We’re already thinking ahead to our next fundraiser and there’s a way for you to help. A TNS T-Shirt Design Contest!

The TNS T-shirt design contest offers you a chance to show off your skills and create a logo that our news junkies can wear with pride.

We know our members signed up to support our journalism mission. Now it’s time to offer an extra incentive. What better way to let our readers spread the word about independent media than to offer a one-of-a-kind, limited-edition T-shirt to people who sign up as contributing members? We’ll also reward our long-time fans by giving shirts to current members who increase their donations.

Our requirements are pretty straightforward. The design just has to say “The NewStandard” and include our web site: www.newstandardnews.net. The rest, including more verbiage, we leave to your artistic discretion. But keep in mind:

•The design will be screen-printed on sweat-free, union-made, cotton Tees
•The logo can be any size, but will appear on the front of the T-shirt only
•Designs can be spot printed in up to six colors, but the cost of printing will be a consideration in choosing the design
•You can enter up to three designs
•TNS will assume the copyright to the chosen logo

In true democratic fashion, we’re going to post the design candidates on our site and let our readers help choose the winner.

So what’s in it for you? First, you’re helping The NewStandard continue to publish. Second, your artwork will become part of the TNS “brand” and be worn wherever our readers go. And finally, regardless of whether your design is selected, we’ll post your bio and website in the contest entrants’ page of our website.

The design submission deadline is January 15. Please send all submissions as high-resolution JPEG files to Tshirt@newstandardnews.net.

Good luck!

Basically, there’s a rare opportunity to gain full-power radio stations in some areas of the country. If you know of any organization that might be remotely interested, please forward this announcement to them and urge them to call Prometheus directly. Prometheus can help them decide whether to apply and if so, help them with the process. Thanks!

Jen Angel
—

The FCC is opening up a rare opportunity where they will be giving away free radio licenses to non-profit organizations (does not have to be 501(c)3). Usually commercial stations like this sell for millions of dollars, but since these are non-commercial channels they are given out for free. If your group meets the qualifications, and a frequency is available, you can start a radio station. Sound too good to be true? There is a catch. Well, several catches. The channels that are available are mostly just in smaller cities. Your group would have to pay for engineering and legal consultants, and the costs of equipment, which can add up. And most places only have one or two open channels, and sometimes the competition can be complicated between the various activist groups, agencies, schools, and churches for that one channel. But your group has as good a chance as anyone else! And finally, this is the first time that the FCC has done this in close to 15 years and it is quite possible that it will be another 15 years before they open it again. If you want to know more, call the Radio For People Coalition, or take a look at radioforpeople.org. You can call Coalition groups Prometheus Radio Project at 215-727-9620, who can help you to claim your communities slice of the FM dial! Prometheus Radio Project has helped to build radio stations for civil rights groups, unions, schools, tribes, environmentalists and neighborhood organizations of all sorts, and can help you evaluate whether this is right for your organization, and if it is, lead you through the process.

October 29, 2006
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 compaÒeros and compaÒeras in other countries to unite and to demand justice for this dead compaÒero.” 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.

In that vein, TAKE NOTE of what happened in Jersey. Quit thinking of it as the ‘armpit’ — be that of big-headed NYC or the country — and begin to recognize it as a part of the nation’s vanguard.
Note: refrain from snickers about ‘of course, this is Jim McGreevey’s state.’

For a few articles to get a better sense on what the ruling was, what the significance is:

Q&A from The Advocate;

[in Vermont] it’s not like they wrote a new law—they just wrote something that was parasitic on the existing marriage law. The New Jersey legislature could photocopy the Vermont law, change a few things, and they could make it work.

analysis from the NYTimes:

gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, but split over whether their unions must be called marriage or could be known by another name, handing that question to the Legislature.

oh, and for the legalese from the Rutgers Law Library.

Last week, the TNS collective came to a difficult realization: we are in big financial trouble. Due to two dismal membership drives, it seems unlikely we will make it to the end of the year.

