[Text by Kathryn Andryshak] On Friday November 21, award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, will speak at The Smith Opera House in Geneva as part of her national tour to celebrate Democracy Now!’s 12th anniversary. Goodman will discuss her new book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, written with brother and journalist David Goodman, as well as the results of the recent Presidential election.
Goodman began her career in community radio in 1985 at Pacifica Radio’s New York Station, WBAI, where she produced WBAI’s Evening News for 10 years. From the front lines of election coverage to war zones, Goodman has delved head-first into revealing truths through her investigative journalism.
In the 90s, Goodman demonstrated her commitment to the atrocities occurring in East Timor, traveling first in 1990 to report on the U.S.-backed Indonesian occupation. Witnessing Indonesian soldiers gun down civilians and subsequently beated by Indonesian soldiers themselves, Goodman and colleague Allan Nairn produced their documentary, Massacre: The Story of East Timor. Banned by the Indonesian military, Goodman and Nairn were arrested in 1994 for their attempt to enter East Timor. In 1999, Goodman was deported while attempting to cover the referendum to grant East Timor independence. She finally returned in 2002 with Democracy Now! to cover East Timor’s transition to independence and a new nation.
In 1998, Goodman set out to Nigeria to investigate the activities of U.S. oil companies in the Niger Delta. The resulting radio documentary, titled Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship, exposed Chevron’s role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers who were protesting yet another oil spill in their community. Soon after, the documentary won the 1998 George Polk Award.
In 1999, Goodman was also the first journalist to enter the Peruvian prison that was holding Lori Berenson, where she was able to interview the American political prisoner.
And just recently, at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were being unlawfully detained.
This is just a handful of Goodman’s many accomplishments. Yet for all of her undertakings, she is still criticized for her efforts.
She has been called “combative” and at times “hostile” by Bill Clinton, a “threat to national security” by the Indonesian military, and the reason Newt Gingrich told his mother not to speak to reporters.
When I asked Goodman herself, “Just who is Amy Goodman?” she answered: “A journalist who deeply cares about what is happening in the world and who is making a forum for those who are too often silenced.”
Many others agree with her mission. Goodman was named recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the most recent of many accolades and honors she has received. Fellow award-winning journalist Bill Moyers has said, “Amy Goodman doesn’t practice trickle-down journalism. She goes where the silence is, she breaks the sound barrier.”
Since Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! began on February 19, 1996, Goodman has been doing just that. She is a champion of independent media, claiming a mission to make dissent commonplace in America, and having faith that she can make a difference - a necessity, she says, when the stakes are so high. “It’s very important that we have media that will bring out the voices that passionately care about these issues - and not the pundits that know so little,” says Goodman.
Because the mainstream media has become a drumbeat for war, Goodman attests, it is independent media’s obligation to become a sanctuary of dissension. Goodman attributes Democracy Now!’s success to the program’s ability to showcase analysts who are involved in change, people who are rarely heard but are the majority. It is fresh voices and not the typical armchair analysts that give people hope, she says.
While Goodman raises awareness, she also believes that at this turning point in American history, it’s what we do right now in this country that matters. Armed with her brother and journalist David Goodman, Amy set out on a tour across the country to investigate what Americans are doing to stand up for what they believe in, or “the ways in which grassroots activists have taken politics out of the hands of politicians.”
What the Goodmans found was later published in their book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. The book contains stories of a diverse population that stand up to censorship and “reveals what really makes up America, not what is projected through a lens silenced by corporations or mainstream media,” says Goodman.
In addition to the responsibility Americans must claim to affect change, Goodman says that the success of President-elect Barack Obama is also in our hands. “It’s up to everyone right now,” says Goodman. “The masses came out to vote in historic numbers. But what happens next is not so much about him as it is what the people do. The people have to hold the president accountable. He says he’s going to close Guantanamo; we have to make sure he does it. He says he wants to end the war? How? When?”
How do we tackle the task that Goodman sets out for us - the act of taking our own stand, of feeling that as individuals we can affect change, rouse social consciousness in others? She simply states that we have to “get involved in what we care about.” If we’re not doing it already, Goodman’s talk this Friday will surely be a catalyst for action. At the very least, Goodman will surely leave you inspired.
Democracy Now! became an independent non-profit organization in June, 2002 and is currently broadcast on over 700 radio and television stations - the only public media program in the country that airs simultaneously on radio, satellite and cable television and the internet. Democracy Now! can be heard locally on WEOS, Public Radio for the Finger Lakes on 89.7, 90.3 or 88.1.
Amy Goodman will speak Friday, Nov. 21at 7:30pm at The Smith Opera House, located on 82 Seneca St. in Geneva. Tickets are $15 for main admission, $50 for VIP admission which helps to support Public Radio for the Finger Lakes - WEOS. Tickets can be purchased at TheSmith.org. Ithaca’s Evil City String Band will open.