What We Are Reading
Below is a list of books that we have read in recent weeks. The comments are not a review of the books, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, by Benjamin Dangl – This book is a great sequel to Dangl’s first book on Latin American social movements, The Price of Fire. Like the first book Dangl provides sharp analysis of social movements in Latin America, not from the halls of academia, but as someone who has spent significant time talking with and observing movements from below. What makes this book so important is Dangl’s assessment of how popular movements in Latin America interact with the State. The author believes that their strength and ability to makes changes is because these movements have remained independent of political parties and know when it makes sense to endorse state actions and when to fight the state. A useful book for those seeking to understand the impact social movements have on making change in Latin America.
The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, by Gord Hill – Native writer and comic book author Gord Hill has given us a gem with The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book. Hill depicts through words and drawings how numerous Native communities have resisted conquest over the past 5 centuries, with examples from the Incas, Mapuche, Pueblo, Apache, AIM and the Zapatistas. Hill pulls no punches in showing that this resistance has often resulted in Native people using force to defend their communities and the land they inhabited. The book also includes an introductory essay by Native American activist and scholar War Churchill.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, by Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe – This is a collection of essays and interviews with two of the most outspoken authors on Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. Chomsky & Pappe have spent the last 40 years critiquing and challenging Israeli state policy often at personal risk. The book deals with Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1947-48 all the way up to the 2008-09 assault on Gaza. For anyone looking to understand what drives Israeli policy against the Palestinians this book is an excellent choice that will answer important questions.
Debt, The IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, by Eric Toussaint & Damien Millet – The global economy is often times difficult to wrap one’s head around, especially when it involved the role of the IMF and the World Bank. Toussaint and Millet have done us a great service in laying out a critique of these institutions in a sixty questions and answers framework. In addition, the author present relevant information on the issue of debt that has been imposed on poorer, often called “developing countries.” This is an excellent populist text that would be useful for both educators and organizers alike.
Movie Review: The Tillman Story
Like a good American I did what we all do on holidays, I went to the movies. However, instead of going to be entertained I went to be challenge by a powerfully produced documentary that exposes yet another lie by the US government.
Last night I saw the recently release documentary film, The Tillman Story. The Tillman Story is about Pat Tillman, an professional football player who left the game to join the military after 9/11. Tillman was the consummate all American hero, who not only was killed by his fellow soldiers, but was used by the government to sell the War on Terror.
The documentary tracks both the life of Pat Tillman and the military cover up that began immediately after his death. Tillman was first deployed in Iraq in 2003 and was involved in the bogus rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. Tillman’s brother, who joined the military with his brother said that after being in Iraq for just a few weeks, Pat told him while they watch US planes bomb residential areas of Baghdad, “this war is fucking illegal.”
Disillusioned with what he saw in Iraq, Tillman was then deployed to Afghanistan to conduct search missions on the Taliban. Tillman and his squad were sent to a village and along the way were separated from half of that squad. Tillman and other soldiers heard gunfire and set out on foot over a mountain ridge to see what was happening. When Tillman came over the ridge his fellow squad members opened fire and viciously killed him.
The documentary takes you down the difficult road that his family would have to travel to get the truth about what happened. Initially, Tillman’s family and wife were told he died fighting the enemy, but once questions were asked the story began to unravel.
This is an incredible story of government and military cover up that after two years was first investigated because Tillman’s father sent a letter to government officials accusing them of lying. The government then wanted to put the blame at the feet of a lower level officer, until an AP reporter was given a military memo that demonstrated that high-ranking officials knew that Tillman was killed by his fellow troops.
The documentary ends with a powerful narrative and scenes from a Congressional hearing where several US Generals, including Stanley McCrystal and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld boldly lied to members of Congress about what they knew and when they knew it.
This is a must see film for anyone who thinks the war in Afghanistan is for a noble cause and it is an important film for those already opposed since it provides another powerful resource to build greater opposition.
Local events in solidarity with the stand against the SOA
The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) in 2001, is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” the SOA has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.
