Brad Will | |
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 Brad Will performing atDreamtime Village in the 1990s. | |
| Born | Bradley Roland Will (1970-06-14)June 14, 1970 Evanston, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | October 27, 2006(2006-10-27) (aged 36) Oaxaca, Oax., Mexico |
| Education | Allegheny College (B.A. in English) |
| Occupation(s) | Activist, videographer, journalist |
| Notable credit | Indymedia |
Bradley Roland Will (June 14, 1970 – October 27, 2006) was an American activist,videographer, and journalist. He was affiliated withIndymedia. On October 27, 2006, during alabor dispute in the Mexican city ofOaxaca,[1][2] Will was shot twice, possibly by government-aligned paramilitaries, resulting in his death.
Will was born inEvanston, Illinois, and raised inKenilworth.[3] He graduated fromNew Trier High School in 1988, then attendedAllegheny College inMeadville, Pennsylvania, where he earned aB.A. inEnglish.[3]
Beginning in the summer of 1991, he was a regular attendee at theJack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, the summer writing program ofNaropa University and was a teaching assistant toPeter Lamborn Wilson (a.k.a. Hakim Bey). In 1995, after spending time atDreamtime Village in southwestWisconsin, he moved toManhattan where hesquatted on theLower East Side before moving toWilliamsburg, Brooklyn.
At Naropa, Will participated in a satiricalperformance art piece designed to mock the Coloradosocially conservative Christian community and protest a proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution which sought to limitgay rights. Will pretended to marry another man in a ceremony conducted byPeter Lamborn Wilson, aUniversal Life Church-ordained minister. The mock ceremony included a procession of their wedding party indrag, parading in front of aPromise Keepers event inBoulder, Colorado.
While in New York City, Will became involved in the squatters movement of theLower East Side and also became involved in what has become known asfreeganism, an effort to live outside the mainstream economic grid by means that includes collecting and eating food discarded by stores and food manufacturers. He fought the removal ofcommunity gardens, including theChico Mendez Mural Garden on the Lower East Side, named after Brazilian activistChico Mendes. Will was an active participant in protests across the country, usually for varioussocial justice andhuman rights causes, and was involved withenvironmental movements such asEarth First! and theFall CreekTree Village in theWillamette National Forest outsideEugene, Oregon.
Will gained some notoriety for his efforts to prevent New York City from demolishing a squat on Fifth Street in the Lower East Side. When construction crews arrived at the building to begin taking it down, he stood atop the roof waving his arms. His efforts stalled the demolition, but the city eventually leveled the building, which housed a café, a meeting place and a performance space. Will later talked about the building in a program produced byPaper Tiger Television called "ABC Survives, Fifth Street Buried Alive".
We were making a home out of a crumbling building. The interior of the building needed help, and we brought that building back to life. It was standing strong. And the only reason it was standing was because people were living in it. If we had let it go the way the city wanted it to go– they tore out the stairwell, they punched holes in the roof. The water– the rain was rotting that building from the inside out. We replaced the joists. We rebuilt the floors. We sheet rocked the walls and made the building alive. What did they do? They killed it. That building is over a hundred years old. It was standing strong.[4]
Will was a proponent of anti-corporate media, and he hosted his own program onSteal This Radio, a Lower East Side-basedpirate radio station.
In 1998, he and partner Hazel spoke at the Ecosaloon, a weekly activism forum held on Tuesday evenings at the Wetlands Preserve nightclub. Their presentation connected the struggle to defend the forests of the Pacific Northwest with the fight against the gentrification of Manhattan's Lower East Side. After helping to organizeBuy Nothing Day and aReclaim the Streets protest inTimes Square, Will traveled toSeattle for the1999 WTO protests, and was a longtime participant inDirect Action Network (DAN) and theIndependent Media Center (IMC) ofNew York City. In August 2001 he joined participants for a roving exploration of usable food found inTribeca dumpsters; they were accompanied by a TV crew fromPBS'sLife 360. In his later years, Will began recording documentary videos, releasing them on the internet through theIndymedia network of websites. During the summer of 2006, Will continued videotaping demonstrations, including a June 15 protest at the Mexican Consulate in response to a police incursion into a teacher's plantón (encampment). On June 29 he video-recorded and helped organize a protest againstVictoria's Secret at theManhattan Mall in response to the resources used to print the high volume of mail-order catalogs which the company mails out. He also filmed a street theater performance by the group A for Anarchy, organized in response to the release of the filmV for Vendetta. At the time of his death, he was working on a documentary aboutfolk punk music.
In 2000, while visiting theCzech Republic Will attended a protest inPrague against theInternational Monetary Fund Summit. He later traveled throughSouth America while participating inanti-globalization. He reachedEcuador,Argentina,Chiapas andBrazil in that trip.
Traveling under a touristvisa, Will arrived in Oaxaca in early October 2006 in order to document and film the teachers' strike.[5] On October 27, he was videotaping near a barricade erected by pro-strike protesters when he was shot twice. In the last few minutes of the video; Will filmed before being shot, voices speaking in Spanish are heard demanding that filming be stopped and cameras be turned off. In the final seconds of the video a voice in Spanish reprimands Will for not having turned off the camera. In the middle of this statement a gunshot is heard, there is a scream, the camera pans down to the ground and the video ends.
Will died while being carried from the area in search of medical help. Two others, Esteban Zurita López and teacher Emilio Alonso Fabián, were also killed. Several others were injured. 26 protesters were ultimately murdered during this mobilization.[6] Atruth commission later classified his death as an "extrajudicialexecution".[7]
During a news conference on October 29, 2006, Oaxacamayor Manuel Martínez said that four men, all local public officials, were being detained in connection with the shooting.[8]
Later on the day of the shooting, the Oaxaca airport was closed to commercial flights as the Federal Police arrived to reestablish government control of the city. The army was also mobilized to provide intelligence support to the police, but not to engage directly with protesters. APPO representatives declared their intention to resist the government's armed response to the crisis. At the beginning of November, violent clashes continued between protesters and police.[9] The government claimed that the Federal Police that entered Oaxaca were unarmed.
On October 30, more than 200 protesters convened outside the Mexicanconsulate in New York City to deplore the killing of Will and others and to demand an end to the violence. The protest was organized by the grassroots group named in his honor, The Friends of Brad Will.[10][11]
TheCommittee to Protect Journalists sent an open letter on October 30 to the Mexicanattorney general calling on theMexican government to launch an investigation into Will's death. The statement said thatDavid Vega Vera, special independent prosecutor, had begun gathering information related to the case.[12]
On November 11 and 12, 2006, Friends of Brad Will organized a gathering in New York City to commemorate Will's life. The event included a memorial service atSt Mark's Church in-the-Bowery attended by 250 people, as well as speeches and concerts.[13] Outside the church was an array offreegan food as well as a pile of Will's personal possessions, from which attendees were urged to take.[13] It was followed by a procession through theEast Village described byThe Villager as "jubilant and rowdy" and culminated in marchers breaking into the formerCharas/El Bohio, inside which they briefly cavorted, scrawledgraffiti, twirled firebolas and cycled.[13]
David Rovics wrote a song about his life and death, titled 'Brad'.
Una de las víctimas fue el camarógrafo estadounidense Brad Will, ultimado cuando cubría una manifestación y cuyo caso fue catalogado como una "ejecución extrajudicial" por una comisión de la verdad, que denunció también actos de tortura y desapariciones forzadas a manos de autoridades y policías.
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