On The Dream of Indymedia and the Murder Of Brad Will

Brad was a videographer who covered everything from tree-sits in the northwest, housing squats, the WTO and IMF protests, and for the last two years, mass movements throughout Latin America.

Brad lived the last seven years of his life at the crossroads between activism and journalism. When we both witnessed the birth of the Indymedia movement here in Seattle in 1999, I thought it might be some strange shotgun marriage between activists who didn't believe that the most important stories were being covered (Brad) and unemployed journalists who were looking for a place to publish their stuff (me). Yet in only a matter of months after WTO we saw Indymedia centers spread to more than 100 cities around the world. Suddenly it seemed like journalism was more addictive than crack and rapidly turning into a world-wide pandemic.

I met Brad, typically, at a mass protest (WTO). He was introduced to me as a Critical Mass bicycle activist, squatter, and tree-sitter. There is a famous picture of Brad at a New York squat in 1997, when he climbed a building about to be demolished and emerged on the roof as the wrecking ball began to swing.

Yet only a few months after WTO, he was back and carrying a camera for the freshly minted New York IMC. Our paths would cross again and again in some old warehouse or garage turned into an IMC, and we'd trade stories about the friends we had seen since the last big gig. I stayed in his apartment in Brooklyn during the New York RNC in 2004 and we would sing and drink late into the night.

Brad believed that the way to cover a story was to live it as his subjects did, and to let them speak for themselves. This led him back up into the trees and all over Latin America, but now he would be carrying a camera and a microphone. These may not seem like the most formidable of weapons, but in the hands of a determined reporter and a steadfast publisher, they can occasionally change the world. To be an unpaid reporter is a little like a cross between being a priest of some long forgotten religion dedicated to the pursuit of truth and Diogenes searching for his honest man.

I don't believe for a second that Brad would have consciously chosen the fate of a martyr, even in a cause as noble as the pursuit of truth. Certainly he always knew the risks and accepted them with good cheer, but the Brad I knew loved life too much to think that way. He was an eat, drink, and be merry kind of guy. If he could have chosen his own demise, I suspect he would have chosen to go out with a guitar in one hand, a jug of wine in the other, while serenading a pretty girl. Brad was the kind of guy who always brought a guitar to an action as well as his camera gear. Some of you who were involved then might remember him as the guy who wrote the (first) extra verses to the anthem of the time, Desert Rat's Tear Gas song, the verses about the oceans and trees. Yeah, that guy. Wiry, dark hair and goatee, steel-rimmed glasses and a guitar, always ready with a joke or a song. You might have met him back then.

More
http://eatthestate.org/11-05/OnDreamIndymedia.htm