Open Letter to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)

We the undersigned, students and professors of the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism, want to reaffirm our support for the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, its objectives, content and principles. We express our gratitude to all who have made this gathering possible.

However, we direct this letter to express our concern about the public confirmation of the training of Venezuelan groups in civil resistance in the city of Boston in 2005 by the ICNC. Mr. Jack Duvall, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), confirmed this fact for us on February 9, 2010, which we publicly condemn and denounce here.

We know that some destabilizing actions in Latin American countries have received support from organizations originating in and/or financed from the United States. For this reason, we ask that ICNC answer the following questions:

1. Who were the participants in this meeting? How many were present? Where were they from? How were they chosen?
2. If, on any other occasion, the ICNC has given support other organizations in or from Venezuela;
3. Have any of the participants that attended the 2005 Boston meeting attended any other event financed by ICNC? Are any of these participants still related, directly or indirectly, to the ICNC?
4. What was the meeting's content?
5. Who initiated the contact between the Albert Einstein Institute and ICNC?
6. What relationship did the ICNC have with the Albert Einstein Institute in 2005, at the time of this meeting, and what relationship do they have now?
7. What is the relationship between Jack Duvall, Peter Ackerman and James Woolsey?
8. What is the relationship between Freedom House, the Albert Einstein Institute and ICNC?
9. What are the criteria used by ICNC to determine whether a group will receive financing or not?

We respectfully request:

1. That the ICNC respond as quickly as possible to the aforementioned concerns;
2. That the ICNC publicly state its current position concerning the aforementioned training in 2005.

In closing, we express our support for the construction and defense of authentic journalism, free of any professional obligations beyond the economic support that the school has already received, and we publicly denounce any attempt to link us to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and its objectives.

Signers:

Amanda Huerta Morán (Venezuela)
Maylin Alonso (Cuba)
Lourdes Zuazo (Argentina)
Paloma Garcia (Argentina)
Geovani Montalvo (El Salvador)
Sunny Angulo (United States)
Wendy Martinez (Honduras)
Noah Friedman–Rudovsky (United States)
Greg Berger (United States) (Note: I do not adhere to the final paragraph)
Marianne Simons (Brazil)
Marine Lorman (France)
Natalia Viana (Brazil) (Note: I do not adhere to the final paragraph)
Karina Gonzalex (Mexico)
Jesee Freston (Canada)
Ter Garcia (Spain)
Sandra Cuffe (Canada)
Kaelyn Fonde (United States)
Anne Vigna (France)
Charles Hardy (United States)
Omar Vera (Colombia)
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (United States)
Jill Freidberg (United States)

Response from Al Giordano
Founder and director of the School of Authentic Journalism
Publisher of Narco News:

Our publication of this letter does not indicate agreement with it, but, rather, Narco News’ continuing commitment to freedom of expression and a diversity of views.

The letter is not addressed to me nor to Narco News. It is entirely up to those to whom it is addressed to determine if they wish to respond or not.

But since it now appears on our pages, unedited and unabridged, I will offer my own observations on it.

Had this letter not contained the final paragraph – about which two of the signers expressed their non-adherence – which “publicly denounces” something that does not exist (“any attempt to link” the signers to an organization that contributed to the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism), I might have signed the letter, too. But that final paragraph lacks the most basic journalistic standards and ethics that we teach in the School: Mutual respect and tolerance for differing views that are expressed in the School and between all of its invited participants.

There is, of course, a story behind this letter, which provides necessary and important context:

Each of the signers of the letter agreed to participate in the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism with the full knowledge that the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) had donated significant funding and that some of its staff and associates would be professors at the School. This was fully disclosed in the announcements last September of the School, its faculty and application process. Nobody can fairly claim to have been surprised by that fact. All wanted to attend the School with full knowledge that there were professors from that organization who should have been considered equal participants as anyone else.

A majority of the signers, additionally, accepted funding for their airplane tickets to and from Mexico to attend the school that, as they knew in advance, was in part provided by ICNC. Five of the signers contributed $250 apiece toward their room and board at the School (less than half of the actual costs of feeding and lodging them) and the rest enjoyed ten days and nights as guests of the School fully subsidized by funds that in part came from ICNC.

