Brad Will, New York Documentary Filmmaker and Indymedia Reporter, Assassinated

Lo extraño de repente. We weren't  so close. We will never be anymore. I can't believe it. We were sort of friends, just compañeros walking in the same path. The scars of el continente continue to harden. stay tuned....

Me duele. Joder. Espero que todo salga tan radical como lo esperamos.

Un doloroso abrazo con toda esperanza.

Brad was part of Steal This Radio, one of the most prominent pirate stations in the mid-90s. The risks that these pirate stations took helped to set the stage for the legalization of LPFM. Anywhere that there was a popular movement, Brad  was there to cover it and tell the story. He was there at virtually every mobilization I have been to, not only doing his own journalist work but helping to set things up and train people and spread the story of independent media. He lived much of his life without  the material comforts most Americans are used to, putting any resources that came his way into fighting for his beliefs and his work in independent media.

The mainstream press could try to marginalize him, since they can not imagine why anyone would make media without pay-- and certainly could not understand a young man who would live in an abandoned building in order to be able to afford to spend all of his time at it!  But we can  continue his work and use the outlets he has helped to build  to tell the story of the movement for peace, freedom, and human dignity... the stories  that he gave so much of himself in life and in death to be able to tell.

pete tridish

In 2003, a collective I was in had the honor of publishing a beautiful story he wrote about the community gardens of the South Bronx and the Lower East Side. He wrote the story in 2001 (with an update just before we went to press), and, reading it now, the Brad I knew shines through it - his audacity, his immense capacity to maintain and disseminate hope, his curiosity, his drive to tell the truth from below, and his taste for adventure.

Although we sometimes drove each other crazy, I always knew him as having an enormously open heart, and as being absolutely dedicated to putting himself in service to people in struggle. He was one of those rare people who seemed, at least on the surface, to have found some sort of a balance between the grave seriousness of the struggles he covered, and the joy and hope necessary to stick with the work.

Some of that balance, I imagine, came from his music. The first time I saw him play music was in Prague in 2000, at a bonfire after a long day of planning for the actions against the IMF and World Bank ministerials. He played a song originally written by a fellow named Desert Rat after the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. It’s one of those songs that immediately found a home in the hearts of many of us; we learned it, sang it together on many streets, and some people, most notably Brad, wrote additional verses. Many of the lyrics can be found here, including the verses Brad wrote; here I just include the original chorus, which, for me, serves as a kind of eulogy for him:

I will stand beside your shoulder
When the tear gas fills the sky
And when the National Guard tries to shoot me down
I’ll be lookin them in the eye.

I will wash the pepper from your face
And go with you to jail
And if you don’t make it through this fight
I swear I’ll tell your tale.

I will stay with you in the prison cell
In solidarity
And I will not leave that cursed room
'til you walk out with me.

For we the people fight for freedom
While the cops just fight for pay
And as long as the truth is in our hearts
We’re sure to win someday.

Oh, I will not falter when the iron fist
Comes out of the velvet glove
I will stand beside you brother
And defend this land I love
I will stand beside you sister
And defend this land I love.