According to SOA Watch,“The past 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, ‘disappeared,’ massacred, and forced into being refugees by those trained at the School of Assassins.”
From Nov. 15 to 21, people seeking to close the school will gather at the gates of Fort Benning for the “Convergence of Hope,” as they have since 1990. Locally, The Bloom Collective is sponsoring two film/discussion events in solidarity with the Fort Benning protests:
11 a.m. Monday Nov. 15 Film, Hidden in Plain Sight, and Campus March at GVSU Allendale campus, 2204 Kirkhoff. This event is free.- 6:30 p.m. Thursday Nov. 18 Film & Discussion, Guns and Greed at The Bloom, 671 Davis NW. Suggested donation $3 to $5 includes a light supper with vegan options.
Guns and Greed features “Powerful statements from Students against Sweatshops, labor leaders, veterans and church people participating in protests at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia and at a Washington DC protest of World Bank and IMF policies.”
Hidden in Plain Sight explores the link between U.S. foreign policy and 20th century Latin Americas bloodstained history. It features interviews of both SOA supporters and critics, and shows footage of soldiers and victims.
You can also view Hidden in Plain Sight on line. Both are available at The Bloom Collective.
Students aren’t Tweeting in London, they are protesting
(This article is re-posted from ZNet.)
Students have finally had enough. Fees were introduced in 1998 and we hardly heard a squeak; they were bumped up to over £3,000 in 2006 and no one revolted. But today students smashed their way into the Tory party campaign HQ in a show of anger against a political elite they believe have abandoned them.
Around 200 protesters, who had taken part in the 50,000 strong demonstration against cuts in education, broke through police lines and smashed windows to enter the building, occupying it for several hours before being forced out by the police.
This kind of radical action shows that some students are disillusioned with the National Union of Students protest and lobby model. With the Lib Dems doing a U-turn on their pledge to vote against an increase in fees, and Labour discredited as a champion of students, students have been left feeling that there is no one left to lobby.
There has been a significant segment of the student movement that has been pushing for more drastic action for a while. What has changed is that that segment has swelled to include a much wider section of the student community.
Several commentators and indeed the NUS have said that the Millbank occupation was not a student-led action and that anarchist agitators are behind it. Images of black-hooded youths have added to this belief. Speaking to the people inside the building, however, revealed a different story. Those dressed in black were students too, and several fresh-faced, excited students said this was their first demonstration. Meanwhile, Philippe Clem from Hull University said: “I’ve never been on a protest before … we just came to join the march, but we just got swept up in this. It’s amazing.”
The crowd of students outside the building, lighting fires and shouting their support for those inside, swelled to over a thousand. This tells a different story to the one told by those wishing to discredit the protest as just a small bunch of troublemakers kicking off. The fact that the building was only a few hundred metres from the end rally supports the claims of those inside that this was unplanned.
Some of the people inside were obviously more seasoned activists, Robert Briggs, 28, of Kings College London, said: “This is nothing, this is a spark, but it is important for people to see that they can do something, that they are not totally powerless.”
The issue at the heart of the protest was the proposed increase in fees up to £9,000 a year. Alison Bent, 19, of Sussex University said, “I really don’t know how I’m going to cope. I’ve always wanted to come to uni, so I had to do it, but it is really scary.” Anger towards the Lib Dems was also evident with effigies of Nick Clegg hoisted high and placards demanding “I want my vote back”.
Recent events in Greece and France where students played a large part in the unrest over public sector cuts appeared to have inspired today’s actions. Chants of “Greece, France, now here too!” echoed through the HQ as people stormed up the stairs.
There is a very real possibility that this could motivate people looking to fight the cuts to other public services to look beyond just protesting and lobbying. Across the country there have been meetings and protests already, with speakers at rallies calling for poll tax style revolts.
No doubt Polly Toynbee will be looking on disapprovingly – she has argued that students are low on the pecking order of pain inflicted by the coalition government. And she is right that students are largely from middle class backgrounds and so won’t be as hard hit by austerity as many others. But her argument assumes that there is only a certain amount of space in society for protest. If the students are successful, her argument goes, then others will face more severe cuts. Quite the opposite: if the students make some headway, others will be spurred on to push their agendas more forcefully.
