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César Chávez Day 2010: Produce your own revolution
Expanded from the 3-14-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 3-16-2010
Barbwire wins second straight Nevada Press Association first-place award
SUING FOR SCHOOLS: Click here to view the new Barbwire show on your desktop
If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions —new power to the people on the public airwaves
The programs were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.
The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.
Thus began what an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.
Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.
You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.
Your contribution will help fund the distribution of the Dec. 6 and Feb. 21 programs as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station.
You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.
Thanks.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew
Barbwire column on the depredations of Charter Communications and the Reno City Council wins 2009 Nevada Press Association first-place award
Past 12 months
Use the search tool you will find at page right at the above link. It will return the 19 newest TV programs. You may also search by date — M-F for the past year save holidays.Click here for on-demand re-runs
from the 2009 legislative sessionBarbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 fileWednesday, March 31, would have been legendary labor leader César Chávez's 83rd birthday. We celebrate his life and legacy that evening at Circus Circus Hotel-Casino with César Chávez Celebration VIII.
Nevada's first César Chávez Day came when he visited Reno on July 15, 1986.Then-Mayor Pete Sferrazza personally presented a proclamation from the city. Annual celebrations have been held since 2003.
This is the first year that there will not be an essay contest conducted in conjunction with the Washoe County School District. I suspect budget cuts lie at the root, a situation I certainly understand. (Remedy below.)
A few days ago, I came up with a new idea for involving students that works well with the non-profit organization that will be the principal beneficiary of this year's event: Sierra Nevada Community Access Television. I served on the organization's founding board 20 years and have been among its most vocal protectors and defenders ever since.
Great Depression Part Deux has hit SNCAT hard, like every other aspect of the economy. As I have noted for the past few weeks, the community TV station needs help with a critical $40,000 challenge grant from the prestigious Community Foundation of Western Nevada which will match public contributions dollar-for-dollar — all tax-deductible. My personal thanks to those who have already anted in.Recent Barbwire Special programs on health care and education would not have been possible without community media.
If you don't think corporate conglomerate TV provides all the news you never knew you needed to know, this is important to you.
To replace the essay contest, what better way to raise a profile for SNCAT fundraising and involve students than a César Chávez video competition?I will make it as simple as anything can get. Nevada students will compete in four categories: elementary, middle, high school and college.
Produce a 60-second public service announcement on any issue you passionately care about. Upload same at your YouTube.com page and send me the URL so that the judges and I may review your work. The decisions of the judges will be final.
We will show the winners at the César Chávez Celebration on the evening of March 31. We will also produce a TV show to air on SNCAT featuring the winners and best runners-up.I know time is short, so anyone who has something already uploaded, even if it's slightly longer that 60 seconds, enter it. Spanish language entries are cool. I'll have some help there. Any other language, I'll need a translation. Winners will get nice prizes, as always.
Time is short but this is going to be a lot of fun.The event will also premier the inaugural César Chávez Silver State Public Service Awards. Nominations are open for for labor organizer of the year, employer of the year, humanitarian of the year and union project of the year. We will also give a human rights champion award.
We are again inviting members of César Chávez's immediate family plus federal, state and local officials.
Doors open at 5:30 with dinner at 7:00 p.m. Contact me for ticket and sponsorship information.
¡Sí se puede!
SHORT SHOTS. I hope the Teabagger caravan scheduled to harass tiny Searchlight, Nevada, this weekend has been canceled.The yahoos who don't know that the Boston Tea Party was perpetrated to protest a tax cut have been scheduled to bring busloads of dingbats to the home town of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. With the serious injuries suffered by the still hospitalized Mrs. Reid in Virginia a few days ago, let's hope that the Reid-haters show some class and call off the big harass.
I can dream, can't I?
THE LUV GUV STRIKES AGAIN. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Gov. Jim the Dim is reaching new lows in employee relations. The state employees association (they are not a union because they have no collective bargaining rights under Nevada law) are circulating a petition for people who "disagree with Gov. Gibbons' proposal to unclassify state employees within the Nevada System of Higher Education."Workers would lose all their rights and become fire-at-will employees who can be discharged for no reason at all, just like at anyone laboring on the greater Nevada plantation. For more info, go to the website of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 4041/AFL-CIO.
The dismantling of Nevada's starving educational system continues.What to do?
Let's call on Sweet Sue.
SUING FOR SCHOOLS. My latest TV program is now available online. Go to the front page of NevadaLabor.com and click on the very obvious link.The Reno-Sparks NAACP and other organizations are seriously reviewing the potential of what is known as an adequacy lawsuit against the state for neglecting its constitutional mandate to provide for education. The program addresses the broad context.
Twenty-seven other jurisdictions have lost similar cases. Research will be linked to the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com.
Be well. Raise hell.______
Andrew Barbano is a 41-year Nevadan, second vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.
Smoking Guns...
Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?
The Dean's List
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006
The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008
The price of a piece / 6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
BARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing
Barbwire 8-14-2005Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund at our PayPal-enabled ReSurge.TV Consumer War Room
Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know
Harper's Magazine; May 2008; page 43
Phillips has authored numerous books on history and politics over the past 40 years. His most recent, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published by Viking on April 15, 2008.NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.
Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate.
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and AustraliaThe Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
Excerpted from the book available below
ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press
SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.
By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)
Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.
Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006
Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
Copyright © 1982-2010
Andrew Barbano
Andrew Barbano is a 41-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as second vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.
Barbwire by Barbano premiered in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in those parts ever since. Tempus fugit.
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