 in the press Building a “citizen’s archive” of the RNC
At the Tilsner Artists’ Cooperative, where he’s lived on and off over the years, he shared a room a friend was renting out to people working for Indy Media and the Glass Bead Collective. “I spent the week with extremely freaked out and justifiably paranoid independent media people.” He was getting “fog of war” reports all week. It was difficult to get the big picture — it still is. So Parry–a songwriter, photojournalist, and web designer — started a paper archive of everything that happened outside the Xcel. “I printed everything from Star Tribune reports to St. Paul City Council minutes.” People he met during the convention who had stayed in town to work on a documentary about the RNC kept asking him about one document or another. “Finally I just decided to gather everything online.” Parry has experience with this. He co-founded the website Electronic Intifada after his experiences in the West Bank. To this day, the site is an always-current archive of events in Palestine — often written by Palestinians themselves. Parry’s current endeavor is RNC ‘08 Report. He calls it “a citizen’s archive of media reports, government documents, and other resources.” His collection, he insists, “is unprejudiced — it’s the widest possible range of sources because that’s what will be the most helpful. I’ve archived the Twitter feeds and I’ve archived Department of Defense press releases about the deployment of the national guard. I’ve got city press releases on the arrests of the RNC 8 and the press releases of the RNC Welcoming Committee.” He’s still furiously adding to the site and wants people to tell him what he’s missing. His vision is nothing short of a total archive. “The goal,” he says, “is clarity.”
Nigel Notes: The Minnesota Independent had the best on-the-ground, raid-by-raid, tear gas canister-by-tear gas canister RNC coverage of any print publication. While there were a team of people doing RNC coverage, what did it for me was what happened when they sent out the guy who has reported from Iraq into the comparatively only Semi-Mean Streets of St. Paul. As we ran past each other during one protest—to avoid some horse cops—Jeff noted: "Hi! Hey, can't stop right now. See you later!" I bailed from that protest right about then. Jeff lucked out and didn't get mass arrested later with the 200 people police corralled on to the Marion Street Bridge—which included about 20 journalists during that particular mass arrest. Check out Jeff's Day 1 Diary of the RNC for a sense of the sheer detail of reporting on the protests, both with text and with photos. This level of coverage is so very helpful for years to come. After so many words have been said about what happened, having the skinny is important. The Minnesota Independent's extensive RNC Archive is here: http://minnesotaindependent.com/category/rnc. UPCOMING EVENT! If you're in the Twin Cities, my band Pocket of Resistance is playing an RNC arrestees fundraiser with Junkyard Empire at 7PM onwards on Thursday October 16th, at the Black Dog Coffee Shop in St. Paul, MN. More details here.
more from this section  • Israeli ultra-rightist protested in Pittsburgh, Walter Smolarek, PSLWeb.org, Thursday, February 11th, 2010  • PULSE: 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009, PULSE, Thursday, December 31st, 2009 • Wise guys, Marina Saint Martin, The Gold Coast Bulletin, Sunday, December 20th, 2009 • Video: National Special Security Events and Independent Media, Our World In Depth, Monday, December 14th, 2009 • So who is the idiot here?, Doron Rosenblum, Ha'aretz, Sunday, November 1st, 2009 • Image Problem, Marty Levine, Pittsburgh City Paper, Thursday, October 15th, 2009 • Live on KPFK Pacifica Radio's "Indymedia On Air" program, KPFK, Monday, October 12th, 2009 • G20 Press Conference at the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, FluxRostrum, Monday, September 28th, 2009 |
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