Among those who received their air travel, room, board and other costs fully subsidized were three current correspondents of the media organization TeleSur, the international TV network that is funded by the governments of Venezuela and other left-leaning countries in the region. A total of $2,300 dollars was spent on air travel for the three of them, funding which they happily accepted to attend the school knowing full well that it in part came from ICNC. A TeleSur intern from Washington DC also attended the school as a student, at the urging of that news organization’s Washington correspondent Reed Lindsay (who himself was unable to attend the school as he is reporting from post-earthquake Haiti).

All arrived at the School by Wednesday, February 3 and for the next five days participated in the work groups, plenary sessions and other School events. On Monday, February 8, at a plenary session on “Financing Your Journalism,” a space was expressly created for all participants to comment or ask questions about the financing of the school itself. None of the aforementioned individuals availed themselves of that opportunity. On Tuesday, February 9 and Wednesday, February 10, two separate plenary sessions included presentations by members of ICNC on the topics of the theme of the 2010 School that had been announced last September: Journalism and Civil Resistance.

While the great majority of students and professors demonstrated attentive interest in those presentations, the attitude of the TeleSur employees and some others, as they expressed it to me, was that they didn’t want to listen to anything from ICNC related participants. They demanded a school wide meeting for Thursday, February 11 (two days prior to the scheduled end of the School) which was granted and lasted an inordinate six hours, displacing three plenary sessions and most of the day’s work group hours.

They came to that session with a copy of the above letter in hand, already written, and attempted to impose their own moderator on the group. The first order of business, their chosen moderator, Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, said, would be to vote on whether four ICNC related professors would be expelled from the meeting. This gambit – essentially to conduct a show trial in absentia against other members of the School – met with fierce resistance from other students and professors, particularly from Latin America.

Mercedes Osuna from Chiapas, Mexico, objected to the imposition of a moderator by the group and asked for a different moderator. Friedman-Rudovsky denied being part of the group, which many participants knew not to be true (she had just spent the morning by the poolside of the School campus collaborating in the composition of the above letter in full view of other students and professors). After a long discussion over who should moderate the session, another moderator was chosen.

Oscar Estrada from Tegucigalpa, Honduras then expressed his strong objection to the motion to expel four school participants from the session. The discussion on this point lasted more than an hour. Eventually, a vote was taken: 12 in favor of expulsion, 30 opposed. Another 20 students and professors, unhappy that the work and learning that they came to the School to receive had been displaced by what would evidently be a long unplanned session, had already left the room prior to the vote.

The tone of the TeleSur employees, in particular, was accusatory and strident, despite the fact that they had been granted a session to fully air their viewpoints. Various participants commented on that. Hugo Ramírez, from Bogotá, Colombia, compared their stance to “the intolerance of the ultra right wing of my country.”

In sum, if the plan was to impose a moderator, determine who could speak and who could not, expel invited participants from the session and then pull out their “open letter” and challenge the students and professors to sign it, it was a gambit that failed miserably for its lack of planning or strategy. I thought to myself, had these colleagues paid better attention to the plenary sessions on nonviolent strategies and tactics and their dynamics, they might have succeeded instead of failed. It was as if they were offering an inadvertent class on “How Not to Organize and How Not to Win.”

The final two days of the School were spent getting back to work on the many news stories, web platforms, videos and documentary being produced in the School work groups, two final plenary sessions, a jubilant graduation ceremony and an inspiring closing event at which every participant spoke. During those final 40 hours, the TeleSur contingent remained visibly unhappy that most of the rest of the School’s participants did not share their passion for hijacking the School’s work for something more important to them. Instead of complying with the work they had agreed to do in the School, they spent the final two days huddled among themselves and circulating the above letter, trying – as is their right - to convince each each student and professor to sign.

While I grant the benefit of the doubt that the signers above did so in sincere agreement with the letter, I think it is notable (and laudable) that journalist Natalia Viana of Sao Paulo, Brazil and Greg Berger, a US documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Mexico, qualified their signatures by expressing non-adherence to the final paragraph. And it is also interesting that despite the intensive effort to secure signatures from each student and professor, a majority of School participants declined to sign the letter as written.

Because the School of Authentic Journalism and Narco News believe in providing a platform for a diversity of views, I should point out that nobody will be treated differently merely because they signed or didn’t sign a letter. Our participants are defined by much more than where they stand on a single matter. There are signers of that letter who will be invited back to the school and others who will not, in both cases for reasons beyond the mere signing of a letter. (Likewise, there are people who did not sign the letter who will be invited back, and others of them who will not, also for considerations unrelated to their stance on the letter.) The letter is just that: a letter, an opinion, and all opinions are respected here.

