1/17/13

We live in a nation now where over 90% of the national media overtly supported a ruinous, dreadful, imperial war based on a lie, the questions isn't why you should support alternative media, but, why do you still the support the corporal media? They waved flags, beat the drums, played martial music & swam in the funk of fake fear, to propel the nation to a mad war in Iraq, all to please their corporate shareholders, to sell their products & to continue praying at the imperial altar of oil, what was the alternative media doing at the time? They were on the ground, printing the pieces that gave us insight into the grassroots & giving rare voice to those sane amongst us who damned the war as a naked imperial exercise. They turned their lenses on the prisons, the streets, the neighborhoods & communities of blacks, browns, anti-imperialist whites & gave a truer deeper portrait of the world, the world in protest against the racist, violent empire, so support the alternative media, for when you do so, you support yourself & the movements that are paving a way into the future.

There seems to be a reticence about supporting political prisoners & prisoners of war some pamphlets about prisoner support work include support for political prisoners & POW's, but say little about who we are or why we should be supported as part of prisoner support work, supporting political prisoners is not an impediment to the work of opposing the prison industrial complex, or fighting for humane prison conditions, it seems the hesitance to support political prisoners is because of our politics, our political consciousness & our actions, the conscious relative political crimes we have been charged with committing conflict with some people's own political strategies, should we as a movement not encourage consciousness, self-determination & creative & collective protagonists in the struggle for human dignity & human rights? There is always room to debate politics, points of view, strategies & tactics, to confront differences & questions is a good thing, any struggle for liberation demands free & open debate of ideas & practices. At the same time, active struggles need to support those who act consciously & politically, to do so is a part of asserting the right to struggle, as well as defending activism & promoting stronger resistance to the military, financial & political apparatus that denies our society & the whole world true equality & justice.

post for http://betweenthebars.org/blogs/1491