2007 Antiwar Protests in Denver

This was a video I shot of the Antiwar Protests in Denver this past Saturday on the Fourth Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

By far, this was the most controversial video I've shot. I interviewed a few of the Pro-War protesters who were in attendance, in particular a group that calls themselves the "Gathering of Eagles," but didn't include any footage of their interviews, in large part because their opinions didn't seem very coherent or rational.

Nonetheless, the group was apparently very upset that I didn't include them, and so ended up having a little protest outside the Daily Camera offices to this extent.

It seems that some issues are extremely contentious by their very nature, whether you include some individuals or not.

Community Table Food Program

This is a video I shot of a food distribution program at a church in Boulder for homeless and low-income people.

The challenges of shooting this were two-fold. Some of the people at the program were very adamant about not wanting to be on video. Some were even angry that I approached them, though I didn't start taking pictures of anyone until I had asked their permission.

The second challenge was the audio quality. This was shot in a noisy church basement of tile floors and low ceilings - the makings for a veritable echo-chamber. Nonetheless, by getting close to the subjects, the audio worked well enough to get a fairly good sound recording.

Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP

This is another video I shot entitled "Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP" that I will hopefully have linked to the interactive map in the near future.

One of the reasons I include the car driving sequence at the beginning of each video is that often these trailheads are difficult to find. Some, but not all, of them are found down unmarked and twisting dirt roads. If anyone's ever gotten up bright and early to head up into the back-country and then spent the next hour-and-a-half looking for a trailhead, then they know how frustrating that experience can be.

So hopefully a few shots at the beginning of each video will make it much easier to find some of these trailheads. I shot this Finch Lake video before the Cub Lake video below.

One of the things that's easy to forget when you've been doing something like snowshoeing in the backcountry for a number of years is that information that you take for granted may not be obvious to people who haven't done this sort of thing before. Therefore, in the Cub Lake video below, I tried to include much more "orienting" information such as trail length, elevation gain, overall difficulty, etc. that I didn't include in this video. I also made a few sylistic changes and improvements as well.

Enjoy...

Snowshoeing Cub Lake RMNP

This is a video I made for the Dailycamera.com entitled "Snowshoeing Cub Lake RMNP." At present, I and another person at the Daily Camera are creating a Flash application for a map of Rocky Mountain National Park so that by moving your cursor over different parts of the map, a thumbnail image will appear of the video along with a text-box that explains what the video is about, as well as providing a link to another page that contains text about the trail, including length, elevation gain, trailhead location and elevation, and other relevant information.

In addition to this video, there's also a "Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP" video that I shot and produced (above). The idea is to be able to link a number of these videos together in an intuitive interface.

This is a slideshow I created recently using some photographs I took in New York a couple of years ago. I posted it to Youtube and then embedded it here on blogger.com. I created the slideshow in iPhoto using royalty-free music I got on garageband.com.

Perhaps there's an easier way to do this, but I'm not exactly sure how yet.

The Video Revolution is Arriving

This is a video I recently made for the Dailycamera.com (where I am currently interning) on the 2007 Cross Country Championships recently held here in Boulder at the Flatirons Golf Course.

Video is going to play a HUGE part in the future of on-line media. While it will not completely supplant other forms of information, including print, a picture is in fact often worth a thousand words. Furthermore, if as Bill Gates says (see post below) the internet, television, and computers are all going to morph into one information portal within the next five years, video will undoubtedly play an increasing role in people's busy lives.

The future is almost here. Once a viable business model is connected to internet video (see post below) user-generated content will revolutionize the media landscape. And once that happens, things will never be the same again.

YouTube Posting on "Free Speech Zones"

This is a video I posted on YouTube of what happened when I left a so-called "free speech zone" set up in connection with a Presidentail visit last Fall when George W. Bush was campaigning for Bob Beauprez.

One of the interesting things about this was that only people who were critical of George W. Bush were forced to stand in this "free speech zone." Those who had signs that were supportive of the President, or those who just happened to be in the area but otherwise had no connection with the Presidential visit, were allowed to wander freely outside the free speech zones.

All of this is patently and blatantly illegal. The Secret Service claims that they do not discriminate on the basis of the content of protesters' signs - pro or con. This is a clear falsehood.

One of the reasons that this is such a hot-button topic is that there were wide-spread and numerous violations of protesters' Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly at the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. (See posts below.)

Does this video lend support to the contention that what we'll see in Denver in 2008 for the Democratic National Convention will be a replay of thse kinds of massive Constitutional violations? Watch the video and decide for yourself...

Demonstrations in NY City in 2004 - Parts I and II

This is an article I wrote for the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn about the protests in NYC in 2004:

NEW YORK CITY—The crowd of several thousand that marched down Sixth Avenue past the CBS Building on 52nd Street and the Time Life/CNN Plaza on 50th before stopping in front of the Fox News Building on 48th was loud but
orderly. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Code Pink had organized this “March on the Media” on the evening of September 1 in New York City as a counterpoint to the slickly presented Republican National Convention.

Chants of “Shut the Fox up!” and “Whose media? Our media!” arose from the
multitude as they voiced their loudest disapproval for Bill O’Reilly and his cohorts in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media empire. Standing in the middle of this crowd, I couldn’t help but be struck, though, by the quixotic quality
of the demonstration.

Perhaps the reason it seemed so was the fact that the throng of protestors,
video camera-lances in hand, was so completely dwarfed beside the modern megaliths of the corporate media giants. The only thing these skyscrapers seemed to be missing was the creaking arms of a turning windmill.

This juxtaposition perfectly illustrated the challenges that protesters
and their allies in the alternative media face, especially in our post-
9/11 world of heightened security concerns. Police presence in the city
was extreme, which some viewed as an attempt to limit free speech by
Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg and his allies in the Bush administration.