In Solidarity,

The NewStandard Collective

Because we realize that sometimes there really IS nothing better in life than reading an official letter from a corporation’s PR office, we invite you to indulge in American Apparel’s jeremiad. We only ask that you also take a minute to read our reply to their Media Relations Director’s threat to sue us if we don’t retract the issue. Good times, really.

Our editorial and publishing staff consider this particular discussion over. Whether American Apparel does or not is really up to them. Time will tell, and it’s up to you to decide whether you feel like you need to hear more.

As for us, we’d really like all you new-to-Clamor friends to check out the new issue. Not surprisingly, there is some really amazing shit in there that has absolutely nothing to do with American Apparel. It’s a shame that it’s being eclipsed by all this nonsense.

If you don’t mind, we’ve got to get working on our Winter issue.

Keep at it.

The boss says the business isn’t anti-union. The boss also says that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in his workplace. The boss said the AA building was built in 1920s, not the 1940s.* Okay. Read the articles in our section. Then read some more articles (here on our blog and elsewhere), and decide for yourself.

Clamor is an independent media outlet that works with everyday people to tell the stories that are important to our communities. We stand by the articles in this special section because they are accurate and resonate with what a lot of people are feeling. We and many of our readers feel duped by a company that has made a lot of money appealing to our progressive ideals.

American Apparel is attempting to do to Clamor what it has done fairly successfully to independent (and corporate) media outlets — squash criticism through threats of legal action, intimidation, or discrediting of the source or the journalist. We’ve been gathering stories from blogs, radio programs, magazines, filmmakers, and TV shows big and small of just how American Apparel has worked to prevent critical stories from being published. It’s a solid model that works well to eliminate dissenting voices and create a chilling effect on future coverage. You’ll be hearing more from us on this when we finish our research. In the meantime, you might want to have a conversation with Weronika Cwir — one of AA’s Media Relations staffers whose current job description seems to have been rewritten to include “trolling the internet to talk trash about Clamor on various blogs.” Tell her we said “Hello!”

We take Semon’s letter as an indication that we have achieved our goal of accurately and passionately critiquing a fashionable sacred cow of liberal style. An apology will not be forthcoming. American Apparel is welcome to make the case to concerned consumers of its products that it can conduct its business without sexism or anti-union tactics. However, to do that will presumably take more substance than PR.

And that is precisely what has American Apparel’s 100% Baby Rib cotton briefs ($30 for a 3-pack) in a bunch.

*Jim Straub’s article actually said, “The company possesses a downtown textile factory straight out of the ’40s, a sexploitation ad campaign from the ’70s, and a marketing strategy so sophisticated it almost seems to come from the future.”

You should definitely subscribe to Clamor to have the issue delivered to your door and support vital indpendent media. While you’re waiting for your subscription to kick in, take a moment to sneak preview the special section as a PDF here.

Oops: Case Still Pending.
In this Fall 2006 issue, we incorrectly reported that Mary Nelson, a store manager at American Apparel, had withdrawn her sexual harassment suit against CEO Dov Charney. It has come to our attention that the suit by Mary Nelson, a sales manager, is still pending, and that an unnamed store manager withdrew her suit against the company.

I Am Ashamed of Myself
By Kalamu ya Salaam
Post-Katrina New Orleans

I woke up this morning. I was ashamed.

I couldn’t remember what I was doing in 1994. In April. The rainy season. Even if my life depended on it, I could not recall any specifics. I just couldn’t remember.

Over 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered then. I don’t remember what I did but not having anything that I remember tells me that I did nothing memorable.

I don’t even have a poem specifically about the genocide. Did I write a letter, a petition, an article? Did I do anything? It is depressingly banal how often the reality registers: when the good do nothing, the bad do everything.

Why is goodness always cast as a coward? The truth is, if we do nothing, we can not be good. Doing nothing is a collaboration with the worst of ourselves.

Less than four hours earlier at three-something in the morning when I should have been sleeping I had just finished watching “Sometimes In April,” Raoul Peck’s movie about genocide in Rwanda a dozen years ago. I stagger to bed emotionally drained.

I assume while I was asleep my subconscious was taking inventory. When I awoke, a terrible truth appeared: if I did nothing during Rwanda, I had no high ground from which to expect others to do something for New Orleans.

