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Tag Archives: Breaking the Set

Historical Archives: Police State Brutality: The Story of Kenneth Harding

20 Mon Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech, Historical Archives

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Abby Martin, Alexa O'Brien (US Day of Rage), Bonnie Faulkner, Breaking the Set, Democrat Party, Dennis Bernstein, Felipe Messina (Media Roots), KPFA, Michael Hudson, Nora Barrows Friedman, Occupy Wall Street, Pacifica Radio, Ralph Nader, RT, UMKC

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—This article was originally published at MediaRoots.org on 27 JAN 2012.  We have tried to archive it here at Lumpenproletariat.org.  Unfortunately, it seems to have been deleted.  Unless MediaRoots have dramatically changed their politics since 2013, when we last spoke with Abby Martin[*], we doubt they have deleted the article.  Unfortunately, we’ve lost contact with MediaRoots since Abby went to work for RT.

We will work to re-establish contact with Abby to recover as many of Messina’s articles for safe archival and preservation at Lumpenproletariat.org.  (Otherwise, we will have to reconstruct—after final exams—a historical report of the brutal killing of Kenneth Harding by SFPD police.  Warning:  Video of Kenneth Harding’s murder, at the very bottom of article, by SFPD in San Francisco’s Bay View Hunter’s Point district is very graphic.)

-Lumpenproletariat

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MEDIA ROOTS—You’ve likely heard of Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran shot in the head by a police tear gas canister at point blank range during the nationwide crackdown on the Occupy Movement. The tragic event transformed him into an international symbol of police brutality, and it continues to be an important story signifying state repression. Yet, you …

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“Press Conference: SFPD killing of Kenneth Harding“

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“Muni Shutdown Kenneth Harding Jr. Vigil – Alana Turner 7/16/12“

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[*] I haven’t spoken with Abby since I left for university (or scarcely any human beings, given the academic isolation of the proverbial academic reading room).

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The Joe Rogan Experience #634: Abby Martin

17 Fri Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech

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Abby Martin, Breaking the Set, Felipe Messina (Media Roots), Joe Rogan, KPFA, Pacifica Radio, Project Censored, RT, Two-Party Dictatorship

The Joe Rogan ExperienceLUMPENPROLETARIAT—As a decades-long listener of free speech radio KPFA (Pacifica Radio, 94.1 FM, Berkeley, CA), one of the most sincere voices I’ve heard on KPFA is that of one Abby Martin.  Abby was one of the few voices we heard in the public realm who made it a point to challenge the USA’s two-party dictatorship as a matter of course.  This impediment to democracy has been of perennial interest to some of us.  Abby, founder of MediaRoots.org, was a contributor to Project Censored on KPFA at the time.  Abby, later, went on to do Breaking the Set on RT, until recent events led to the end of her TV show.

Abby recently spoke with Joe Rogan again on the Joe Rogan Experience (episode #634).  (See videos below.)  Among many other things, Rogan asked Abby about her rise and fall at RT.  In discussing how she came to get a prime-time international TV show on RT, Abby raised the importance of the issue of challenging the USA’s two-party dictatorship.

Abby Martin:  (c. 18:28) “But I think that, when you’re looking at RT—and I wasn’t easily definable because my whole angle was coming out of party lines because I’m so disgusted with both parties.  And I think that that’s why people are so disillusioned because they—[deep breath]—they’re watching the media and they just think that there’s two camps, two parties.  And it’s bullshit.  And both are perpetuating really disastrous policies on the domestic and foreign policy front.  They’re indistinguishable when it comes to war.”

-Messina

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“The Joe Rogan Experience #634:  Abby Martin”

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“The Joe Rogan Experience #529: Abby Martin”

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“The Joe Rogan Experience #381:  Abby Martin”

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[last updated 17 APR 2015 09:51 CDT]

[Thanks to RDM for bringing Abby’s new interview on The Joe Rogan Experience to the attention of Lumpenproletariat.]

