Latin America at the Breaking Point: Will You Know When History Is Happening?

Narco News Brings Unique and Breaking News on Latin America’s Social Movements, but Without Your Support It Won’t Exist

By Dan Feder
Editor-in-Chief of The Narco News Bulletin

October 31, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

We’re nearly halfway there. Less than three weeks ago, Narco News announced matching funds of up to $5,000 for your donations, making a total of $10,000 for this fund drive if we are successful – enough to keep this newspaper running and healthy into the near future. If you look at the live graphic on the pages of our newspaper, you will see how far we’ve come in such a short time toward reaching that goal.

Please, let’s not lose this momentum. Thanks to your generosity, we’ve been able to continue publishing Narco News during Al Giordano’s leave of absence. The drug war’s bloodiest battlefield in our América, Colombia, is taking a more central role in our coverage for the first time in several years.

Just take a look at the front page for a reminder of all we’ve published since September. We’ve brought you unique and breaking news on the country’s growing social movements and the repression against them; on the implications of this past weekend’s elections; on the deceitful efforts of the Bush administration to pass a “free trade” agreement and Colombian senator’s efforts to show how it will only benefit the country’s rich narcos; on the continuing repression and toxic crop fumigations in the Colombian southwest; on continuing developments in the “Bogotá Connection” DEA corruption scandal… and many other stories that you won’t find anywhere else.

Bill Conroy continues to reveal new and damning information in his House of Death series, often copied but never scooped by the commercial media. Nancy Davies continues to report from the front lines of a social revolution in the state of Oaxaca. Brenda Norrell, Raúl Romero and Juan Trujillo provided the most complete coverage anywhere of the historic “Encuentro” in Sonora, Mexico where Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos met with indigenous peoples from north of the border…

The list goes on. And we have many more stories in projects in the works. As the failure of Plan Colombia and Uribe’s repressive U.S.-backed policies approach the breaking point and a Democratic U.S. Congress views them ever more skeptically, as Mexico braces for its planned transformation into a virtual police state under the Calderón government and its new “Merida Initiative” with the United States, Narco News is more necessary than ever.

Please make a contribution online at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Or send your contribution today to:

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

This new chapter in Narco News’ history is just getting started. Remember, your donation this fall will have double impact on our always-on-a-shoestring budget. Please, help us develop our coverage of the stories the commercial media ignore into everything it can be.

Dan Feder
Editor-in-Chief
The Narco News Bulletin

For more Narco News, click here.