The Realities for US Veteran’s on Veteran’s Day
It is Veteran’s Day and that usually means parades and ceremonies to honor men and women who have served in the US military. It means the President will give a speech about the commitment to freedom that the US military demonstrates and Veteran’s Day usually means news stories about soldiers on leave.
This was the case with a story in the Grand Rapids Press, which features the return of a US soldier from Afghanistan. The brief article tells us about a US soldier from Hudsonville, who was greeted at the airport by family and friends. The story quotes the soldier’s mom who says she expected her son to come back different.
Coming back different is an understatement, particularly for soldiers who have been involved in combat. The statistics are staggering, whether we are talking about soldiers who have been physically wounded, are struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), substance abuse and broken relationships.
While the news media and society in general might celebrate the sacrifices that US soldiers make, the concern for soldiers returning from war changes dramatically after the parade ends.
There has been some news coverage of US troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is usually limited to numerical milestones. What we don’t hear much about are US troops who have committed suicide as a result of their involvement in war. In fact, for every death, at least five members of the armed forces were hospitalized for attempting to take their life. According to the Navy Times, 2 percent of Army; 2.3 percent of Marines and 3 percent of Navy respondents to the military’s own survey of 28,536 members from all branches reported they had attempted suicide at some point.
US soldier suicides have now claimed more lives than soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan. You can see from this graph how US soldier suicides have risen steadily since the US War in Iraq began and the recent escalation of US troops in Afghanistan.
In addition to high suicide rates, US soldiers have to try to cope with living in a civilian life, which means finding work and attempting to maintain relationships. Ann Jones reports that many US soldiers fall victim to substance abuse after combat. Substance abuse can add stress to relationships, which sometimes results in physical abuse by veterans against spouses, girlfriends and children. Sometimes this abuse results in rape and murder of intimate partners.
These are the ugly realities of the consequences of putting very young men in circumstances that no one should have to endure. Unfortunately, these are realities that we do not want to talk about or come to terms with since to do so is often seen as unpatriotic. This kneejerk response is ridiculous on many levels but particularly when we realize that the strongest voices on the realities of war veterans are veterans themselves.
Just a few days ago Jeff Hanks, a US soldier who has served in Afghanistan, refused deployment because of his struggle with PTSD. Hanks sought help from military doctors when returning from Afghanistan, but his treatment was cut short when he received orders for re-deployment. Iraq Veterans Against the War have organized a campaign to support Jeff Hanks and they are seeking solidarity from the public.
So on Veteran’s Day 2010, let’s not blindly honor veterans as heroes, rather let us see them as victims of a policy they had little to do with. Let us listen to US veterans of war who are resisting the ongoing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a short video by Brave New Foundation, where US veterans speak out on the US war in Afghanistan.
GR Press Announces End of Recession….Again
Last Monday, November 8, the Grand Rapids Press ran an article which explained that Michigan was finally “climbing out of the recession.”
But let’s not get excited. The Press has run a number of articles saying the same thing over the past few years. Back in 2008, we had “Fifth Third Exec Predicts End to Credit Crisis,” in which we were told that we hadn’t even had a recession yet: “Stapley sees an end that could come soon enough [thanks to the Wall Street bailout] to avert a true recession—or at least make any national recession short-lived.” Then in 2009, we had “Is Recession Really Over?” with a Fifth Third bank official explaining how things were going to improve and the stock market was about to rally. More stories were scattered throughout 2010: “Economic Panel Says Recession Ended in June 2009”; “There’s No Shortage of Money, There’s a Shortage of Confidence”; “Stocks Post Meager Gains Despite Strong Jobs News”; and one of my personal favorites, “Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Discourage Job Searches?” Right…it’s those lazy workers’ fault that they don’t have new jobs yet! How could I not have seen that?
