Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne talks about his recent performance at Zuccotti Park and his support of the movement. Discussing the suppression of Occupy, Jackson says, “People who really have so much money lose how serious a game this is to people who are slipping below the poverty line and whose children’s futures are beginning to evaporate.”

A Lesson in New Web Journalism and Political Activism

Editor’s Note: In December, 2002, I was on the payroll of The New York Times National Desk operating from my duplex on Plum Street, two blocks from the Carrollton Avenue street car line in New Orleans, Uptown, when the Trent Lott story broke, bringing to an end to the rise in national politics of one of the South’s most prominent, conservative Republican Senators. Much has been made of this case study in the power of the new Web Press to influence both the traditional, national news media — and the direction of politics itself. This is my original contribution to this important story in the history of Web publishing, as well as the academic field of media influence on politics and public opinion. I publish it today because it is time.

“I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”
— Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, Dec. 5, 2002

“On December 20, 2002, after significant controversy following comments regarding Strom Thurmond’s presidential candidacy, Lott resigned as Senate Minority Leader. In December 2007, he resigned from the Senate and became a Washington-based lobbyist.”
– Wikipedia

by Glynn Wilson

On December 5, 2002, about the time Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was making the remarks that would bring him down at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in Washington, D.C., I was in New Orleans sending an e-mail message to the brand new New York Times correspondent in Atlanta, David Halbfinger, pitching a story on the Alabama Ride to Freedom bus tour planned for January, according to my old Outlook Express e-mail archive. It goes back all the way to the 1990s, and is still on occasion a useful and reliable research tool.

Halbfinger and I never got to do that bus ride story together. But for the next few months, we would work on a number of stories. I also worked with the other more experienced Times correspondent in the South at the time, Jeffrey Gettleman, as well as Rick Bragg and a number of others. If either one of those guys had known what I knew about the history of Civil Rights struggles in the South, perhaps we could have done that bus ride story justice, especially since I was working a lot with photographer Spider Martin at the time. He was sitting on one of the most important collections of photographs from that era at his place atop the mountain in Blount County, Alabama, where I often stayed while working on stories in my home state for the Times and the Christian Science Monitor.

When the Lott story broke, it may not have caused a firestorm of publicity right away. But within only 15 days, Lott was gone and his rising political ambitions went stone cold dead.

Because of my academic research experience as well as the fact that I was one of the reporters who worked the story for the Times — in fact doing critical investigative work that was as important as anything done by the bloggers or television news in the battle — I have my own unique perspective on what went down and what it all means. But in part because I was a free-lance reporter for the Times and was never properly credited for my work on that story, along with many others, the academics in New York who used this story to make a name for themselves ignored my attempts to comment and provide some perspective for their research.

Due to events in my home state these days, with another conservative Republican politician under fire for racially charged remarks, I thought it would be a good time to put this story out there for Google and Facebook — so it does not get lost to history forever.

To me, it is an important lesson for bloggers trying to influence the mass media and public affairs — and for activists who are trying to change the country and the state for the better.

See the full story below…
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Near Houma, Louisiana, citizens have set up a tent city in front of BP headquarters to protest the Gulf oil spill and the still incomplete compensation and cleanup effort.

They sang “We shall overcome” and took liberties with the lyrics to change some of them to “Feinberg must go now,” according to a local television news station.

These ministers and business representatives are fed up with BP’s Head of Claims Ken Feinberg.

“We need you to write the check. Write the check,” said the Reverend Vincent Fusilier. “Stop lying.”

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The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

The news could not be any worse.

I honestly wish there was some good news to report. Sorry to say, there’s not any.

Well, the Crimson Tide did manage to pull out a victory over Ole Miss in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, football being about the only thing worth mentioning on the good side of the ledger in Alabama. But the Atlanta Braves were knocked out of post-season play last week, so baseball season is over. So much for sports.

I traveled to the Gulf Coast again last week for Shrimp Fest, hoping upon hope to see some signs of things getting better along the formerly beautiful Gulf of Mexico. I’ve spent a fair portion of my life visiting the Gulf, and lived in Gulf Shores and New Orleans for some very interesting runs over the years.

Alas, I came away with empirical data indicating that the air and water are still dangerous and may not get well anytime soon.

On the political front, the elections of 2010 are shaping up to be compared to Richard Nixon’s midterm elections in 1970 and his reelection campaign in 1972, when corporate and individual donations were secretly pouring in to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, otherwise known as CREEP.

Nixon said he was “not a crook,” but he was certainly a creep. No historical rehabilitation will ever exonerate him for that.

The record of all that illegal Republican campaign cash was stored in the president’s secretary’s desk, and is now in the National Archives and referred to as “Rose Mary’s baby.” Unfortunately, the Washington Post‘s investigation of the Watergate break in did not pick up enough steam to stop Nixon’s reelection, even though it did culminate in his impeachment and resignation after the election — and jail time for some of his cronies.

Is it possible that a similar scenario is developing this time around?

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We caught up with Aaron Viles with the Gulf Restoration Network in New Orleans the other day and filmed this update with the latest information on the BP oil drilling disaster as well as a factual briefing on the Mississippi River, Louisiana wetlands and some of the best thinking on what needs to be done about America’s clean energy needs.

The city of New Orleans suffered one of the worst disasters in U.S. history when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005. Then when the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010, the people felt like the city was back. But seven weeks later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.

An Interview with
photographer David Rae Morris
by Glynn Wilson
LocustFork.Net

Secret Vistas: Dedicated to the Memory of Spider Martin

by Glynn Wilson

The first time I rode the rocky, rolling white water of the Locust Fork River with Spider Martin, I knew it would be more than your average adventure. In stark contrast with today’s drought in the Southeast, near record levels of rainfall in 2002 swelled the narrow banks to the top of the black rocks smoothed over by the relentless forces of time.

Glynn Wilson

Spider Martin on the rocks in 2002

Then, anyone who has ever known Spider Martin knows life around him was, well, never dull.

The record rainfall would continue into 2003 and allow for other explorations of the river. But now that he is gone, they all merge in my mind into one.

When I launched this Website in early 2005, in part inspired by conversations with Spider, I also knew it would be a similar adventure even though he would not be around to share it.

To try to understand you have to picture in your head the most wide-open form of freedom possible in the imagination of a writer and a photographer in America then, sitting at the computer or careening down a fast river. In a world dominated by the professional, corporate press, and in this post 9/11, PR, police state, I know, this is hard to imagine.

But just picture Spider Martin in 2002 in the back of a green 17-foot Kevlar canoe in the lazy water by the Swann Joy Covered Bridge north of Birmingham in Blount County. I’m in the front. In the middle, there are two coolers. One is full of food. The other is stuffed with ice and beer, and not just any beer. Something golden brown.

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