But the complete lack of mainstream media coverage of the event may
have been even more effective than police barricades in limiting the impact of
their message, demonstrators were quick to point out. They claimed that as a
result of this collusion between government and corporateowned media, a biased view of world events is being force-fed to the American people.

The protestors, though, suggested that their type of grassroots organizing could change the media, but would require new and innovative techniques to succeed. Ultimately, they claimed, which side prevails will depend on the resources and determination each brings to the battle.

Scores of police, some already fully garbed in riot gear, including Plexiglas-visored helmets and wooden truncheons, surrounded the demonstrators. Metal barricades squeezed the protestors into a shoulder-to-shoulder
camaraderie, and police supervisors studiously scanned the crowd with handheld video cameras. Behind them, Secret Service agents with prominent earpieces unsmilingly watched for troublemakers.



Because a permit had been obtained, the protestors were not restricted to a twoby-two marching formation. Rather, half the sidewalk and one lane of the street had been cordoned off for their use. Another lane on the other side of the street had been roped off as well, but not for the protestors. Occasionally, black SUVs with darkly tinted windows would speed by, escorted by police cars and motorcycles, blaring sirens and flashing an array of blue and red lights.

The government functionaries inside gave no indication of awareness of the protestors, though many on the street carried signs and some even wore bright or theatrical costumes.

Mark England explained why he had decided to demonstrate with his daughter, Mariva.

“I think [the mainstream media] is owned by too few people, and too few points of view are represented. So if the guy who owns Fox, if he has captured the audience of three quarters of the world’s population, then that’s a bad deal. He’s pushing one agenda. He doesn’t speak to what I believe at all.”

Behind him, another police-escorted motorcade screamed down the canyon of Sixth Avenue.

Also using these “Republican lanes” was an unending flow of chartered buses, as they transported delegates from posh, midtown hotels. Just a couple blocks away, outside the Sheraton, dozens of cops lined the steps down to the sidewalk, providing a secure door-to-door channel for delegates, many of whom wore distinctly uncomfortable expressions.

Just outside this area, SWAT team members in black combat helmets and thick flak jackets, carrying M-16s with scopes atop, provided a further layer of security. Nearly every delegate had clad him- or herself in a flag of one sort or another—lapel pins, neckties or stars-and-stripes scarves jauntily flung around necks. Once on board each chartered coach, an armed and uniformed police officer occupied the first seat of the first row, and the Republican delegates would be whisked securely away.

At the other end of this route, Madison Square Garden had been transformed into a fortress, and was alternately surrounded by phalanxes of media trucks with satellite dishes and even more cops, concrete barriers and new, metal barricades that rose up to form a ramp-in-reverse, apparently beefy enough to sheer off the undercarriage of even a speeding dumptruck.

The organizers at FAIR had managed to get a permit for a small sound system. In contrast to the bright media lights that surrounded the multimillion-dollar stage inside the convention center, Robert Greenwald, the director and producer of Outfoxed, a documentary exposé about the Fox News Channel, climbed up on a small stepladder. He was greeted by loud cheering from the crowd, who held signs aloft that variously read, “Six Corporate Giants Control Your Media” and “Corporate Media: Unfair and Unbalanced.”

Greenwald soon hit his stride.

“If we continue, through the hard work that you’re doing, we will create the kind of media we want. I’ve worked in the film industry and television for many years. And one thing I can tell you, the sponsors behind these shows are not known for risk taking, they’re not known for their courage. And it’s extraordinary, really extraordinary what a letter or a phone call can do. The right has done it for years. Eric Alterman calls it working the refs. We’ve been late coming to the table, but we’re getting there now.

“And I urge all of you, you’ve got to give us five minutes a day, an hour a week—whatever you have—whether it’s writing a letter, making a phone call, raising hell, getting involved with FCC issues, there’s something for everyone to do!”

The crowd applauded in approval.

The next speaker was Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR, who began by talking about the biased coverage his organization found at Fox News, before turning his guns on General Electric’s NBC.

“I was also the senior producer on the most watched show on MSNBC, which was Phil Donahue’s primetime show. We were given orders in the last months of that show that every time we booked a guest that was anti-war, we had to book two guests that were pro-war.”

Boos from the crowd.

“In one meeting, one producer said that she wanted to book Michael Moore, and she was told if you do that, you have to have three right-wingers for balance. I had considered proposing that they put NoamChomsky on the air.”

Loud applause from the crowd.

“I knew it would be rejected because our studio could not accommodate the 83 rightwingers we would need to be balanced!”

Laughter and cheering.

“Now, if you watched MSNBC after Donahue was fired, if you watched it in the run-up to the war and during the war, you know that no one waved the flag more than MSNBC, not even Fox. And if you’re so busy waving the flag, you don’t have any energy to do what journalists are supposed to do in a free society, which is ask tough questions of the powers-that-be before the bombs start dropping!”

How much of all this, though, would actually get through? How much of what was happening here behind the scenes, unscripted, could reasonably be expected to pass through the filter of the corporate media and into the homes of Mr. and Mrs. America?

The absence of mainstream media cameras provided the answer: Little, if any, in fact would. In addition, the massive police presence reinforced the protestors’ message that free speech was being squeezed into smaller and smaller zones.

Only time will tell whether these protestors’ fervent fight against the giants of corporate media succeed or their message be successfully ignored by the media and restricted by the government.

Until then, Cohen advised the gathered crowd to circumvent the mainstream media by heeding alt-news sources, such as “DemocracyNow!”, Commondreams.org and FAIR’s website.

“The good news is, we now know how to reach millions of people around the corporate media,” he said. “Join the movement that’s restructuring this media, and let’s bring about fundamental change in this country.”