So you can’t blame reporter Jackie Headapohl for being just a bit tentative this time around. Her Monday article was headlined with a question (“Is Michigan Finally Climbing Out of the Recession?”) and is not based on any investigative work of her own. Instead, it recaps a recent article in Crain’s Detroit which predicts “mild economic growth” for the state in 2011. But, Crain’s adds, “…it will be quite a while before [Michigan’s] unemployment rate gets to the national level—at least a year.”
Or never.
First let’s recap a few facts that GRIID has featured in recent articles on this site:
•Grand Rapids’ poverty rate now stands at 25 percent.
•Its current “official” unemployment rate is 10.5 percent.
•In September 2010, foreclosures jumped 30 percent over August’s numbers.
Add to those statistics a new study that shows that across the country, 77 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.
Every time the Grand Rapids Press has run an article announcing the end of the recession, or reminding people that the recession ended in June of 2009, readers write in protest, saying, “Not as far as I’m concerned!” So what’s going on? Why do the capitalists keep insisting that everything’s back to normal?
As Bill Moyers would say, “Welcome to the plutocracy.”
Moyers gave a speech in October as part of this year’s Howard Zinn Lecture Series. He chose a topic that he feels is vital to our understanding of our current situation: we have been robbed. We now live in a society where the wealth distribution is equivalent to, or worse than, it is in banana republics such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. A concerted effort began in 1980 to demolish the middle class and shift wealth into the hands of the richest Americans. The government, the media, and the financial industry have conspired together to hide that fact from us. So Moyers decided to lay out the entire scam in his lecture:
•The richest 1 percent of Americans take home 24 percent of the country’s income. That’s almost 10 percent more than the wealth gap during the Gilded Age, where the richest 1 percent had corned 15 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•CEOs now make an average of 531 times as much as the average worker.
•American CEOs have cut, in the past decade, one in three manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
•Under the Bush tax cuts, which will now probably be re-instated, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans will receive about $370,000 in tax cuts…and it will not “trickle down” because studies show this class invests tax-return money, not spends it.
•From 1950 to 1980, an even distribution of wealth across the classes created an average income which rose from $17,719 to $30,941, or about $661 a year.
•But from 1980, when Reagan took office and the official plundering of national wealth began, to 2008, the average worker’s income has gone from $30,914 to $31,244. That means over the past 20 years, our average income has only risen $303. That’s $15.15 a year.
It’s called what Moyers calls “wage repression.” It’s created two different Americas. And that’s clearly class warfare.
Moyers states: That’s how financial capitalism works today: Conserving cash rather than bolstering hiring and production; investing in their own shares to prop up their share prices and make their stock more attractive to Wall Street. To hell with everyone else…If this were a functioning democracy, our financial institutions would be helping everyday Americans and businesses get the mortgages and loans – the capital – they need to keep going; they’re not, even as the financiers are reaping robust awards…The super-rich earn their fortunes with overseas labor, selling to overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have little to do with the rest of America, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.
Moyer’s entire speech can be read here. It’s well worth the time.
And it explains a lot. The capitalists are telling us the recession is over because for them, it is. In fact, between the bailout dollars on Wall Street, the constant squeezing of wages and the invented “jobs deficit,” good times have never been better for them. But the other 90 percent of us are trapped in the gray world of a recession—a recession that those in power have a vested interest in continuing, if possible, forever.
Mainstream newspapers like the Grand Rapids Press help corporations maintain the smoke-and-mirrors illusion that things are just not as bad as we think they are. That’s the purpose of those jolting, occasional articles about the end of the recession. It’s a weapon of mass confusion, and an effective one, considering how much has been stolen from us and how little we still understand about the criminals who robbed us.
Tonight (Wednesday, November 10th), as part of American Indian Heritage Month, there will be a screening of the documentary film Reel InJuns: On the Trail of Hollywood Indians.
Hollywood has made over 4000 films about Native people; over 100 years of movies defining how Indians are seen by the world.
Reel Injun takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through the history of cinema.
