This is a walking vlog entry that I recorded last week in Washington, DC. No very citizen-reporter-esque point to it, beyond sharing some thoughts and images.
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Author Archives: bicyclemark
Bicyclemark on Off The Hook
Click here to listen to me as part of the latest episode of Off The Hook which normally airs on WBAI 99.5 in New York (or the internet). I’ve been listening to Off the Hook for more than 10 years, no matter what country I’m in or what is going on, I always have OTH on my mp3 player. Thankfully in the last year I finally met some of the boys from 2600 and last night I went up to the studios in lower manhattan and sat in as one of the many guests. It was a pleasure to see the studio and put a face to so many of those names at the station.
I digress, follow the link, and give it a listen. Its not earth shattering, but I had a fantastic time.
Happy Birthday Beeb
The BBC turns 75 today.
Why is that important?
Because in this world where everything can be privatized and no matter where you go there are commercials in your face trying to convince you to buy something, there is an alternative way to have a news channel. It is called public service, and back in 1922 some smart people in the United Kingdom realized why this would be valuable.
And while I know lots of Brits who will complain about the BBC. I also know that those same Brits don’t want to lose their public service broadcaster. They don’t want their news laced with wall-to-wall advertizing. The BBC remains a model for what mainstream media COULD be like in the world, if certain world leaders and citizens were brave enough and resourceful enough to start their own BBC’s, instead of holding telethons or hoping that some mega-media corporation will be interested in reporting the news.
Happy birthday BBC. You may be mainstream, but you serve the world… and I salute you for it!
Prison Life In Ohio
On my way back from Washington DC I was listening to a recent edition of Off the Wall, one of the two radio programs / podcasts that 2600 produces. The program featured an interview with a friend of Emmanuel and 2600 who is currently incarcerated at an Ohio state penitentiary. Besides the alarming story of how he found himself in such a place for 6 months for doing very little besides being at the wrong place at the wrong time and then misreading an order to “not leave the county” as “do not leave the country”, even more eye opening is his experience in prison.
I highly recommend listening to this episode of Off the Wall, Emmanuel does a good job asking questions and bearing with the difficulties of just talking on the phone with someone in prison, and Lurid – the friend – gives a vivid picture of what is a violent and terrible place that isn’t doing much in the way of rehabilitation as the prison system once was supposed to.
Another Journalist Dies
Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi. You’ve never heard me mention that name before. I’ve never written the name before. Yet Ali was a colleague of mine. He was someone who participated as a correspondent for one of the greatest independent news reporting projects today: Alive in Baghdad.
Like everyone who works for AiB, he reported from Iraq about the reality of people’s lives there and what they were living through under a foreign occupation, being subject to all sorts of terrible acts by their own government, the US military, or the various other types of criminals one finds in Iraq. As an independent project, they receive no funds and do what they do at great personal risk as every jounalist knows full well that if they try to expose injustice and report about war crimes that they will often be targeted by the military.
Ali was killed yesterday. Reports say it was 31 bullets from the Iraqi national guard. The national guard that was trained by the US military. The national guard that is supposed to be for the good of the people, to protect freedom or whatever nationalist slogan they’ve adopted lately.
Ali’s murder is a tragedy to add on to this neverending list of tragedies. Perpetrated while the whole world COULD be watching, but lets be honest, most of the world isn’t watching, they’re probably Christmas shopping.
This post is to offer my heartfelt condolesces to a colleague that probably did not know I existed or how much his work meant to me. This post is also to renew my pledge as an independent internet based journalist and podcaster; I will not forget the importance of his work… and if I may be so bold as to compare… of our work… I will remember Ali.
Homeless America
On my way down the street in one of Washington DC’s hippest neighborhoods, I look at all the houses and the people, in search of what I can say about this place at this point in history. I ride the metro here and there, out to the lovely suburbs, and I wonder if this region represents the United States in a small scale. Some friends and I walk into a local liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, and we have a brief exchange with various homeless people out front, and step over the passed out man on the floor of the shop before paying the cashier through a bullet proof glass window. Yet we walk down the street and see beautiful homes, people walk their dogs and say hi to you sometimes. Behind the cast-iron bars on the windows and doors, there are families, college kids, artists, and people of all walks of life.
Does DC teach us something about what the United States is all about? Or is it an anomaly of a city that doesn’t even have a state?
One thing deserving of more attention, in this city and beyond, is the amount of people living on the streets. The Los Angeles Homeless Coalition says that 3.5 million Americans will be homeless in a given year. 3.5 million. On the streets. In a shelter only in the rarest of cases. They also say 1 in every 5 suffer from a severe mental illness, no where is that more apparent then in our nations capital. Much like the shelters that are nonexistent or inadequate, so too are the public mental health institutions, places where people can go to get treatment and off the streets. People in DC tell me about them. They have names for them “stabby dancer” for the guy who would dance around and occasionally stab people with a pen knife. “Blanket guy” for the man wrapped in a blanket who you see on your way down the street each morning. They notice them, yet in many ways, these people are not at all noticed. Ignored and deemed invisible by their community and by their government… both of which seem to hope they’ll simply disappear.