'The Plots to Kill Occupy Protesters' and other life lessons

‘The Plots to Kill Occupy Protesters’ and other life lessons


By Brenda Norrell

Photographer’s life lesson: How the US government destroys movements

Meanwhile, writing in Tucson Weekly this week, reporter Margaret Regan writes of photographer Charles Harbutt and his current show of life works, which began with street photos in Cuba. Regan’s poignant article points out an often censored fact about how the US government destroys activists and movements.

Regan writes, “For years, he was a photojournalist with Magnum, publishing work with Look, Life, Time-Life and other outlets in the great era of photo magazines. Later, he became disillusioned with journalism after watching government agents dressed as hippies trying to incite violence at a Black Panther rally. Too many events—especially political ones—were staged, he decided. (See Tucson Weekly Dec. 24, 1997 online at http://weeklywire.com/ww/12-29-97/tw_review1.html.) He quit Magnum and turned to more personal, self-directed work. http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/political-and-the-personal/Content?oid=3941510

However, along with the good, there is the ugly.

Arizona Daily Star celebrates Indian Fighter

Editors at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson must have woken up and thought it was 1914 — instead of 2014 — with this headline: “Fighter of Indians, purveyor of posh hotel remembered with downtown street.”

Fighter of Indians? Tucson is a city where Native Americans are a living force each day, from the arts and the university, to businesses. 

It seems the Arizona Daily Star editors are either too young to make sound judgments, have just arrived from the east, or they are part of the racist backbone that makes up the bulk of Arizona media, a power play of white privilege. 

This power play sends the message that it is a good thing that Navajos and their neighbors are poisoned by the coal-fired power plant Navajo Generating Station on the Navajo Nation at Page, Ariz. This means that southern Arizona can have electricity, while most Navajos on Black Mesa do not. Not only are Navajos poisoned by Peabody Coal, but most Navajos on Black Mesa haul their water, while Peabody and NGS waste the pristine water. It doesn’t end there. Arizona and the corporate thieves still work diligently behind closed doors to steal Navajo water rights, so southern Arizona can water lawns and golf courses, and fill their swimming pools.

Perhaps Arizona Daily Star editors in Tucson don’t realize who the original inhabitants of the land were, the land where their building now stands. Perhaps the editors have a total disregard for members of their community, or perhaps the editors circle of friends is so narrow that they don’t even know who actually lives in Tucson.

Armchair plagiarizers in Indian country

Along with the bad, there is the worst. While news reporters around the world are killed, kidnapped and tortured for practicing journalism, in the US, and particularly in Indian country, plagiarism by armchair journalists dominates. These armchair profiteers sit home and profiteer by way of the theft of others work and then deceive their readers.

Journalism requires journalists to be present. This doesn’t mean sitting home, rewriting and plagiarizing the web, stealing a photo, or topping off a press release with a phone call. Journalists should realize that the other reporters know that the plagiarizers never show up on for a news story. There is one reporter at Indian Country Today who has pretended to be covering the Southwest for decades. In the past 32 years, I have never seen her present, not even once, on a news story.

Why go down in history as a fraud?

The FBI Burglars and COINTELPRO

Meanwhile, COINTELPRO is once again in the headlines, with the FBI burglars who discovered the word COINTELPRO, going public. The New York Times and Democracy Now! have coverage. The media coverage includes the fact that the FBI used blackmail in attempt to persuade Martin Luther King, Jr., to kill himself. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows.html?_r=0 and Democracy Now www.democracynow.org