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Historical Archives: Messina on Media Roots

17 Fri Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech, Historical Archives

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Abby Martin, Alexa O'Brien (US Day of Rage), Bonnie Faulkner, Breaking the Set, Democrat Party, Dennis Bernstein, Felipe Messina (Media Roots), KPFA, Michael Hudson, Nora Barrows Friedman, Occupy Wall Street, Pacifica Radio, Ralph Nader, RT, UMKC

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—As a decades-long listener of free speech radio KPFA (Pacifica Radio, 94.1, Berkeley, CA), one of the most sincere voices I’ve heard on KPFA is that of one Abby Martin.  The reason I say this, despite the brilliant voices for social justice on KPFA (e.g., Dennis Bernstein, Bonnie Faulkner, Nora Barrows Friedman, et al.), is because Abby Martin was one of the few voices I heard in the public realm who made it a point to challenge the USA’s two-party dictatorship as a matter of course.  Although she used the term “false left-right paradigm” and I preferred Ralph Nader’s term, two-party dictatorship, we both understood like most people, that the Democrat Party is not the party of the working class.  Moreover, we both agreed that there was no reform-from-within solution to the problems of the Democrat Party.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Abby on MediaRoots.org from about 2011 to 2013, when I began studying heterodox and orthodox economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, an economics department, which Dr. Michael Hudson (on KPFA’s Guns and Butter) has called the anti-Chicago School of Economics.  (I intend to cross-post or archive my old articles at Media Roots here at Lumpenproletariat, as time allows.)

I joined the Media Roots team around the time that the Occupy Wall Street movement started spreading nationally and internationally.  So, Media Roots contributed as correspondents in the SF Bay Area covering the Occupy movements for the global RT (TV Network).  A memorable experience was discussing the Occupy Wall Street movement with Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage, one of the five or so original groups, which organised the original Occupy Wall Street, including Take the Square, Antibanks, US Day of Rage, WL Central, and ROAR Magazine.  It was, ultimately, disappointing that the broader Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t champion US Day of Rage’s platform of pursuing a constitutional amendment, which was like today’s tepid Move to Amend campaigning, but on steroids.  The idea is to leave behind our current system of one-dollar-one-vote for the more democratic one-person-one-vote.

O’Brien is still one of my favourite activists because she also has articulated most clearly above all other activist voices today, the problems facing our society.  Despite the weak social ties, which plague us as a society (which O’Brien mentioned in the interview I conducted for Media Roots), and despite the lack of expansive group solidarity, O’Brien went on to do big thangs, including suing Obama, alongside Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and others as well as providing “an extensive archive of the only available transcripts of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning’s closed trial.”

RT, eventually, asked Abby to do a prime-time international news and politics TV show:  Breaking the Set.  Abby kicked ass at RT until, apparently, RT realised that she was too outspoken and posed too much of a PR liability, as Russia’s geopolitical dynamics intensified, particularly in the context of US/NATO imperialism, with the 2014-2015 Russian military intervention in the Ukraine.  So, it seems inevitable that the relationship between Abby Martin and RT would eventually strain to a breaking point.  To her credit, Abby stuck to her principles and gave the world one of the most candid and sincere public affairs TV shows, probably, ever.  Only a Russian international TV network, it would seem, would allow unfettered critique of USA’s domestic and foreign policies on prime-time TV.  The only question would be, whether RT would allow Abby the same freedom of the press when it came time to apply the same sincerity to the Russian government.

Even if Abby hasn’t been an academic expert specialising in any narrow field of political science, political economy, or whatnot—and, which journalists are?—surely, we all agree we’d rather have a sincere person on TV than an embedded journalist, embedded in corporate culture.  (Abby does hold a degree in political science with a minor in Spanish.)  As I mentioned to Abby once, even Amy Goodman’s hallowed presence on Democracy Now! seems to evince Democrat Party apologism.  We know Goodman isn’t the only person on Democracy Now!’s board, as her long-time associate Denis Moynihan once reminded me at a 10 Women Campaign Award ceremony in San Francisco when I approached Amy Goodman about the internecine strife within her network Pacifica and, especially, its parent flagship station, KPFA.  Amy Goodman, who admirably ambushed Bill Clinton during one interview, remained silent when I did the same.  But she is Amy Goodman.  What can we do?  We must take the good with the bad.  At some point, you either play ball or you don’t.  But that’s probably why RT decided to do Abby Martin dirty.  Abby wasn’t taking guff from anybody.

Abby Martin recently spoke with Joe Rogan again on the Joe Rogan Experience (episode #634).  Among many other things, Rogan asked Abby about her rise and fall at RT.[*]  (See video here.)  In the opening minutes, Joe Rogan said, matter-of-factly:  “I’m assuming that everybody who’s friends with you is on some sort of a list.”  What else is new?

-Messina

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[*] I haven’t spoken with Abby since I left for university (or scarcely any human beings, given the academic isolation of the proverbial academic reading room).

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[last updated 17 APR 2015 11:03 CDT]

[Thanks to RDM for bringing Abby’s new interview on The Joe Rogan Experience to the attention of Lumpenproletariat.]

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