community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Rustbelt Radio for January 14, 2008
by Pittsburgh IMC: Rustbelt Radio collective
Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 at 2:15 PM
radio@indypgh.org (email address validated) 412-923-3000 WRCT 88.3 FM
On this week's show... * Pittsburgh activists gather over the weekend to share organizing skills * Violence is brewing in Chiapas's ongoing low-intensity war * Dissident Israeli professor Neve Gordon discusses Academic Freedom at American Universities * Hundreds of People ride bikes in NYC to honor fallen cyclists and Pedestrians * Activists resist a Grand Jury against Puerto Rican Cultural and Social Workers in NYC * and more in our local and global headlines
audio link: 
MP3 at 27.3 mebibytes
Welcome to this week's edition of Rustbelt Radio, the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center's weekly review of the news from the grassroots, news overlooked by the corporate media.
On today's show...
Rustbelt Radio is broadcast live from WRCT studios every Monday at 6 PM on 88.3 FM in Pittsburgh, and the program airs again on WRCT every Tuesday morning at 9AM.
We can also be heard weekly on the following stations:
We're also available on the internet, both on WRCT's live webstream at W-R-C-T dot ORG and for download, stream or podcast from our website at radio dot I-N-D-Y-P-G-H dot org.
We turn now to local stories.
As the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approaches, the anti-war movement in Pittsburgh is beginning to strategize ways to mark this tragic milestone. About 25 members of the Thomas Merton Center's Anti-War Committee spent a full day on Saturday assessing the work they have completed over the past 5 years, and the new directions they would like to go in. One member of the committee, Mel Packer, shared his thoughts:
We asked Mel if he thought the peace movement in Pittsburgh is growing stronger, or if it seems people are no longer paying attention to the anti-war movement:
We also spoke with Edith Bell, who has been a member of the committee since it began...
The next meeting of the Anti-War committee will be on Sunday at 1pm at the Thomas Merton Center and this year's annual anti-war march will take place Saturday March 29th.
Pittsburgh is home to many radical and community based projects that cover a wide range of Social Justice Issues. Although Pittsburgh is generally regarded as a tightly-knit city, there can be at times a lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing. In order to unite the various activists in the area, an Organizing Skillshare was held for 2 days over the past weekend. About 50 participants discussed their experiences with social justice organizing and created a dialogue within a larger audience.
Monica Avery and Toni Bartone were the two main organizers behind the skillshare. Monica talked about how the idea for this type of gathering began:
* monica_intro_to_skillshr.ogg: monica intro to skillshare 28sec
Toni described some of the topics that were addressed during the weekend:
Monica explained how the structure of the weekend allowed for networking amongst many Pittsburgh activists and organizers.
Von Singletary, a presenter and participant at the skillshare described what she will take away from this event:
Overall, Toni and Monica were happy with the turnout of the event, and the energy that came out of it:
For more on local news, you can visit pittsburgh dot I-N-D-Y-M-E-D-I-A dot org.
[ HMB BREAK RUSTBELT - 0:20 (fades down 0:10 in to start global intro) ]
You are listening to Rustbelt Radio, the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center's weekly review of news overlooked by the corporate media. We turn now to news from other independent media sources around the world.
On January 9, Haitian former paramilitary leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant (PRONOUNCE: eh man WELL cone STAANT) rejected a plea bargain in a mortgage fraud case that would have given him a prison sentence of three to nine years. Now that he has rejected the plea bargain, his case will go to trial. Constant faces multiple charges in the case, with a maximum total sentence of 45 years.
Senior Staff Attorney Jennie Green, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, or CCR, explains the charges in the mortgage fraud case, and explains her organization’s involvement:
A former paid CIA informant, Constant has lived in the U.S. since 1994. After President Aristide returned to power, his government issued an arrest warrant for Constant, who then fled to the United States. Constant is the former leader of the notorious Haitian paramilitary death squad known as FRAPH (the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress)
Jennie Green, on Constant’s relationship to the US Government:
The Center for Constitutional Rights won a landmark judgment in a 2006 civil case charging Emmanuel Constant with human rights abuses including massacres, gang-rapes, and other torture while leader of the FRAPH in Haiti, and will continue to pursue the mortgage fraud case as it goes to trial.
The judge has set the trial to start on February 25th, and a verdict can be expected in late march or early April.
Last week, the Democratic Party of Kosovo made an agreement with the Democratic League of Kosovo, an opposing political party. This agreement gives the two combined parties majority rule of the parliament, where together they control 62 seats out of 120. The new division of power allowed Kosovo’s Parliament to approve a coalition government with Hashim Thaci as the providence’s prime minister in an 85 to 22 vote last Wednesday. Thaci’s government will include 15 ministries – 7 from the Democratic Party of Kosovo, 5 ministries from the Democratic League of Kosovo, and 3 from non-Albanian minorities.
This agreement is an effort to unify the leadership of Kosovo in their desire for independence. Though formally part of Serbia, the Kosovo region has been run by the United Nations and NATO since a 78-day NATO air strike campaign drove out Serb forces that targeted the Kosovo Liberation Army.
In 2007, international talks failed to resolve the status of Kosovo due to the veto power of Russia. Russia continues to threaten to block any measure that would grant independence to the Kosovo region in the belief that supporting independence would set a precedent for separatist groups and violate the sovereignty of Serbia.
Recently, Serbia and Russia suggested continuing negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia. However, the new government is reluctant to delay declaring independence. On the day of his election, Prime Minister Thaci addressed the crowd by saying: "I assure you that within a few weeks, we will declare independence."
