From: "David B.Briones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 29, 2007 9:22:25 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [narconews] Pre-Order Nancy Davies' Book on Oaxaca's
Popular Assembly
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
January 30, 2007
- Narco News Books to Publish Nancy Davies' "The People Decide:
Oaxaca's Popular Assembly" in the Spring of 2007
- Pre-Order a gift copy of the book's first edition (and see the
cover art by Sanya Hyland) at The Fund for Authentic Journalism web
page:
http://www.authenticjournalism.org
By Al Giordano
Publisher, Narco News
When on May 25, 2006 Nancy Davies published a reporter's notebook
entry on The Narcosphere titled "The Desperate Government in Oaxaca"
few observers– other than Davies – saw the regime of Governor Ulises
Ruiz Ortiz as desperate.
Ruiz, since coming to power in 2004, had run roughshod over social
movements, imprisoned political opponents (the subject of two Narco
News video newsreels last February, "Prisoners of 'Democracy'" and
"Marcos Goes to Jail"), violently attacked opposition journalists,
and the movements themselves were historically divided. The teachers'
union known as Section 22 went on strike as it had every May 22 for
the past quarter-century, but few expected that the 2006 strike would
amount to anything more than modest gains.
Davies began what would become more than seven months of nonstop
reports with an opening dispatch: "Oaxaca is a perfect example of a
place where those in power see the collapse of order – their order.
The violence escalates more in line with their fear than with ours.
When they start beating up photographers and shoving around elderly
women, they must be frantic."
More than seven months later, Oaxaca is world-renowned for the
rebellion through which people took back control of the state capitol
and other municipalities for more than four months, chased out the
repressive state and city police corps and political bosses, seized
control of the radio and television airwaves, and constructed an
alternative government from below. It was on June 14, when thousands
of striking teachers – who had been joined by other social movements
in their Oaxaca city encampment – beat back a dawn invasion by 3,000
state and municipal police, that Davies' reports documenting the
"collapse of order" began to be taken seriously.
By June 14, Davies had already reported twelve stories that charted
the path toward that confrontation. Many national and international
reporters then beat a path to Oaxaca. One of them, Indymedia
cameraman Brad Will (1970-2006) was celebrating his 36th birthday on
June 14 back in the United States when he learned of that battle. He
went to Oaxaca later in the year and was assassinated on October 27
in Santa Lucia del Camino on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, after
filming his gun-firing assassins. In what would also be an historic
moment in Internet and alternative journalism, he filmed the final
moments and his own death. Postings of his last video have clocked
tens of thousands of views on Youtube (more than 20,000 have watched
it here, and many more at Indymedia and other websites throughout the
world).
The sensational death of a foreigner in Oaxaca brought a media frenzy
that many previous assassinations of Oaxacan citizens in the struggle
did not. An even larger wave of journalists, observers and activists
– the good, the bad and the ugly – flocked to Oaxaca from across
Mexico and the world. Their breathless accounts from the barricades
focused mainly on pitched street battles with police to the point
that Oaxaca seemed, from afar, to be little more than a dust bowl of
wafting teargas and whizzing bottle rockets. Lost in the
sensationalism were the reasons for the conflict. The professional
simulators of the Commercial Media (among them, Associated Press'
pathologically dishonest Rebeca Romero) served to further cloud the
view of what the Oaxaca rebellion was and is about.
But day after day, behind the literal and mediated smokescreen, Nancy
Davies walked the streets of the city that has been her home for most
of a decade, looked and listened to the ordinary people and the
extraordinary social fighters. She took notes and filed 48 reports on
Narco News chronicling not just the grievances, protests and
corresponding repression, but also the deeper motives and contexts
that guided them. Most significantly, Davies found and archived the
big story behind the conflict that others continue to ignore: The
birth and growth of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
(the APPO, in its Spanish initials), now a model of resistance and
grassroots democracy for the rest of Mexico and much of the world.
Davies reported prolifically yet donated her labor free of charge. To
this day she has not received, nor asked for, any compensation beyond
the satisfaction of getting the true story out to the world.
Recently, George Salzman, in Oaxaca, and James Herod, in Boston,
began to compile Davies' reports in book form. The radical social
philosopher Herod is a member of the Lucy Parsons Center collective.
Salzman – who has published his reports from Oaxaca on Narco News, on
Counterpunch, and on his own web site – wrote an extensive
introduction, based on his own eyewitness experience on the ground
there. Davies wrote a special update for the book that will appear
for the first time in print. I am authoring a brief preface. And they
offered Narco News the opportunity to publish the book, with Davies
donating her author's royalties to the project. Sanya Hyland designed
the cover. The full work is presently being copy edited and the back
cover designed. We expect the book to be printed and available by
April, in time for a lecture tour in the Northeastern United States.
We currently have the budget to print 1,000 copies of "The People
Decide: Oaxaca's Popular Assembly" but we highly suspect that as many
will "fly off the shelves" before a second printing can be completed.
We thus wish to establish a realistic sense of how many copies we
should order of the first edition. Therefore, we are asking readers
to reserve gift copies of the book with donations of $20 or more to
The Fund for Authentic Journalism. That will provide us with an
accurate sense of the volume to print as well as the funds to
accomplish it. And it will give our readers first crack at the book.
As soon as the book is out, those who pre-ordered it will receive
immediate shipment.
But there's another reason why we offer the opportunity to pre-order
the book. As George Salzman explained in a recent essay, Davies, the
author, and he have been subjected to a cowardly and anonymous
campaign of intimidation and threats by some who wish to silence
their reports and commentaries. If those hiding behind the anonymous
threats have any common sense at all, they might see, with this
announcement, that a book featuring Davies' and Salzman's work is
about to come out. The futility of threatening or attempting to harm
these eloquent truth-tellers as the book already goes to press ought
to be evident as counter-productive. After all, if a fraction of the
number of people who watched Brad Will's final video on Youtube buy
Nancy Davies' book with an introduction by George Salzman, the would-
be silencers might just push the work they want hushed onto the
bestseller lists and into much wider distribution than we
contemplate. The work is certainly worthy of that, and Davies tells
the story in a refreshingly clear manner. Even a more modest but
significant number of pre-orders on the book would help construct the
global safety net under these and other correspondents in Oaxaca
today. It will show to the wanna-be censors what Nancy and George
already know: that they are not alone.
And so we invite you to reserve your gift copy or copies of "Let The
People Decide: Oaxaca's Popular Assembly" by Nancy Davies, with an
introduction by George Salzman, by clicking this link to The Fund for
Authentic Journalism.
http://www.authenticjournalism.org/
When the book comes out it will cost $17 US dollars. A $20 dollar
contribution will reserve you the work and get it shipped to your
door. And it will also help ensure that there are enough books on
hand for others to read. And in a number of weeks, when we go to the
printer, perhaps we'll have more news to announce.
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