That said, since they seem to be so concerned about denouncing and disassociating instead of the real work of the School, I do not plan, at present, to invite any TeleSur employees or correspondents to future schools, not as professors or as students, unless and until they either resign or are fired from TeleSur, or unless and until TeleSur takes affirmative steps to correct the sabotaging behavior of its correspondents at the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism. Unfortunately but necessarily, that includes my friend and colleague Reed Lindsay, who so strongly recommended the professors and students that attempted, in his absence, to derail the School’s work for what they believed was more important to them. He vouched for those individuals and therefore shares some responsibility for their bizarre authoritarian behaviors.

Colleagues: You might respond to that last statement with some shock. You might ask, “What? Did Giordano just declare a purge of TeleSur correspondents from the J-School?” If that sounds heavy handed, well, it is. And it is also exactly what the TeleSur correspondents and some others tried to do to others during the School: Purge individuals because of their organizational affiliation, appointing themselves in charge of a project that they did not construct, to which they were invitees just the same as any other.

Truth is, I am not going to ban Reed or other TeleSur-related colleagues from future schools. I simply wanted you to think I would do such a thing for the time it took to read the last paragraph, just long enough to remind of what a disgraceful thing the TeleSur correspondents at the J-School attempted to do to others who were invited there. Given what transpired, future invitees to the School from that organization will have to agree in advance to never again attempt to hijack or change the School’s agenda, or declare by fiat which parts of the curriculum should happen or not. And if they can’t agree to that, well, they will have used their own key to lock themselves out. Life is about making choices and living by them.

Just as Ernesto Che Guevara criticized Soviet hegemony over revolutionary movements in Latin America, the hour has arrived to assess, five years since its inception, TeleSur’s role and comportment reporting on the struggles in this hemisphere. As a colleague from Honduras inferred last week, the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism in Mexico was not the first place in which TeleSur correspondents have come in from out of town and attempted to appoint themselves in charge of autonomous struggles and projects. Let this response begin a long overdue critique of TeleSur from below and to the left. Authentic journalists simply should never attempt to instruct or order movements how to conduct themselves. That may not be their intent, but, rather, the result of a dysfunctional organizational model that too closely imitates the very corporate media that authentic journalists challenge daily. But the damage to other struggles and projects is the same, no matter what the intent.

One thing that we have always taught at this School – it was the late Gary Webb who first said so at the 2003 School of Authentic Journalism – is that an Authentic Journalist must always be willing to be fired from his or her job (or internship) to do this work well. My own conclusion is that the TeleSur employees at the School behaved as if they had received a sudden pressure from their news organization to disrupt the School’s work, and acted out of fear and panic. Whether or not TeleSur’s chain of command was involved in creating that impression, I do not know. But the fact remains that they behaved that way and admitted as much to me and to others that they felt they had to proceed as they did in order to protect their careers at TeleSur.

Truth is that state run media has so many of the same vices as corporate media: bureaucracy, intolerance, censorship and abuse of workers and journalists. Narco News has always supported the TeleSur project in spite of its errors and lapses. And when anti-democracy forces of destabilization have attempted to portray the revolutionary projects in Venezuela, Cuba and other nations as stereotypically authoritarian and intolerant of dissent, we have reported, again and again, on how that stereotype is inaccurate, and on so much mitigating information on the good and great accomplishments by those projects, including in the work of community media.

How sad, then, that TeleSur’s correspondents at the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism behaved as if they were poster children for that intolerant and dogmatic stereotype, behaviors that are anti-journalistic, anti-authentic, unworthy of this School and contrary to its teachings.

We of course will always support TeleSur’s freedom to broadcast, and defend it against attacks upon that freedom, but we conclude that it is impossible to teach individuals who feel they have nothing to learn, or think that because they have a paying job with a state-sponsored media project that it makes them more “revolutionary” or precious or important than the other participants in the School of Authentic Journalism.

That said, the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism – despite that one unpleasant imposition by a few upon the many – was clearly a bigger success than any we have done before. At the closing session, participants almost universally indicated their desire to return for the next one, including those who, two days prior, may have forfeited any possibility of that invitation arriving again by trying to turn the School into a Kafkaesque forum for a show trial in absentia. That they failed to do so was the final lesson we could offer them - but it is for them to choose whether they learn from it or not.