All of the tasks I should be doing but for whatever reasons I have not done, each of them stood at my bedside and took turns whacking at my conscience.

My discomfort was not just Rwanda. Kysha, Robin and I are working on a poetry anthology appropriately entitled “The End of Forever.” Over the last couple of weeks I have come up missing in action. I am mired in a swamp of inaction, emotionally overwhelmed at times. The book is in the last stages, just a little more effort and it would be finished, but I lay in bed, dilly-dallying for no good reason-I don’t know what I’m waiting for and I’m not sleepy, it’s just…

But the book is not the only thing. More and more people are calling me about Listen to the People. If I push harder I could make more happen, faster. We should have been up and online by now. There are specifics I can not do, technical matters others have to address, but I could put my shoulder to the wheel and make things turn faster. I could, but…

My wife is patient with me, never once complaining as I leave the house every evening and don’t come back until round midnight, going to spend hours with Doug who is battling cancer and dueling with the after-affects of chemotherapy. Nia and I have not gone to the movies at all this year, and it has been some months since we have gone out to dinner together.

There have been days when I freely gave my full attention to visitors needing assistance with this, that or the other. On more than one occasion I have spent more time with someone I may never see again than I have with my wife whom I see almost every day-you see, I can not even say I see my wife everyday because some days…

Do you understand why I am ashamed? Yes, I know that I do so many good things for the cause, but I do not remember what I did in April of that killing season occurring in a ten-thousand-square-mile country of around eight million souls. Count off eight people you know, if they had been Rwandan, most likely at least one of them would be dead-and not just dead, but smashed like an insect. Thus the marauders crowed, explaining why they used machetes: we do not waste bullets on cockroaches.

I have not completed the book we planned to have ready by the end of August. Our Listen to the People website is not fully operational yet. My wife and I eat separately. Do you understand how it feels to see yourself like that?

I tell myself to get up. Get moving. It is another day. We’re alive. There’s so much we can do. But… it’s raining outside, just like April in that breathtakingly beautiful land of a thousand hills.

Most of us never know when our end will arrive. I stared at my computer screen as actors under Peck’s direction portrayed people who knew they were about to die. At one point I hit the space bar to pause the action. I reached up, wiped my eyes, and then continued watching. If I had been there, what would I have done?

Lying on my side, face to the wall, a hard answer severs my sense of self half-in-two: Had I been in Kigali, I may have done nothing but watch, that is, if I were lucky enough not to be a Hutu hacking a Tutsi, or a Tutsi being hacked, I probably would have been a so-called innocent onlooker… after all that is what I was as I sat in Houston in my brother-in-law’s living room watching on CNN as the Tutsis of my city were abandoned at the Ernest Morial Convention Center.

When we evacuated, our car was full but I left a working automobile behind. I can say: I did not expect the levees to break, I thought I would be back in a few days. I can say if I had stayed I would have been one of the locals, like Malik and Jerome, rescuing people before outside help arrived. But regardless of what I say or want to believe I might have done, the hard question remains. What did I do? When the deal went down, there I sat, just watching.

Now, I realize: every day is April. Whether it’s Rwanda or New Orleans, the same question wakes me: what am I doing about it today?

A dozen years from now will I have done anything worth remembering?

The War Tapes is full of moments that will leave you breathless, but I found a particular scene with SGT Zaher (Zack) Bazzi incredibly moving. Born and raised in Lebanon for the first ten years of his life, Bazzi and his family eventually moved to the US. He joined the National Guard and was eventually deployed with the rest of his company to Iraq. Upon returning from his tour, Bazzi joins hundreds of other immigrants (dressed in his Army fatigues) in an mass ceremony to be sworn-in as an American citizen. While everyone cheers at the end of the ceremony, we watch Bazzi’s face — blank and distant, almost resigned — and bask in the irony.

Because of its earnest (and successful, in my opinion) attempts to provide an unfiltered look at the war from the perspective of reluctant and gung-ho soldiers alike, The War Tapes may very well do for the war in Iraq what Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices accomplished in mobilizing thousands to challenge the ubiquity of the big box giant. Find a screening near you and mark your calendar.