Free Concord presents an illustrated excerpt from Lysander Spooner’s No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority. Using footage captured while Robin Hooding in Keene, Garret Ean narrates an opening portion of the Boston anarchist’s 1870 treatise. The video is scored with Henry Purcell’s Funeral March of Mary II played on the cello and glass harp.
An excellently produced video report by Dave Ridley. He addresses the need for students to be prepared to document the increasingly closed environment of the government school system.
When you lose with a camera rolling, you win. If the video survives to become public, some of the abuse you suffered is proven. If the authorities snatch the camera and the video doesn’t survive, they show themselves to be thieves…That camera might not save the student. It might get her into more trouble initially, but it should give her some ethical high ground she wouldn’t have had had she kept the camera in her pocket. Whipping out that camera forces the authorities to choose between censorship and openness. Whichever one they choose, you win, as long as the public is well informed of what happened.
Dave Ridley has produced a summary video the shortly offered CopBlock Protection, which was recently launched and quickly halted, after making an undisclosed number of sales of the media product. The protection plan offer guaranteed response in the event of an arrest or prosecution in the form of media coverage featured at CopBlock.org. An update posted to CopBlock shortly after the halt stated that all memberships so far purchased would be honored, but at this time no more memberships were being offered.
Ridley makes smart analysis as usual, though he seems to advocate coupling one’s insurance package in the event of needing defense against the state to include both attorneys and media outreach. The centralization of defense, to have an attorney and PR representatives sourced from the same organization will make both fronts more responsible to each other than necessary. Almost all attorneys advise their clients to retain silence with the media. By ensuring activists will be set in motion in advance to bring eyes to your case, the defendant is relieved of some of the responsibility for reaching out to others in the event of an attack by the state. (more…)
As a final segment for the episode of Shire TV that aired yesterday, I included footage I had captured outside of the NATO Summit last summer. There, US military veterans made history when 45 decorated soldiers tossed their medals in the direction of the barricaded McCormick Place, where the world’s military elite were meeting. Perhaps the most well known among the group returning their awards was former marine Scott Olsen, who was injured by a shot to the head from a crowd control device fired by police while breaking up an Occupy Oakland demonstration.
From the Huffington Post:
“I’d like to direct my message to the NATO representatives here in Chicago today,” said Suraia Sahar of Afghans for Peace, according to MSNBC. “For what you’ve done to my home country, I’m enraged; for what you’ve done to my people, I’m disgusted; for what you’ve done to these veterans, I’m heartbroken. I sympathize with their disappointment and being failed by the system and having their lives, their morals, and humanity toiled with.”
What appears in the episode is not the statement of each participating veteran, which spans about twenty-four minutes. Previously released on Free Concord was a longer version of the demonstration from which this segment derives, running fourty-four minutes. To follow up the content featured in the episode, I trimmed into its own video only the speeches of soldiers immediately before throwing their medals away. Below is the trimmed video, further down is text extracted from some of the more gripping and informative statements.
This past week I spent some time collecting video, writing a script, directing and editing an episode of ShireTV to air on the evening of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The public access studios were closed in observance of the federal holiday, so I stepped up to create an episode to be submitted the week prior with the assistance of the program’s usual cohost James Cleaveland. After an evening of shooting with a day to edit and publish a submittable, finished episode, I allowed one of the associate producers of the weekly show to review the finished product. This was not my first involvement with ShireTV, as I had made a guest appearance in the past. It was my first endeavor behind the camera for the show. Though numerous portions of my finished episode had to be removed for noncommercial reasons, a breaking point for whether or not an associate producer felt himself comfortable submitting the final cut revolved around the edification of the brief ending sequence. Dislike of a creative production is understandable, but as resistance was 
provoked during the test screening, I knew that the uncensored version of the episode had to be released as its own production. It was decided that another producer would be sponsoring the episode with an alternative ending, and I agreed to coincide release of the uncompromised original cut with the previously scheduled airing. The unrestricted omniaudience of the internet will have access to the banned episode when it publishes here at 6:59pm. On cable will air the satisfactory, yet compromised edition of the program at 7:00pm. Organized in three segments, the show begins discussing local radio hubub in Keene from the week prior, then segues into Robin Hooding victories. The last segment is footage of US military veterans tossing back their war medals in the largest such demonstration since the Vietnam War, filmed at the 2012 NATO summit on May 20 in Chicago. (more…)
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