New York City IMC Responds to the Death of Brad Will

New York City
Brad Will was killed on October 27, 2006, in Oaxaca, Mexico,
while working as a journalist for the global Indymedia
network. He was shot in the torso while documenting an
armed, paramilitary assault on the Popular Assembly of the
People of Oaxaca, a fusion of striking local teachers and other
community organizations demanding democracy in Mexico.
The members of the New York City Independent Media
Center mourn the loss of this inspiring colleague and
friend. We want to thank everyone who has sent condolences
to our office and posted remembrances to
www.nyc.indymedia.org. We share our grief with the people
of our city and beyond who lived, worked, and struggled
with Brad over the course of his dynamic but short
life. We can only imagine the pain of the people of Oaxaca
who have lost seven of their neighbors to this fight,
including Emilio Alonso Fabian, a teacher, and who now
face an invasion by federal troops.
All we want in compensation for his death is the only
thing Brad ever wanted to see in this world: JUSTICE!
• We, along with all of Brad’s friends, reject the use of
further state-sponsored violence in Oaxaca.
• The New York City Independent Media Center supports
the demand of Reporters Without Borders for a full
and complete investigation by Mexican authorities into
Oaxaca State Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s continued use
of plain-clothed municipal police as a political paramilitary
force. The arrest of his assailants is not enough.
• The NYC IMC also supports the call of Zapatista
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos “to compañeros and
compañeras in other countries to unite and to demand
justice for this dead compañero.” Marcos issued this call
“especially to all of the alternative media, and free media
here in Mexico and in all the world.”Indymedia was born
from the Zapatista vision of a global network of alternative
communication against neoliberalism and for humanity.
To believe in Indymedia is to believe that journalism is
either in the service of justice or it is a cause of injustice.
We speak and listen, resist and struggle. In that spirit, Brad
Will was both a journalist and a human rights activist.
He was a part of this movement of independent journalists
who go where the corporate media do not or stay long after
they are gone. Perhaps Brad’s death would have been prevented
if Mexican, international, and US media corporations
had told the story of the Oaxacan people. Then those of us
who live in comfort would not only be learning now about
this 5 month old strike, or about this 500 year old struggle.
And then Brad might not have felt the need to face down
those assassins in Oaxaca holding merely the ineffective
shields of his US passport and prensa extranjera badge.
Then Brad would not have joined the fast-growing list of
journalists killed in action, or the much longer list of those
killed in recent years by troops defending entrenched,
unjust power in Latin America. Still, those of us who knew
Brad know that his work would never have been completed.
From the community gardens of the Lower East Side to
the Movimento Sem Terra encampments of Brazil, he would
have continued to travel to where the people who make this
world a beautiful place are resisting those who would cause
it further death and destruction. Now, in his memory, we
will all travel those roads. We are the network, all of us who
speak and listen, all of us who resist.
The New York City Independent Media Center
www.nyc.indymedia.org
4 W. 43rd St., Suite 311
New York, N.Y. 10036
USA / EEUU
212-221-0521