Most of the participants in the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism move forward now – faster, better and more coherent than before, with international relationships and friendships constructed and deepened – to continue the daily hard work of authentic journalism. And in the coming days and weeks, as we edit and complete the many news stories, videos and documentary produced during these inspiring ten days on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, kind reader, you will be able to read, see and hear what the real work of the School was, is and always will be about.

Note: Below is a statement from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in reply to the "open letter" above, received on February 27, 2010, and posted here in full:

Statement by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

This statement is our reply to an open letter signed by 22 of the 69 participants in the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism, conducted in Mexico from February 3 to 13, 2010 and supported in part by ICNC. Two of our staff members, two of our academic advisors, two of our senior advisors, and one of our academic collaborators were part of the faculty of the School.

The open letter is concerned mainly with a workshop that was conducted in Boston in 2005 by the Albert Einstein Institution. The letter begins with an incorrect statement, that in remarks at the School, Jack DuVall confirmed ICNC’s “training of Venezuelan groups in civil resistance” at that workshop. In fact, Mr. DuVall said that ICNC’s role in that workshop was limited to supporting part of its costs, and that it was conducted for one group by the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI).

The letter goes on to list nine questions relating to (a) the workshop’s participants, (b) the workshop’s content, (c) the criteria used by ICNC in determining whether to support workshops or programs, and (d) institutional relationships of ICNC and personal relationships of Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. All but one of these questions were posed to Mr. DuVall at a meeting at the School on February 11, and he answered them. Now restated in the open letter, these questions are covered again in this reply, in part with information about that workshop which was not available at the February 11 meeting, as well as other information that responds to the open letter as a whole.

About ICNC

The open letter appears to question the propriety of ICNC’s role in the Boston workshop, and the denunciation in the last paragraph indirectly challenges the value and probity of what our Center does.

ICNC is organized under U.S. law as a private educational operating foundation, and our chartered mission is to develop and disseminate knowledge related to nonviolent conflict and its practice, throughout the world – to citizens and activists campaigning for rights and justice, to educators and students at all levels, to those who analyze and recommend public policies, and to the media. ICNC does not tell nonviolent organizers or activists what their political or other goals should be, it does tell not them what strategies they should adopt or what tactics they should employ, it does not finance their operations, and it does not undertake programs for or accept funding from any government. ICNC’s work is limited to preparing and providing generic information about the ideas, history, cases and practices that are germane to the use of civil resistance. We believe that the knowledge of how ordinary people can organize, mobilize and act forcefully on behalf of rights, justice and democracy should be made universally accessible.

The international legal basis of ICNC’s work is covered by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This right authorizes anyone to receive information from an educational organization such as ICNC or the School of Authentic Journalism, and it protects our right to furnish that information or support another organization in doing so. So the legitimacy of what ICNC does -- in conducting or supporting workshops on civil resistance as well as assisting with educational programs like the School of Authentic Journalism – should not be in question. For further information about ICNC, please see http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org

Questions related to participants in the Boston workshop

In the past eight years, ICNC has been asked by more than 20 organizations to conduct or support workshops on nonviolent conflict and civil resistance for organizers, activists and educators. Workshops have been conducted or supported only in response to contacts from people seeking rights or justice and committed to using nonviolent methods. The request received by ICNC to support the Albert Einstein workshop in March 2005 was one of many requests in that period and our response was not part of any preconceived plan or intention to train people from a particular country.

Since its inception ICNC has strictly followed publicly announced operating guidelines. One of those guidelines states: “ICNC observes the right to privacy of those who contact it, for the protection of people who may face repression or intimidation for exercising their rights. Accordingly, ICNC abides by requests for confidentiality from individuals who communicate with it.” Since the meeting on February 11, we have confirmed that the Venezuelan organizer who sought the AEI workshop and then initiated contact with ICNC about supporting it had requested confidentiality on behalf of those who were to participate in the workshop. Although to date ICNC has not been given a list of the names of participants, we would not release those names or characterize those who were present if we were given the list, because that would violate our pledge of confidentiality.

