Amy Goodman's "Crime"

Matt Taibbi

Amy Goodman was clearly acting as a reporter at the protest. Moreover, she’s as close to the ideal of what it means to be a journalist as one can get in this business.

 

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

 

And something is happening but you don't know what it is

Do you, Mr. Jones?

 

Bob Dylan

 `

Until yesterday, the award-winning journalist, Amy Goodman, was facing prison time. Her crime? Committing journalism. As was reported on October 15 in The Nation:

 

"Goodman had the audacity to commit this journalism on September 3, when she was in North Dakota covering what she calls “the standoff at Standing Rock”: the months-long protests by thousands of Native Americans against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The $3.8 billion oil pipeline is slated to carry barrel after barrel of Bakken crude through sacred sites and burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and tribe members fear it could pollute the Missouri River, the source not only of their water but of millions of others’, should the pipe ever rupture. Their protests, which began in April and ballooned through the summer months, represent the largest mobilization of Native American activists in more than 40 years—and one of the most vital campaigns for environmental justice in perhaps as long."

 

The original charge against Amy was "trespassing". When it became obvious to the geniuses persecuting her that there was no validity to that, they changed the offence to "riot" - not "inciting a riot", mind you - simply "riot". I'm happy to report that, since then, cooler heads have prevailed - or at the very least, more expedient heads. I suppose the powers-that-be realized that this incident was bound turn into a nasty cause celebre that would ultimately blow up in their faces. A wise move to be sure. But what does that tell you? That this sort of thing is being contemplated in a nation where the First Amendment is supposed to reign supreme is unsettling to say the very least.

Amy Goodman is not the only journalist being harassed. A videographer is facing forty-five years for covering this spectacle. Land of the free indeed.

 

Huntley and Brinkley

The demonizing of journalists is hardly a new phenomenon in this country. It has been going on for a long time. At the GOP convention in the summer of 1964, the extremist crazies who that year took control of the Republican party (and still control it to this very day) turned on the assembled press covering the event with such vehemence, that for a few moments NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley feared for their lives. During the Fabulous Fifties, any reporter with courage was putting his-or-her livelihood (and freedom) at risk if they dared exposed the hypocrisy and corruption behind the communist witch hunts of that era. Even Theodore Roosevelt, one of America's finest chiefs-executive, would contemptuously dismiss the crusading journalists of "the golden age of American journalism" as "muckrakers".

What is happening in the United States in 2016 is very ominous indeed. The plutocratic forces that own this country are setting a precedent of fear and intimidation. The message has been sent and received: Don't you dare fuck with our agenda. It's enough to make any thinking person tremble with fear and loathing to contemplate how bad this situation might get if Donald Trump is elected in three weeks time. Thankfully, that's not ever going to happen. The problem is that Hillary Clinton has yet to prove whose side she is on. I'm not optimistic. Someone tell her to prove me wrong.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

AFTERTHOUGHT:

In a little over a week I'll be shoving off to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to take part in a two-day symposium on the life and career of the legendary, groundbreaking comedian, Lenny Bruce. This is something that is decades overdue. When he died fifty years ago, he believed that he was a failure. A half a century later, an ivy league university in New England - about as far away from Lenny Bruce's Hollywood as is possible to travel in the continental United States - will be paying homage to his art, celebrating his life. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

I'll be writing about the event when it concludes. Look for my report.

YADDAH-YADDAH, WARDEN!!!