Travelling through the heartland of America, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond looks at how the myth of “the Injun” has influenced the world’s understanding – and misunderstanding – of Natives.
With candid interviews with directors, writers, actors and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell and Russell Means, clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, including Stagecoach, Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Atanarjuat the Fast Runner, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema’s depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today.
The film will be show on the GVSU downtown campus and followed by a discussion. The film is free and open to the public.
Reel Injuns
6pm
Loosemore Auditorium – 122E DeVos
401 W. Fulton St.
Grand Rapids, MI
WOOD Radio drops local show, adds racist Glenn Beck to their far right programming
Friday it was reported that WOOD AM Radio discontinued one of the few locally produced programs in order to make room for the syndicated show of Glenn Beck.
The show Mouth 2 Mouth aired 9am til noon on Monday through Friday every week in the West Michigan media market. The largest radio conglomerate in the country Clear Channel owns WOOD Radio, which has seven stations in this area.
It was reported yesterday in the Grand Rapids Press that the Glenn Beck show began airing on WOOD Radio on Monday and that has fans of the Mouth 2 Mouth show upset. The Press reported that people have started a Facebook group, called Mad at WOOD. The Facebook page says, “Are you angry at Wood Radio 1300 for “letting go” Scott Winters and Michelle McCormick, our beloved hosts of Mouth to Mouth? Show it by joining!” There isn’t any concrete call to action, although some of the comments on this page are suggesting that people flood station manager Tim Feagan with E-mails demanding that the local show be reinstated.
People on the Facebook page are arguing that Mouth 2 Mouth was one of the few information/news-based shows that was locally produced, where the public could call in to add their comments to the topics of the day. It is true that there is limited local program in the West Michigan market this is overwhelmingly the case for WOOD Radio.
Station manager Tim Feagan said that the decision had nothing to do with the content of Mouth 2 Mouth, rather it was purely a “business decision.” The decision was no doubt good for business since advertisers will want to tap into Beck’s popularity. However, adding Glen Beck to their line up has other implications for WOOD Radion.
A quick look at WOOD Radio’s weekday program should tell us something about the kind of programming content they have decided upon. Not only are all the shows (except 5am – 9am) nationally syndicated shows, many of them are notorious for making false claims and engaging is racist hate speech, as has been well documented by Rory O’Connor in the book Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio.
09:00am – 12:00pm – The Glenn Beck Program – LIVE
12:00pm – 03:00pm – The Rush Limbaugh Show – LIVE
03:00pm – 06:00pm – The Sean Hannity Show – LIVE
06:00pm – 09:00pm – The Dave Ramsey Show
09:00pm – 12:00pm – The Michael Savage Show
12:00am – 05:00am – Coast To Coast AM with George Noory – LIVE
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has been documenting fallacious comments by Limbaugh for years, including racists comments. Michael Savage has an even worse track record of on air racist comments, which has led to efforts to get him off the air in various markets through a campaign called No Savage. Savage has advocated for an outright ban on Muslim immigration to the US and the construction of Mosques.
Glenn Beck has also engaged in demonizing Muslims and immigrants on his talk show, but the comment that resulted in a campaign against him was when he called President Obama a racist in 2009.
This comment resulted in the group Color of Change organizing a campaign to pressure Fox News to pull Beck from their programming. The campaign has not been able to get Beck off the air, but it has resulted in numerous national advertisers pulling their ads from the network.
In addition to these kinds of campaigns, some organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the link between on air hate speech and hate crimes in the US. So far the FCC has not made any decisions on this matter, but it does show that people are organized to challenge the kind of racist and xenophobic language that is part of radio programming across the country and on WOOD Radio.
Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens
Beverly Singer PhD, Santa Clara Pueblo, Tewa/Dine’
We had good lives. We fed ourselves. We built our homes. We had worship. And, we celebrated family and community. What have you brought us?