We would also never substitute our judgment about the safety of workshop participants for their decision about the need for confidentiality, because only they could properly estimate the risks they would be incurring. However we would have had reason to be generally concerned for the safety of organizers and activists seeking information on civil resistance during that time. In Iran, the Maldive Islands, Palestine and Zimbabwe, several individuals who attended workshops supported by ICNC were arrested, detained, or jailed and in one case tortured.

Rulers who suppress the people’s rights don’t seem to doubt the value of learning about civil resistance, and those who don’t condone or engage in repression should never be alarmed about its teaching.

Question related to content of the Boston workshop

In February 2005 ICNC advised AEI that its support for the workshop in question would be to cover teaching on four substantive topics about planning and organizing which AEI intended to include in the workshop. These topics were part of standard curricula regarding strategic nonviolent action, in wide use at that time:

Vision of Tomorrow

The “vision of tomorrow” represents the ideas and goals for a better society that activists and organizers want to achieve. It should be the cornerstone of a strategic plan for nonviolent action, and it has to be developed from listening to the people whom the organizers represent and wish to mobilize. The goals of a campaign or movement have to be concrete and achievable, but they also have to reflect the aspirations of the people as a whole.

Theory, Sources of Power and Pillars of Support

Nonviolent action is intended to shift power away from those causing injustice or abuses of rights. Learning about effective nonviolent action therefore requires an understanding of the basis of political power, which is pluralistic, i.e. it is held and exercised by institutions and groups in a society as well as by the government. Moreover, the legitimacy and sustainability of power depend on the consent and obedience of the people. Citizens acting through a campaign or movement withdraw that consent by forcefully resisting the government, occupier or other authority which is responsible for injustice or denying rights. Resistance can lessen the loyalty of those who enforce or support the system. In other words, civil resistance is an exercise of “people power” which diminishes the ability of established power-holders to maintain oppression.

Power Graph

This is a graphic tool that enables students to display the relative power held by groups and institutions that support rulers or those maintaining injustice or oppression, and it also shows how that power changes over time. The tool is helpful in identifying which groups or pillars of support are more likely to be swayed by the tactics and message of the campaign or movement.

Strategic Estimate

The “strategic estimate” is an analytical tool that can be used to shape the actions of a campaign or movement. It includes a statement of the mission, the practical situation faced in the nonviolent conflict (in terms of politics, telecommunications, transportation, resources and other factors), an analysis of possible courses of action available to the campaign or movement, an analysis of the courses of action available to the opponent, a comparison of the movement’s courses of action and those of the opponent, and a statement of the decision about the strategy to be adopted. As presented in a workshop, the “strategic estimate” is briefed and discussed as a generic planning tool. Those involved in nonviolent action can then later customize and adapt it to their own circumstances.

The above-described topics were four of the standard modules in the type of workshop that was supported by ICNC at that time and provided to thousands of nonviolent organizers and activists all over the world.

Question about criteria for supporting organizations

The open letter asked what criteria are used by ICNC “to determine whether a group will receive financing or not.” Since ICNC does not provide financing to groups that participate in workshops or that engage in resistance, we assume that question refers to support for organizations that conduct workshops or undertake educational programs such as the School of Authentic Journalism.

As Mr. DuVall explained at the February 11 meeting, ICNC collaborates with nonprofit organizations and educational institutions to transfer knowledge about civil resistance to organizers and activists, educators, the international policy community, and the media. The criteria for evaluating possible collaborations include the following: (a) Will the program or event teach that knowledge in ways that expand the global scope and diversity of those who understand civil resistance?, (b) Will the program stimulate participants to want to help teach and redistribute the knowledge?, (c) Could the discussion among teachers and participants yield new insights about some aspect of civil resistance and its context (as in citizen or authentic journalists learning how to cover political or social movements in innovative ways)?, (d) Can the organization deliver on its plan to teach or communicate this information?, and (e) Will the program help us improve the pedagogy of teaching?

Questions about institutional and personal relationships

ICNC does not maintain ongoing operational relationships with any organizations. Its work with organizations is limited to fixed-term educational or field-learning events or programs, and at present all such programs are with educational institutions, producers of multimedia materials or organizations providing language translation services.

As for personal relationships, we know of no foundation or nonprofit organization that would publicly detail information on the personal relationships of its officers or advisors, especially when there is no evidence that such relationships have had any effect on the organization’s activities. At the February 11 meeting, when presented with claims of supposed ties to one person who had been with the CIA, Mr. DuVall reiterated what ICNC and its advisors have said in response to such claims for several years, which is that ICNC has had no contacts or dealings with the CIA.

