 |
 Barbwire Archives |
Today we march with Chávez
Andrew Barbano guest editorial / Reno Gazette-Journal 3-31-2010
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 airwavesThe program premiers 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 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 fileToday's turbocharged and often acrimonious political environment may be 40 years removed from the heyday of César Chávez, but he would know how to deal with it: calmly, non-violently and humbly.
"For most of his life, César Estrada Chávez chose to live penniless and without property, devoting everything he had, including his frail health, to the UFW (United Farm Workers Union)," Peter Matthiessen wrote in The New Yorker.
The good fight continues. The Texas school board has recently attempted to wipe Chávez, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and even President Thomas Jefferson from history textbooks.
All of them teach us important lessons.All used their considerable communication skills to organize citizens.
They continue to show us how to fight for a fair shake for the little guy, which makes them dangerous men to this very day.
They moved mountains non-violently, a lesson we apparently must re-learn every few weeks or so.
"A strong believer in the principles of nonviolence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., César effectively employed peaceful tactics such as fasts, boycotts, strikes and pilgrimages." In 1968, he fasted for 25 days to affirm his personal commitment and that of the farm labor movement to non-violence.
"He fasted again for 25 days in 1972, and in 1988, at the age of 61, he endured a 36-day 'Fast for Life' to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children," according to the Chávez Foundation website.
César Chávez Day will be celebrated statewide in Nevada for the first time this Wednesday evening on what would have been his 83rd birthday.The César Chávez Silver State Public Service Awards will be presented at Circus Circus in Reno.
A southern Nevada celebration will be held at Big League Field of Dreams in Las Vegas.
The non-profit beneficiary of the Reno event is Sierra Nevada Community Access Television where SNCAT board member Elvira Diaz is producing a series on Nevadans of different ethnic groups uplifting each other locally and as far away as Africa.
The events will be true snapshots of Nevada and America as people of all colors, ethnicities, incomes and languages come together to celebrate their potential to create a better future.On March 10, 1968, Robert Kennedy traveled to Delano, Calif, to attend César Chávez when he broke his fast for nonviolence.
Sen. Kennedy told Chávez's farm workers "when your children and grandchildren take their place in America, going to high school and college and taking good jobs at good pay — when you look at them, you will say, 'I did this. I was there, at the point of difficulty and danger'. And though you may be old and bent from many years of labor, no man will stand taller than you when you say, 'I marched with César'."
We march again with César on March 31.
¡Sí se puede!
CARSON CITY Charter Ch. 210
Health Care 3/22-3/27, 3/29-4/3
Suing for Schools 4/5-4/10
5:30 p.m. Mondays
7:30 p.m. Wednesdays
8:00 a.m. Thursdays
8:00 p.m. Saturdays
RELEVANT RERUNS. The two latest Barbwire TV specials are now rerunning regionally as well as down in Gomorrah South.
On Carson City Charter Channel 210, the health care show runs the week of March 29 and Suing for Schools airs the week of April 5.
The hourlong programs repeat at 5:30 p.m. Mondays, 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 8:00 a.m. Thursdays and 8:00 p.m. Saturdays.
SNCAT is also rerunning them on Sparks-Washoe-Reno Charter digital channels 16 and 216 and hi-def 80-295. Check SNCAT.org for times.
You may also view them anytime on your computer desktop via the links in the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com.
Be well. Raise hell.
______
Andrew Barbano is a 41-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, second vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, 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...
From Sam Shad's weekly e-mailed program schedule
3-27-2010"Armageddon has not ensued; they are not in war in the valley of Megiddo in Northern Israel. No one's been raptured up, I don't feel any earthquake, and life seems to be going on pretty well. — Andrew Barbano, publisher of NevadaLabor.com, on the passing and signing of the Obama health care legislation. Nevada Newsmakers, Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
Shad editor's note: Megiddo — an important archeological site of the Israelite kingdom, and location of many battle scenes, according to Jacqueline Schaalje, Jewish Magazine.
Barbano editor's note: Megiddo is where the final battle between good and evil known as Armageddon is prophesied to take place.
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.
Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory
Comments and suggestions appreciated. Sign up for news and bulletins