Beverly Singer PhD
When Beverly Singer was 11 years old, she looked on as a Hollywood film crew set to work on the Indian reservation she called home. That experience inspired her to become a filmmaker; her film work has explored the lives of native women, native children and health issues facing Native Americans. Also an author, her book Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video, was the backdrop for her Nov. 8 presentation as part of the Grand Valley State University American Indian Heritage Month series.
Singer began by talking about the importance of community, of belonging to each other and how 21st century technology impacts the experience of community. “We are now moving towards a different idea of ourselves as human beings as a result of what technology brings.”
In illustration, she recalled the Disney promotion of its animated feature Pocahontas in New York’s Central Park. She was living in New York City at the time. Singer was struck that the Disney film repeated the same fixated themes propagated by media about Native Americans throughout American history: 1) the romanticized, free spirited people of the land who have a special connection with some energy force that allows them to adapt to anything that comes along; 2) the embattled savages who are just waiting to be enlightened and changed; and 3) the revolutionary activists who spend all their time figuring out how to counter-balance all the changed that have been forced on our indigenous peoples.
“The bias of the narrative is that we’re constantly at juxtaposition; we don’t really belong. We lost the war. We are angry. We need to make a stand,” Singer said. “Yes, we are very revolutionary but not in the ways you would think. We have held on and not forgotten where we come from. We have connection to community.”
By making their own films, Singer and other Native American filmmakers have been able to step outside those conventional representations—and outside of the boundaries set for native arts by a White America that sees native peoples as mysterious, decorative and nostalgic.
“In the market place, you see the totem pole, the Navajo woman figure, the mythological figure. Somehow native people cannot be understood because we are still mysterious, still hiding something. This (representation) turns back in on ourselves. Much of this art is non-political and non-creative—safe and decorative. What does that do to a people? We are not allowed to move, to change, to feel and experiment.”
As TV has become for native children “their parent, grandparent, teacher, babysitter and best friend,” children grow up with this twisted idea of what it means to be native. They are hounded with images that reiterate the notion that Native Americans can’t fit into society and are potentially volatile.
Following Singer’s talk, five panelists were asked to respond. Glenn Zaring, Tribal Public Affairs Director, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Manistee, MI, said, “We are tired of being referred to as the Indian problem. Too often, we’re viewed as an anomaly that now happens to have a casino and money. The Native Americans offers solutions. Apply our principles to . . . to the issues we are all having to face. We are not the problem. We are the Solution. We would like to offer that assistance.”
Lisa LaPlante, News Reporter, FOX-17, Grand Rapids, responded, “There is a corporation. What I do makes money. The (editors) are gonna cut, gonna cut, gonna cut. On a national news level, people take shortcuts and regurgitate whatever was fed to them. On a local level were getting better.”
Matthew Wesaw, Tribal Chair, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, Dowagiac, said, “For too many years, we have let other people talk about who we are, what we need and what we want. That’s why we are still a mystery. Now is the time for us to tell our story . . . Without us telling, it will never be told properly . . . Warriors like the doctor (Singer) get the message out.”
David Murray, Reporter, The Grand Rapids Press, responded, “American Indians today are still considered mysterious or hiding something? It wasn’t mysterious to me and it wasn’t hidden. … In my community (growing up) there were people who spoke native languages. They were regular folks like you and me.” Murray also denied the existence of institutional racism having an effect on media based on his practice of not using race as a basis for choosing interview subjects on his assignments.
Jeff Smith, Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy, presented figures from GRIID studies analyzing representations of Native Americans in local news. The studies exemplify how news agencies do indeed engage in systemic racism. “Native Americans are racially profiled, meaning they only appear in stories that are race specific—like Pow Wows or casinos. When there are news stories about the economy, public health issues, the environmental or politics, Native voices are virtually non-existent,” he said. “In the 50 popular films we studied this past year, only one has a native character—Twilight. In that context, the native is seen as savage, succumbing to emotions and economically depressed. The white vampires are cool, calm, economically privileged and don’t give into their emotions. How do we think about this stuff that all of us are consuming and how do we relate to that?”
