Beneath the Hype, Beneath the Noise, There is Truth
Amy Goodman wrapped up the night with a rousing 40-minute reflection that links the work of the Fourth Estate (or journalism), with activism, race, politics and Haiti.
While she touched on issues of economic justice, the crux of Goodman’s
speech rested in civil society — people like you and me — realizing
that we are indeed empowered to hold not only the government, but the
news media responsible for the ways in which they report and frame the
news.
Amy’s words give me hope. For the past nine years, I have been a sometimey watcher of television news. This means that when the 6 o’clock news comes on, I rarely watch it. Full disclosure: I do watch breaking news.
The way in which news is packaged — and a news segment is referred to as a package in the business — has become commoditized. The same pundits make their weekly rounds on every cable news station, reporting the same news, the same way.
Viewers do have a responsibility to hold the news media accountable and to think critically about the information given to them.
Switching subjects, one of the most interesting stories she told was about the estate of Defense Secretary Rumsfield in Lincoln, Massachusetts. It’s name? Mount Misery.
What makes this story so riddled with irony is the fact that this was the plantation ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was sent to when he rebelled against his owner in Maryland.
During slavery, slaves who didn’t follow the master’s orders or proved themselves troublesome to the functioning of plantation life were often sent to men who “broke” slaves. Douglass, was sent to Edward Covey, who made attempts to break him.
Amy talked at length about the parallels between the function of Mount Misery under Edward Covey and the oppressive U.S. military policies under Rumsfield.
Though the comparison made sense, what happened to Douglass post-slavery is what really inspires me. But to explain just what this means, let's return to Douglass as a slave.
When Douglass worked on Covey's farm, he plowed and slaved from sunrise to sunset, with lttle time to rest between sleeping and eating. One day, the 6-foot Douglass couldn't take it any more and Covey walked over and hit him. According to some accounts the two man fought for 2 hours, which the slaves looking on as the fight ensued. In the end, Covey realized Douglass could not be broken. In Douglass’ autobiography he and Covey fought and when Douglass won, Covey bothered him no more. Later, Douglass escaped to freedom where he felled many a myth about slavery and continued to fight for the human rights in the U.S. and Haiti (Douglass was the U.S. ambassador to Haiti).
When I read about corruption and conditionalities and debt cancellation that takes too long to happen, I think of Douglass and that battle with the slave breaker he noted as a pivotal moment in his life.
I think of the fact that one day, we will all be free. I say we in the sense that we are all bound to this debt. Whether we are the lenders, who maintain the party line, or the borrowers, who must ask for loans to survive, or the people who repay the loans, people who suffer through a lifetime of debt.
In the end, debt, like horrible trade policies, like a war in Iraq, like economic disparity within our communities, oppresses us all.
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