JURIST– The Casa de Maryland immigrant rights group filed a challenge Monday to a public referendum over a Maryland law providing in-state tuition to undocumented college students. The group filed the challenge in the Maryland Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County after opponents of the Maryland DREAM Act collected enough signatures to put the law to a public referendum. Casa de Maryland and eight other individuals are challenging the referendum for two main reasons.

First, they argue that the DREAM Act will result in state tax money going to fund the tuition breaks making it an appropriations measure not subject to repeal by referendum. Second, they argue that over 57,000 signatures on the petition for the referendum are invalid because of the computer system used to collect them. Many of the signatures were submitted through MDPetitions.com, which downloads and prints a “Pre-Filled Petition” that only needs to be signed and mailed in. The website prints out the form with the voters’ information exactly as it appears in their voter registration, necessary for the signature to be valid. But the plaintiffs argue that such a system is invalid because the petitions do not have sufficient verification to be valid under state law:

There are sound policy reasons for requiring … the petitioner signer to fill in his or her own information on the form, rather than allowing that information to be filled in by someone else. Anyone—including someone other than the voter—could have the website generate a “Pre-Filled Petition Form” with that voter’s information pre-printed, both in the signing block and the circulators affidavit. The user (who is not the voter) could then print out the form, sign the voter’s name in the signature space and in circulator’s affidavit and mail the form to MDPetitions.com for submission to the Secretary of State and State Board.

Supporters of the referendum collected over 100,000 signatures [Baltimore Sun report] with broad bipartisan support: 63,487 Republicans, 32,397 Democrats and 12,628 independents. The DREAM Act narrowly passed the Maryland legislature in the final hours of the spring session.

The Maryland DREAM Act is currently suspended pending the public referendum. In order to be eligible for in-state tuition, undocumented residents would have to have attended at least three years of high school in Maryland and show their parents had filed tax returns to the state. The US Congress has considered a similar but more far-reaching bill [legislative materials; text], also entitled the DREAM Act, that would provide a path to permanent resident status for some high school graduates who enter the military or enroll in a college degree program.

Read more about Immigrant Rights Group Challenges Public Referendum to Overturn Maryland’s DREAM Act.

© 2011 Jurist

Photo by Flickr user DreamActivist

GUARDIAN– An activist who became a hero to campaigners for disrupting a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry with $1.8m (£1.1m) in bogus bids was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday.

Read more about US Eco-Activist Jailed For Two Years

© 2011 The Guardian

Photo by Flickr user 350.org

MEDIA ROOTS- The root system of a tree is five times more extensive than the tree itself, reaching far underground to form a solid base for growth and nourishment. Just as this root system is integral to the survival of a tree, media is integral to the foundation and survival of a democracy.

However, the corporate consolidation and top down control of America’s current media system undermines democracy by stifling and diluting the discourse crucial to maintaining a critical and informed public.

The mainstream media establishment has conceded its journalistic integrity time and time again by catering to corporate and political interests. The people can no longer wait on Congress and the FCC to eke out miniscule reforms to the dysfunctional system in which they are embedded. Instead, the people must create alternative methods to freely communicate and exchange information.

In the bay area, such an organization has been formed. Media Roots is a grassroots, independent citizen journalism project that reports the news from outside of party lines, while providing a collaborative space of open dialogue for conscious citizens, artists and activists.

The website aggregates a variety of critical and fascinating underreported news on various subjects: local and world news; political and corporate corruption; food and health; and science and philosophy.

In conjunction with providing an ever-expanding archival base of crucial information, Media Roots also conducts original reporting on an array of important local, national and global issues. The organization produces a regular radio talk show, original video content and extensive interviews with artists, activists, journalists and inspiring Bay area locals.

The merit of citizen reporting is increasingly recognized as corporate journalism continues to fail in its intended role as the watchdogs against corruption. Many people find that their voice isn’t represented in the political dialogue and are seeking alternative media sources reporting raw, unfiltered and truthful information.