As corporate media isn’t going to set the record straight anytime soon, Singer’s is the most logical response: she and other Native American filmmakers are making their own media. As she said when concluding her talk, “l create media that connects American Indian people with each other, to reduce the noise, to get back to inherent values and practices that keep people belonging to a community, locally and globally, as full partners in what is the creative economy at this moment in history.”
(This article is re-posted from PR Watch.)
In response to growing public pressure about promoting unhealthy food to kids and contributing to the obesity epidemic, the fast food industry did what every industry that produces a harmful product does: it pledged to voluntarily end the harmful practices that started drawing scrutiny to the industry. Accordingly, in 2006 the Council of Better Business Bureaus launched its Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a voluntary code under which fast food purveyors pledged to promote healthier food choices in their advertising, and use messages hat encourage good nutrition in ads aimed at kids.
As with other voluntary corporate codes, the CFBAI has proven more effective at staving off regulation of the fast food industry than protecting kids from predatory advertising and marketing practices. Since signing onto the Initiative, the fast food industry has found many ways to evade it, and promote unhealthy foods to kids more than ever.
On November 8, 2010 Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity released a study that shows fast food companies have ramped up advertising aimed at kids in recent years, and often employ tricky, point-of-sale marketing practices that undermine good nutrition for kids. Researchers looked at the marketing practices of 12 national fast food chains and nutritional data, like sugar, saturated fat and total calories, for over 3,000 children’s meal combos and 2,781 total menu items. Out of 3,039 possible meal combinations, only 12 met the nutritional standards set by the Institute of Medicine for preschoolers, and only 15 met the criteria for older children.
Targeting Kids More Than Ever
Children as young as two years old are seeing more fast food ads than ever before. Researchers found that in 2009, preschoolers saw 56 percent more ads for Subway, 21 percent more ads for McDonalds and 9 percent more ads for Burger King than they did in 2007. Older kids saw even more fast food ads, and African-American youth were exposed to at least 50 percent more fast food ads than white youth. Fast food companies have also moved beyond television ads in their advertising practices, and now use social media to reach kids. For example, McDonalds has 13 Web sites that get 365,000 unique child visitors between the ages of 2 and 11, and 294,000 unique visits from teens ages 12 to 18 every month. McDonalds starts targeting kids as young as age two with websites like Ronald.com. McDonalds and Burger King have even created sophisticated “advergames” and online “virtual worlds” that engage children, like HappyMeal.com, McWorld.com and ClubBK.com.
Youth Marketing is Effective
Fast food ads work well at getting kids into the restaurants. According to online surveys, 40 percent of kids between the ages of 2 and 11 beg their parents to take them to McDonalds at least once a week. 84 percent of parents report that they give in to their kids’ request at least once a week. While some argue that it is the parent’s job to refuse kids’ pleas for fast food, researchers concluded that it is a poor practice to promote unhealthy products directly to children, and constantly put parents in the position of having to say “no” to their kids. Ideally, restaurants would support parental efforts to encourage kids to eat healthy foods, not undermine those efforts by marketing directly to children.
Tricky Point of Sale Practices
Even though companies like Burger King and McDonalds signed onto the BBB’s voluntary pledge to limit advertising to kids, these companies engage in tricky point-of-sale practices that undermine healthy nutritional practices. For example, even though most fast food restaurants list at least one healthful side dish and beverage on their menus, and even though their ads show healthful food options as side dishes, restaurants’ default practice is to serve French fries as a side dish 86 percent of the time, and sugary drinks at least 55 percent of the time. And instead of eliminating their biggest side dishes and drinks, companies merely rename them. Burger King’s former 42-ounce “King” sized drink is now called a “Large,” their former 32-ounce “Large” size is now called a “medium,” and their former 21-ounce medium-sized drink is now called “small.”
The Yale study confirms, yet again, that when an industry imposes a voluntary code of conduct on itself, it is time for real and effective regulation of harmful corporate behavior. Voluntary codes are smokescreens. They are not designed to protect the public from harmful corporate behavior. They are devised for one reason only: to protect an embattled industry from truly effective regulation of known harmful practices.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
