“We Are Optimistic As We Face a Daunting Task”

A Letter from Rosario, Argentina

By Romina Trincheri
2004 Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholar

September 23, 2004

Dear Reader,

Making the decision to build real alternatives to the dominant mass media and their logic of so-called “globalization” is no easy task in any part of the world.

Romina Trincheri

This task becomes more difficult when one is not merely challenging, with words and with actions, the depraved “war on drugs,” but challenging also how we communicate (or keep quiet) about it. And it gets even more complicated with the goal of creating a giant network that can, working from many distinct places, reveal something of the daily struggles this planet’s peoples wage around the issue.

Nevertheless, we are really optimists. We are optimistic in our concrete actions, in the ideas that we have brought into being, with the strength many of us put into our projects with body and soul. We are positioning ourselves to build alternatives, alternatives that cross the spaces that already exist and those that we can imagine. We are building with our words, that they multiply, bringing together voices and images that take one closer, telling stories that disturb us, but also make us feel as part of a movement, that wake us up and get us involved.

Just a month ago we made the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism 2004 possible. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, we shouted to the world, “coca is not cocaine,” “no to the war against the poor,” “no to wretched journalism that takes only five-minute decontextualized soundbytes from the infinite existent realities of this world.” It is in this way that the voices of the coca growers of the Chapare are today crossing the virtual bridges we have build between us. We say “no” as we build, organize, and search for new ways of being.

You can say “yes” by donating, online, to the Fund for Authentic Journalism, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or, by sending a check today to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 71051
Madison Heights, MI 48071

In this search we need the commitment and support of all those who wish to go on, to introduce many “yeses,” yeses that strengthen us, identify us, and give us something in common. We say yes to Authentic Journalism, as we try to build it every day.

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

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