One Month from the Atenco Atrocities and the Zapatista “Red Alert,” Narco News is Working Harder than Ever

New DVD from the Other Journalism, “Delegate Zero in Yucatán and Quintana Roo,” Now Shipping for Narco News Supporters

By Dan Feder
Managing Editor, Narco News

June 6, 2006

Dear Reader:

Just over a month has passed since the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared itself on Red Alert and Insurgent Subcomandante suspended his planned 6-month tour of the Mexican Republic — a tour that, thanks to your support, Narco News had been covering, in six languages, like no other newspaper, television or radio program. The tour remains on hold and Marcos in Mexico City until, the masked rebel spokesman says, every prisoner taken during the bloody police riots of May 3 and 4 in the towns of Atenco and Texcoco is released.

But this break from Delegate Zero’s relentless travels has not meant any kind of vacation for your correspondents. Just take a look at the unusually large volume of reports the Other Journalism with the Other Campaign has done since May 3, documenting human rights abuses, illegal arrests, tortures and rapes, and you will see that the “red alert” has brought us more work, not less:

http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo

When he first set off in January from the Zapatista base communities in Chiapas, the EZLN announced that Marcos would visit each of Mexico’s 31 states (plus the Federal District of Mexico City). His mission was to listen to the people and begin to build an Other Campaign that would reject the electoral politics on which the country’s media are now so transfixed, with the July 2 presidential elections just around the corner. With all the very real possibilities of fraud and other dirty tricks from the Mexican establishment as election day draws near — the very reason that Marcos and the Other Campaign advocate turning away from the “above” and creating a politics “from below” — Narco News needs to be on top of the story more than ever. And to do that, we need your support.

Please, make a donation, of any size, to the Fund for Authentic Journalism. As always, your donation to the Fund goes entirely toward housing, transporting, feeding and equipping our — and your — team of authentic journalists.

As thanks for your support, we will send you a copy of our newest DVD, hot off the presses: “Delegate Zero in Yucatán and Quintana Roo.” It contains all the video newsreels produced by the Other Journalism video team from the first leg of Marcos’ tour, from the Mayan-descended farming communities of the Yucatan peninsula, to the tourism industry workers of the resort city of Cancún, to the streets of the capital city of Mérida. These are the Narco News video newsreels you have seen and downloaded from salonchingon.com, but they are only available on DVD to Narco News supporters (and to shoppers at the “pirate” video market in Tepito, Mexico City).

You can make a donation online, at the Fund for Authentic Journalism website:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check, made out to “The Fund for Authentic Journalism,” to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760

If you want to receive the gift DVD, please remember to include your mailing address with your contribution.

Kind reader, this is a crucial time for the Other Campaign, and it would be a great injustice if those of us who have followed this historic process in Mexico were to run out of steam now. We all have vital parts to play. Please, take another look at the coverage the Other Journalism has offered over the past five months and make a contribution today. Let’s all see this through together.

Thank you,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
www.narconews.com
dan@narconews.com

Click here for more Narco News coverage of Mexico

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