The Truth Shall Set Us Free

By Mike and Ramona Byron

Take your garden variety Texas-raised forest ranger hard at work in Alaska, picking up trash and escorting tourists through the woods.  Get him politically awakened by having the Supreme Court override an election and appoint the president of the United States.  Lie to him about why we went to war in Iraq.  Whitewash what is really going on there.

Then just stand by and see what happens.

On Saturday July 30^th Ramona and I attended a conference on “People as Media” at Palomar College.  The event was organized by several North San Diego County and Southwest Riverside County groups that want to address the neutered Mainstream Media’s many failings by morphing themselves into a new media.

The main speaker, Dahr Jamail, grew up in Texas as the grandson of Lebanese Christian immigrants.  He was apolitical until the impeachment of President Clinton, which was followed by the installation of Bush in 2000 by the Supreme Court.  Like many others around the world, Dahr protested the run-up to the Iraq war.  But the war came anyway. 

So how to make a real difference when it seemed that our government had stopped listening to its citizens, and the Mainstream Media had become its propaganda machine? 

Well, Dahr had always liked writing, so he re-invented himself as a journalist on the spot.  In 2003, he quit his job, manufactured his own “Press Badge,” and at his own expense, set off to Iraq to see what was really going on there.

He was in Falluja during the first American assault on that city in May 2004 to report truthfully on what was actually happening, as opposed to the whitewashed corporate press version being transmitted by the embedded “journalists.”

At first, Dahr was only sending his reports to his friends by e-mail.  But via word of mouth and the internet, his journalism took on a life of its own.  Soon Dahr’s website  began receiving more than ONE MILLION hits per day.  As Dahr noted, “People are desperate to get accurate reports as to what’s going on over there.”  British newspapers such as the Scotsman and the Guardian began featuring his reporting.  While seeking the truth primarily for himself, Dahr found himself serving as a real journalist, and people all across the world began to learn the suppressed truths of what was going on in Iraq.

The “People as Media” conference was attended by about 80 local citizens from North San Diego County and Southern Riverside County.  The purpose of the conference was to empower us with the skills needed to gather information about what is happening around us, and communicate it in a factual manner to the general public.  This has been made necessary because in recent years our media has become increasingly consolidated into ever fewer, ever more monolithic corporate hands.  Journalists working in commercial news organizations have found themselves jobless when they have dared to speak unwanted truths to those in power.  Consequently, the American public has become increasingly ignorant of social, political, and economic developments at all levels.   This accelerating consolidation of media control into the hands of unelected but governing corporate elites will soon prove to be fatal to American democracy if not reversed.

Topics covered in the conference included how to successfully call into talk radio, the “art” of freeway blogging (i.e., posting signs), setting up news-oriented web sites, on-line petitioning, and how to make your own video documentaries.  It was inspirational to see how much can be done with a large investment in time and talent, but so little investment in equipment and other start-up costs.

For example, in North County, groups such as the Community Media Access Program (C-MAP) put hard-hitting locally produced documentaries onto public access TV.  A recent documentary by C-MAP covered the grocery workers’ strike and the stores’ lockout of workers in an attempt by the corporations to deliver a death-blow to organized labor.

We can all expect further windows of truth to become available soon, as satellite TV and radio along with broadband internet connections become more widely available. 

Since the media have become instruments of propaganda and misinformation (why do you think that nearly half of all Americans STILL think that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq?), then the people themselves will have to become the new sources of truthful information.  We the people can stand against these forces and speak the truth to power. 

Concerned citizens are taking a stand and are becoming true “points of light” that will turn back the growing darkness in our nation.  The truth shall set us free!