The belief that ICNC is conniving with people who have been associated with other organizations viewed as nefarious relies on the further belief that there can be guilt by indirect association. These beliefs are encouraged by those who wish to discredit the effort to teach civil resistance to people from various countries. For example, one blogger who defends the Zimbabwean dictator Roberto Mugabe has recycled a number of untrue claims about supposed ICNC ties to the U.S. government, because ICNC supported workshops attended by activists for rights in that country. Since it first began to appear about four years ago, disinformation directed at ICNC has sometimes been defamatory, and none of it is based on actual evidence.

Specific claims about these supposed guilt-by-association relationships have been answered elsewhere in numerous postings and articles on ICNC’s own web site and on many other web sites and blogs. Two of the more comprehensive refutations of these charges can be found in these two articles:

“The Cooties Effect,” Foreign Policy in Focus, Nov. 3, 2008:

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_cooties_effect

“False Accusations and Ad Hominem attacks Hurt Venezuela Solidarity Movement”, Venezueanalysis.com, Aug. 28, 2008:

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3759

Conclusion

The open letter’s preoccupation with the Boston 2005 workshop – only one of more than a hundred ICNC programs and activities in the past eight years – may reflect the fact that it was the only ICNC-supported workshop attended by a group of Venezuelans.

We share and fully endorse the concern of many Latin Americans that they should develop their societies and manage their politics without any external interference. Fortunately, effective civil resistance is possible only if people on the streets, the factory floors and in the neighborhoods of a society choose to join campaigns or movements originated locally. Outsiders are incapable of organizing movements that propel major political or social changes, because they cannot fully understand the grievances and aspirations of the people. The most that outside organizations can do is to help teach people about how civil resistance has been used effectively in the past and elsewhere in the world, and that is what ICNC does.

In the case of Venezuela, it has been argued that because it is a democracy, giving workshops to people interested in civil resistance necessarily represents “destabilization” or aims at anti-democratic regime change. This kind of claim was made by some of the signers of the open letter at the meeting on February 11. That claim is not true because nonviolent resistance is used every day by citizens and civic groups in dozens of democracies around the world – through tactics such as strikes, protests, boycotts and civil disobedience -- to put pressure on elected governments in order to hold them accountable for abuses of power or to press for changes in various policies. There is no functional difference between ICNC’s support of the Boston 2005 workshop and its support of workshops for people in a number of democracies, such as activists campaigning for rights in Indonesia, youth organizers in Europe, or immigrant rights organizers and anti-war activists in the U.S.

One fair test of the value of an organization’s programs is how participants evaluate their experience. Here are comments from participants about the Fletcher Summer Institute on the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (FSI), held annually at Tufts University for the past four years in collaboration with ICNC:

“…balanced, comprehensive and extremely professional.”

“…wonderful atmosphere, great spirit of the staff, lecturers and participants – a very friendly seminar.”

“It was fantastic!”

And this from Imoh Colins of the Centre for Human Development and Social Transformation, in Nigeria:

“Learning about ICNC, using their materials, and participating in their educational events has opened a vista of opportunities on the benefits of civic power and nonviolent action…Collaboration with ICNC has been of immense benefit to the people I work with in the Niger Delta. We now understand that we have a choice of taking action or remaining silent. Our situation in the Niger Delta revolves around injustice, bad governance, environmental degradation and lack of development and opportunities for members of our community. Nonviolent action is about taking positive steps to change unjust situations.”

Each of our staff and advisors who participated in the School of Authentic Journalism had many conversations with people who said they appreciated the perspectives, information and experience which ICNC-related people brought to the proceedings. Our staff and advisors have also said that they learned a great deal from the School’s other faculty and participants about the practice and possibilities of authentic journalism.

ICNC decided to accept Al Giordano’s proposal to support the School of Authentic Journalism and to contribute content and bring faculty related to civil resistance because we shared his confidence that new young journalists using digital technology are the wave of the future in creating fair, honest, rigorous, high-quality media coverage that political and social movements around the world so desperately deserve. The mainstream media have largely failed to provide that coverage, and that in itself is an injustice. To right that wrong is what Al Giordano wants to do, and we share his vision.