa Lucia del Camino, Oaxaca, Mexico. He was filming a violent clash between armed, civilian-clad municipal police and officials and members of the Oaxaca Peoples’ Popular Assembly, or APPO

Brad, a longtime New York City activist and independent journalist, traveled to Oaxaca in early October 2006 to report on the protest movement led by the state teachers union that sought to oust governor Ulises Ruiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled Oaxaca with an iron fist for almost 80 years.

Brad stood amid the APPO protesters and other journalists, filming down the length of Juarez Avenue where armed officials were firing at the protesters. Brad was shot and fell to the ground, his camera still running, having recorded the sound of the shot that hit him. Brad was shot from straight on, just below the chest, and yet his killer does not appear in the camera frame at the moment of the gunshot. Brad died on the way to the hospital. He had been shot twice.

Two years later, on October 16, 2008, the Mexican federal government arrested two members of the APPO, charging Juan Manuel Martinez as the gunman and Octavio Perez with helping to cover up Brad’s murder (Perez was later released on bail). Federal police were still looking for other suspected accomplices, all members of the APPO who had tried to carry Brad to safety and save his life.

The arrests came after a series of human rights reports criticized the government’s investigation for failing to follow leads pointing to local officials who were widely photographed by the press shooting at APPO protesters on October 27, 2006.

“It is such a coverup,” said Kathy Will, Brad’s mother, in a telephone interview on learning of the arrests. “It is an insult to us and to all of the groups that have tried to help with a meaningful investigation.”

more

On September 30th, 2008, in Mexico City,The National Council of Citizen Communicators (known for its Spanish initials CONACC) presented an award in the name of Brad Will. Nick Cooper of Friends of Brad Will attended the ceremony to accept the award in Brad’s name.

CONACC was founded on September 17, 2006 at the Journalists Club of Mexico, a day after the formal establishment of the Democratic National Convention. Initially the founding states were the Federal District and Durango with the later they were joined Sonora, Baja California, Yucatan, the State of Mexico, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Nuevo León, Guerrero, the United States, Venezuela, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Panama.

CONACC celebrated its second anniversary with the Ricardo Flores Magon award to reporters and “citizen communicators” for achievements in journalism, ethics, and commitment to the community. Other recipients included families, friends and suporters of those killed in the the 2006 police attack in Atenco, and families of those killed in the March cross-border raid by Colombian troops of a FARC encampment in Ecuador.

more coverage and audio in Spanish

Nick’s presentation in Spanish (English below):

Es un gran privilegio el recibir este honor aquí, además es un privilegio mio que tengo suficientes recursos economicos-, y el apoyo de mucha gente para poder venir. Mil gracias a Robert, Lee, Hardy, Christine, Selina, Massoud, Dorinda, Julita, Patricia, Richard, Luis, Magdalena, y Alexander por la ayuda que me han dado. El privilegio desempeña un gran papel en la vida de gente como Brad Will y yo mismo, quienes tenemos suficiente para viajar, tener equipo, de llegar a un lugar, participar, aprender, hacer periodismo, y al final regresar a casa. Sin embargo, en octubre de 2006, Brad no fue capaz de salir de Oaxaca vivo y regresar a casa. (more…)

On behalf of ten million working men and women of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Director of the International Department of the AFL-CIO, urges Congressmembers Berman and Delahunt to oppose the Merida Initiative funding for FY 08 and FY 09!

Read her excellent letters to Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Congressman Berman (D-California) and to Congressman Delahunt (D-Massachusetts) telling them “to oppose the Administration’s funding request.”

We’ve been urging Congressman Berman, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to hold hearings (as has the United Steelworkers and many others) to counter the Bush Administration’s boosters who have been the exclusive invitees to past “congressional oversight hearings”. The reasoned voice of opponents to the bill - including the United Steelworkers, Witness for Peace, Global Exchange and many other organizations and individuals in the U.S. and Mexico - have provided cogent arguments against the Bush ’security’ initiative, even with “human rights certification” warning that Plan Mexico (as the Merida Initiative is called) would:

- arm unaccountable, corrupt and brutal military and police;
- contribute to the erosion of civil liberties in one of our largest trading partners, Mexico;
- increase violence and instability in Mexico;
- waste U.S. taxpayer money.

