Rochester Indymedia has resolved to witness Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearings and trial, first-hand, after observing an ongoing pattern of sloppy and inaccurate reporting of the case by the local corporate media. With the help of a journalist from Boston Indymedia, who was also present on July 1st in Judge Joseph Valentino's courtroom for his rulings, Rochester Indymedia began to notice other disturbingly oppressive patterns developing in Rivera's case, enacted both in the courtroom and in the ongoing corporate media coverage.

Additional Information: A Child in Chains: A reportback from Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearing | Media Review of Last Month's Pretrial Hearing | Digging for Truth in the Tyquan Rivera Case | Let’s Not Retreat into Cocoons of Expedient Simplicity and Pretentiousness

Audio: Eye-witness e-mail account of police brutality before Tyquan Rivera allegedly shot into police as read on WDKX on February 4th, 2009

Related: AARM Holds Second Event on the Media and Racism | Racism and the Media Community Discussion a Success | Facts about Juvenile Injustice | Activists Against Racism Movement

The Peoria Journal Star owes a long overdue public apology to the late Mark Clark, and especially to his remaining family members.

Peorian Mark Clark, then 22, was murdered by Chicago police authorities during the infamous predawn raid on December 4, 1969 at a West Side apartment where he and a group of fellow Black Panthers were sleeping. The renowned and charismatic Panther Fred Hampton, age 21, also was killed by police, shot point blank in the head while still on his mattress.

The incident became a landmark event in the urban civil rights movement with both Clark and Hampton considered martyrs to the causes of worldwide black liberation and the revolutionary human rights struggle. According to published newspaper reports, 14 police officers assigned to the office of then Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan (who died just last week, on June 9, at age 88) stormed the apartment at 2337 W. Monroe St. occupied by seven Black Panthers in a 4:40 a.m. raid.

A summary of four recent protests along with answers to two questions

Numerous protests have taken place locally in the past few weeks. The bad guys who provoke these protests are obviously working overtime to arouse such dissatisfaction in the American people.

As many are beginning to notice, the number of deaths attributed to the swine flu in Mexico has been greatly exaggerated. The first sign that something was amiss should have been the absence of information on the identities of the deceased. Missing were the normally present stories on the tragic lives of the victims. The second sign that something was amiss should have been the impressively small number of attributed deaths outside of Mexico. Despite all the hype, we are now finding out that this strain of swine flu is largely benign. How could such a small story have enveloped the world and caused global panic? The only real disaster has been memetic. The virus that threatens us is not a physical virus, but a memetic virus: the false rumor of a pandemic. Read More | Related: WHO RAISES PANDEMIC THREAT LEVEL

Publisher Brian Tierney claims that it is important that he and his group maintain control of the Inky because they represent a local interest. But he represents a local special interest, and certainly not local majority interest. Thus he has pushed the paper to the right on issues well beyond the local but impinging on the city in negative ways.

In the case of Ward Churchill vs. CU Boulder, the jury ruled in favor of American Indian scholar and activist Ward Churchill on all accounts. CU Boulder administration, right wing pundits and much of the mainstream press is fuming as a result.

You'll find many articles regretably conceding that yes indeed the firing of Ward Churchill was fueled not by academic misconduct, but by his controversial essay On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. The jury agreed to all three points of the prosecution: that CU used Churchill's opinions and words to terminate him, that the termination harmed Churchill, and that had it not been for the essay he had written (as opposed to the allegations of academic misconduct) that Churchill would still be teaching at the University of Colorado.

Still, quickly looking at the headlines from major news outlets and the story continues to be smearing Churchill, rather than recognizing that a university joined forces with conservative politicians to lead a witchhunt against a teacher for their political beliefs. read more | Ward Churchhill Solidarity Network

There is also the matter of principle: That is, whether there can be said to be a “rule of law” when high level but serious violators of law are beyond prosecution. Barry Bonds must be pursued because he allegedly may have lied to a grand jury on his use of steroids, but Bush-Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld-Powell lied many times on issues involving mass killing and violations of domestic and international law.

Community television can help fill the void left by a collapsing media system. But the most prevalent form -- local public access stations (or PEG channels) -- is under attack by the likes of AT&T and Comcast, which are trying to bury community stations on their networks and make them difficult to find. You Can Help: Protect Community Television.

The deadline to comment at the FCC expires in less than 36 hours [April 1st]. Please make sure that the commission hears from the public about the importance of local media. Click here to file your comment. | freepress.net

Last week, National Public Radio featured a discussion on First Lady Michelle Obama. The First Lady received her degree from Princeton and her law degree from Harvard. The host made sure to mention this. But the tease was Michelle Obama’s shoulders. She exposed her shoulders at her husband’s first State of the Union address! The First Lady has been out and about to schools in Washington D.C. reading to children - said in the parentheses, again. But those shoulders!

I thought Fuel was very well-made, important, and informative--there's a lot to absorb. I don't agree with every point of view expressed in the film, but I realize the movie has to communicate to diverse people. . . . Still, the movie features a lot of provocative ideas like vertical farms (skyscraper-like farms that would exist in the middle of cities and other places where space is scarce), and there is some great historical information. For example, details of Rudolf Diesel's sudden and very suspicious death is discussed as well as the long and insidious history of Standard Oil (which was broken up 100 years ago but is now reunited as Exxon-Mobil). Also, a compelling case is made that Prohibition was really about stopping a car that Ford put out that ran on ethanol. As soon as Ford gave up on this car, Prohibition was lifted.

. . . I was glad to see depictions of monorails in the film (though they're never discussed). I think they could be a solution to some of our problems (at least until our population crisis is dealt with--if it is ever dealt with), as they have been in other countries for a century. . . .

Article: "Fuel" (review) by RP

Seattlites in the University District weigh in on the possibility of the PI closing and Seattle becoming a one-newspaper town. WATCH VIDEO | seattlepi.com

It's everywhere you look and in every speech you listen to. Every time a politician or businessmen talks about the recession, an almost in-synch, repetitive mantra can be heard: "Shared sacrifice, equality of sacrifice, hard choices." Oh my.

There must be something to it, since EVERYBODY seems to be regurgitating the phrase in harmony.

With laudable exceptions, the myopic mainstream replied to the occupations in The New School and NYU in December and February, respectively, with scorn and dismissal. It is necessary to clear the air of these typical pollutants, but it is also crucial to advance, just as in many ways the NYU occupation amplified the empowering echoes of the earlier one in The New School. The indifferent, the doubters, the seated radicals, the contented liberals, must be cast aside as we fearlessly charge for the unattainable horizon, revealing evermore humane, free, terrains of struggle.