Televising the Revolution
The Independent Media Center comes to Los Angeles
For the length of the Democratic National Convention, they have rented out an entire floor of Patriotic Hall, a county-owned building at the southern edge of downtown that will also house Arianna Huffington‘s “Shadow Convention.” They will soon begin setting up computers and editing bays and makeshift radio and television studios. During the convention, the IMC Web site will be updated constantly with news stories and videos. Its radio station will broadcast around the clock, including IMC-delivered news, analysis, music and spoken-word programs, as well as a daily program by Amy Goodman, of Pacifica’s Democracy Now. A donated satellite truck will be parked outside, beaming daily newscasts into over 1 million homes. And The Los Angeles Free Press, largely dormant since 1976, will be published daily and distributed around the convention site and to the rest of Los Angeles.
There will likely be some potholes between now and the convention. Financing is very tight, and a lot of equipment is still needed. “There‘s no funding,” says spokesperson Eben Rey. “It’s all out of pocket from volunteers and sweat equity -- mainly sweat equity.” To make matters worse, the management of Patriotic Hall, under pressure from local businesses that fear the IMC‘s presence will bring rowdy protesters to the area, recently nearly doubled the IMC’s rent to pay for added security. IMC organizers are nonetheless optimistic that they will be well ahead of the game. “In D.C. they had only two or three weeks to prepare,” says Chris Burnett. “In Seattle they had roughly six weeks.”
They are also counting on the momentum created by the upcoming round of protests to outlast the Democrats‘ convention. Burnett hopes the IMC will at last actualize the much ballyhooed revolutionary potential of the Internet: “Indy Media is to corporate America and the commercial press what the printing press was to the French aristocracy before the French Revolution.” Even after the delegates go home and the IMC gives up its satellite truck and Patriotic Hall offices, the Web site will remain online. “This is just the beginning,” promises Rey.
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