The first annual Keenevention is your opportunity to explore New Hampshire in the fall – particularly the arguably most famous (or infamous) activist destination – Keene. Plus, participate in panel discussions, enjoy great speakers, the camaraderie of like-minded individuals, fun social events, and get a taste of Keene activism in real-life.
It’s happening November 1st-3rd at the BEST WESTERN PLUS Sovereign Hotel in Keene! Tickets for the entire weekend are just $50 and hotel rooms are available at a special rate of just $79.99 per night (plus the icky meals and rooms tax). Get details and get signed up at Keenevention.info!
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.
“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…)
Presenting Day Zero of Free Concord’s Occupied Chicagoseries. The series features limited commentary over the raw video taken while traveling to and attending the NATO summit protests last May. This segment takes place in Boston, and begins with the group returning to its starting point eight hours after departure. After finding out that our bus trip would be replaced with a flight from Logan airport, some consumed their goods that were not approved by the TSA. This attracted South Station’s police, who in decriminalized Massachusetts chose not to act against the smokers. Once bus transport for the two or three among us who couldn’t fly is secured, an activist from Acton reads the subway guidelines for the week of the summit in Chicago. The video ends with a preview of Day One’s footage, to be released in the next week.
On this first day of the New Year, I was motivated to do something I don’t normally, and that is contacting federal ‘representatives’. A website linked on my Facebook feed made it as easy as customizing a form letter to address three congressman and the president. The letter called for the immediate closing of the US Department of Defense’s School of the Americas, also known as WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. WHINSEC is a training facility in Fort Benning, Georgia where primarily Latin American militants loyal to US foreign policy demands are instructed in tactics of controlling and killing. You don’t often (or ever) hear the four politicians who received my message discussing the collateral damage and crimes attributed to graduates of the school, which made it the most fitting way to frame a new year, while talking heads babble on about fiscal cliffs. For more on legislative and other actions to take against the School of the Americas, check out soawatch.org.
The first annual Keenevention is your opportunity to explore New Hampshire in the fall – particularly the arguably most famous (or infamous) activist destination – Keene. Plus, participate in panel discussions, enjoy great speakers, the camaraderie of like-minded individuals, fun social events, and get a taste of Keene activism in real-life.