Is the Democratic Majority Congress unwilling to listen to us? Are they partners with Bush (and Mukasey and Gates) to ignore impunity by the Mexican security forces and the glaring absence of a a real plan to ensure that the above predictable impacts of a military aid package are avoided?

Building Bridges:Plan Mexico; Puerto Rico Teachers’ Strike; Ruby Dee on The
Emmy By Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Bush’s Plan Mexico Is Planned Repression
with Laura Carlsen, Director, the Americas Program,
Center for International Policy

LISTEN TO (and download) AUDIO here

WBAI Radio’s Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash
Monday, March 3, 2008, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM
or streaming live at http://www.wbai.org
***********************************************

Bush’s Plan Mexico Is Planned Repression
with Laura Carlsen, Director, the Americas Program,
Center for International Policy

President Bush announced a $500 million per year security cooperation
plan with Mexico, the Merida Initiative or Plan Mexico. It proclaimed its
targets to be narcotics trafficking, counter-terrorism, border security, and
the administration of justice. But, it is increasingly being used to
militarize the Mexican state to counter grassroots organizing and protest from
Oaxaca to Chiapas and throughout Mexico.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/95182.html
(more…)

also see video here:

and spanish-language article here.

US Parents Seek Answers in Mexico Death

By JESSICA BERNSTEIN-WAX –

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The parents of an American journalist slain in
southern Mexico said Wednesday they were unsatisfied with the progress
authorities have made in the case and will have outside investigators
review video footage and forensic evidence.

Bradley Roland Will, a 36-year-old journalist-activist from New York,
was killed in October 2006 while filming unrest in Oaxaca state, where
protesters had been fighting for months to oust Gov. Ulises Ruiz for
alleged electoral fraud. Will recorded video and wrote dispatches for
indymedia.org in the month before his death.

“It’s been a year-and-a-half now,” said father Hardy Will, who
traveled to Mexico City and Oaxaca with Bradley’s mother Kathy Will to
meet with authorities and human rights groups. “We would expect some
progress and concrete results.”

[Note: Links to other articles at the bottom of the next page] (more…)

Here’s a link to the Crimethinc re-publishing of the Rolling Stone piece and a discussion of it.

The January 24, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (on newsstands now — Johnny Depp on the cover) features Jeff Sharlet’s in depth article on Brad Will. It really is an amazing piece.

I don’t see the article available electronically anywhere.
______________________________
Christy Will
www.BradWill.org

FROM: JOHN ROSS
011-5255-5518-1213 X102
johnross@igc.org
Blindman’s Buff #196

COVER UP OF U.S. JOURNALIST’S MURDER SETS STAGE FOR PRIVATIZATION OF
MEXICAN OIL

MEXICO CITY (Jan. 22nd) - Flash back to October 27th, 2006. U.S.
Indymedia photojournalist Brad Will is splayed out on a sidewalk in
Oaxaca Mexico, mortally wounded by the pistoleros of rogue governor
Ulisis Ruiz during tumultuous street battles in that southern city.
His killers have never been prosecuted.

Now fast forward to this past January 10th. Manlio Fabio Beltrones,
the unctuous leader of the once-ruling (71 years) PRI party faction in
the Mexican Senate, announces to a gaggle of reporters that the PRI is
prepared to back President Felipe Calderon and his right-wing PAN in
passing an “energy reform” package that would permit transnational
corporations to generate 49% of the nation’s electricity and open
PEMEX, the state petroleum monopoly expropriated from its
Anglo-American owners in 1938 and nationalized by President Lazaro
Cardenas, to such oil titans as Exxon, British Petroleum, and Shell. (more…)

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Rights Concerns Cloud Regional Anti-Drug Plan

Charles Davis

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (IPS) - A 1.4-billion-dollar U.S. aid package to Mexico and Central American states aimed at combating drug trafficking and organised crime could backfire, the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee said in a hearing Wednesday.
(more…)