Still, Thaci stated that Kosovo would not declare independence until supported by the United States and the European Union. The United States supports statehood for Kosovo and has agreed to recognize Kosovo if it declares independence. The European Union has not issued a formal position of the status of Kosovo. However, on January 11 the EU decided to deploy a police mission to Kosovo after Russia blocked a United Nations proposal to deploy a police and justice operation to grant the region “supervised independence.”
According to a recent report from the Chiapas, Mexico based non-governmental organization CAPISE, the Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research, the Zapatistas and their supporters are experiencing the worst onslaught by state forces in the last 10 years.
Ernesto Ledesma, of CAPISE, reported that Pablo Silvano Jiménez was attacked on December 29. He was walking along the highway when he was shot in the leg. He was attacked by two members of the Policia Sectorial and one member of the paramilitary organization known as ‘OPPDIC’, the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights. Silvano Jiménez lives in the Zapatista autonomous municipality San José Rebeldía, which is part of the official municipality of Chilón.
According to CAPISE, in recent weeks there has been an increased presence of uniformed soldiers who are acting in concert with paramilitary groups. For the past five years, CAPISE has monitored military movements in areas held by the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, the E-Z-L-N.
The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center has also been reporting that the situation in Zapatista areas is serious, because of the increasing presence of the army and of indigenous groups opposed to the Zapatistas. Ledesma said, (quote) "A deliberate concerted action between paramilitaries, who are also indigenous people, and the police, army and authorities is taking place here, the purpose of which is to attack the Zapatistas,"
An anonymous source in the government of President Felipe Calderón told Diego Cevallos of the Inter Press Service that the reports from Chiapas came as a complete surprise to the administration. The source stated that the executive branch has no harassment strategy towards the EZLN.
In 2006 and 2007, during the same time period as the election campaign which brought Calderón to power on December first, 2006, Marcos traveled the country as part of "The Other Campaign", an attempt to rally non-electoral political actors and press for change outside the formal political arena.
Before the end of 2007, Marcos announced that he was returning to Chiapas and that he would neither emerge nor speak again until a future unspecified date. He warned, however, that the EZLN would retaliate if attacked.
Since January first, 1994, this group of indigenous people in southern Mexico has attracted international support, and built an autonomous region, with their own education system, coffee and artisan cooperatives, and medical clinics. They have achieved all of this, despite an ongoing climate of low-intensity warfare. Since that same January first, fourteen years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement has gone from partial to complete implementation.
In the words of Subcommandante Marcos, “We understand that in some forms of the media, we are only news when we are killing or being killed. But, at least for now, we’d rather remain outside of your notes, and we will try to continue onward, consolidating our civil and peaceful strength in that which we still call “The Other Campaign”. And, at the same time, we will be ready to resist, alone, the reactivation of aggression against us, whether from the army, police, or paramilitaries. Those who have been in war know how to recognize the paths we have already been down. The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, has a certain smell. And now we are already beginning to breathe its fetid odor in our lands.”
Denouncing a new wave of repression against the Puerto Rican Independence movement, activists have held protests last Thursday and Friday in Puerto Rico, New York City and various other locations across the country. These protests were directed at the convening of a grand jury against at least three Puerto Rican cultural and social workers in NYC.
You're listening to Rustbelt Radio, the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center's weekly review of news from the grassroots.
This past October, several prominent university professors came together at the University of Chicago for the In Defense of Academic Freedom conference. Before a crowd of over 1,000, they discussed ways in which criticism of Israel has been repressed on college campuses in the United States.
One issue discussed at the conference was the case of Professor Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein was recommended for tenure at DePaul University by his department, and the college-level tenure committee. But the school's dean overruled them and denied him tenure, following a concerted campaign against him led by prominent Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Addressing the Finkelstein case was Dr. Neve Gordon, Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Professor Gordon is a third-generation Israeli who suffered severe injuries during his service in the Israeli Defense Force, and is now an outspoken critic of his government's role in the conflict with the Palestinians. Gordon himself was also the target of a campaign opposing his tenure, led by Haifa University economist Steven Plaut. An Israeli court later ruled that Plaut's attacks were libelous, and awarded compensation to Gordon.
Today, from the Chicago Independent Media Center's monthly radio program From the Trenches, we have Neve Gordon's address to the In Defense of Academic Freedom forum, held on October 12th 2007 at the University of Chicago.
That was Neve Gordon, professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel, speaking at the In Defense of Academic Freedom conference held at the University of Chicago last year.
And now we present the Indymedia Calendar of Events:
[ Outro Music ]
Thanks for tuning in to Rustbelt Radio here on WRCT Pittsburgh, WPTS Pittsburgh, WNJR Washington, WVJW Benwood, WIUP Indiana and WKCO Gambier.
Our hosts this week are Carlin Christy, Matt Toups and Diane Amdor with contributions from Diane Amdor, Carlin Christy, Juliana Strickland, Matt Toups and Andalusia Knoll. This week's show was produced by Phill Cresswell. Special thanks to all of our hosts, producers, and contributors.
You can get involved with Rustbelt Radio! To contact us, or to send us your comments, email RADIO at I-N-D-Y-P-G-H dot ORG. All of our shows are available for download or podcast on our website at RADIO dot INDY-P-G-H dot ORG and this show can be heard again Tuesday morning on WRCT at 9 AM after Democracy Now!
Tune in next week at this time for another edition of Rustbelt Radio, the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center's weekly review of news from the grassroots.
Rustbelt Radio for January 14, 2008 (ogg vorbis)
by Pittsburgh IMC: Rustbelt Radio collective
Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 at 2:15 PM
radio@indypgh.org 412-923-3000 WRCT 88.3 FM
audio: ogg vorbis at 24.6 mebibytes
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