My friend Peter Phillip who is the actual President of Project Censored, a progressive group based at Sonoma State University in Sonoma County, California went to Venezuela last week. In might notice that Project Censored pays attention to the news cover by the grassroots journalist and don't tell or cover by the corporate media.
Below is Peter Phillips'report about his trip in Hugo Chavez land.
Peter
Caracas was outstanding. The Bolivarian University of Venezuela is now officially the Project Censored site for South
America. We met with the President of the University, Faculty and 200+ students for several hours on Monday. The Bolivarian University was established five years ago and is housed in the former oil company headquarters in downtown Caracas. They have 8,000 students of all ages and ethnicities and classes all over the country. The university has a full health clinic free for all students and anyone else who wants health care. There is no tuition, free food on campus, and the only cost for the students is their textbooks. High speed internet is available throughout the university. The PC site came up immediately. I promised them we would have our Spanish language page up very soon.
The trip was a non-stop the whole time. We did five radio interviews, TeleSur TV (CNN like for South America), and multiple newspaper interviews. The Censored book in spanish is selling well at the book fair. We met with the vice-minister of information to discuss PC south and visited two community TV stations in the barrios. The formal presentation of the book on sunday night drew a significant crowd, with standing room only. Lots of supportive questions, and willingness to hear what is happening in the US. The most common question was will Obama really be able to make changes? My response was that given that the military-industrial-media complex is still very much in tact, that major changes in US international policy is not likely in the short run, but that we are all hopeful.
The Bolivarian socialist revolution is moving ahead democratically in Venezuela. To counter the corporate non-stop media attacks on Chavez, they have established 30 community based TV stations and 200 radio stations run by community councils in the poorest neighborhoods all over the country. The state has just published 25 million books—classics like Cerventes as will as Cindy Sheenan's Letter to Bush. these books will be distributed to the 25,000 community council all around the county for free, and sell there after for $1.00
When I got the mail today there was notification that Project Censored will receive the 2008 PEN Censorship Award at the Josephine Miles Annual National Literary Award ceremony Dec. 6 in Oakland.
- Show quoted text -
No comments:
Post a Comment