Media Roots is a valuable tool for people to begin revolutionizing the media dialogue. The organization’s aim is to build community through collaboration and participation, and its openness to feature submissions of all kinds encourages others to take an active role in the field of media.  Everyone has the ability to be a citizen journalist, and Media Roots, while maintaining strong principles of integrity that require all content to be based in sound research, provides an important outlet for others to explore their ideas and share their skills.

Since the inception of the project, Media Roots has motivated multiple people worldwide to directly engage with their communities, whether by interviewing inspirational figures or by conducting investigatory research on a range of issues. Furthermore, the organization has provided a voice for multiple active duty soldiers to speak out anonymously about their political beliefs.

Many people who get their news from the corporate media have a highly skewed perspective on what issues should be of concern to their health, family and communities. The mainstream political discourse truncates issues into oversimplified talking points that pit one political party against another, causing a deep divide in the American citizenry. Media Roots holds no party bias, and reports from the bigger picture by analyzing issues through a broad historical lens.  

As a completely independent organization, Media Roots will never cater toward corporate sponsors or censor credible information. Because it exists outside of the rigid corporate model that capitalistic societies are accustomed to, it has a unique and unrestricted ability to spontaneously grow and flourish. Instead of competing monetarily with other independent media outlets with similar goals, Media Roots simply seeks to co-exist as an organic beacon of information in the emerging renaissance of grassroots journalism happening worldwide.

Like a tree’s widespread root system, grassroots networks of communication in all fields of media must extend far beyond the top down institutional structures created for us. The Media Roots model is not mechanized, and will continue to naturally evolve as more people participate and contribute in the project.

People must create the alternative they wish to see from the bottom up. Media Roots is paving an important path that is driven by a shared passion for media justice and the core belief that unfettered access to information is a human right.

To get involved in the project, please e-mail [email protected].

This piece was written for Project Censored’s 2012 book.

Written by Abby Martin

MR Logo by Shawn Cordeiro

MEDIA ROOTS- The revolution starts in your own backyard.

Cindy Sheehan, along with over 160 other leading peace advocates held a conference call on February 6th, 2011 to strategize for a new collaborative effort of localization called “Re-creating Revolutionary Communities”, or RevComs.

The plan is to put words into action. Cindy’s book, Myth America: the Twenty Greatest Myths of the Robber Class, breaks apart the societal and cultural myths that keep the oppressed dependent on their oppressors, and lays out the case for communities to revolutionize their environment, economy and society.

RevComs intends to overwhelm and permanently overcome the corporate controlled political and economic system that perpetuates exploitation and destruction by providing resources and guidance to local communities as they connect and build outside the grid. It is a truly grassroots effort that requires people to get active and to work collectively and creatively with their neighbors.

In the conference call, Cindy described the vision of how citizens can re-claim the resources in their environment and communities:

“We can do this by appropriating for ourselves what should already be under our control: community banking, community farming, supporting farmer’s markets, electing progressive revolutionaries to local school boards and city councils, having a barter/trade economy and creating cooperatives for every system we can…”

Cindy also emphasizes the necessity for people to look outside of the “use and throw away” paradigm of the current consumerist, capitalist institutions. Citizens who want to create a self-functioning community need to re-evaluate the way they consume and must focus on waste reduction: re-using what we already have and recycling that which we already use.

RevComs aims to be the umbrella organization that helps to guide and connect community initiatives happening across the nation and eventually the world. There are already hundreds of projects happening all over the country– the first step is to discover what they are, followed by getting involved and helping to strengthen them. If your community lacks this foundation, Cindy stresses the need to get creative with entrepreneurial endeavors and new collaborative projects in the community.

Re-creating Revolutionary Communities believe that the answer to globalization is localization. People need to see the fruits of their labor and the benefits of community involvement. Waiting for federal change every four years keeps people disempowered and disillusioned with actions that struggle to affect visible change. Undoubtedly, there will be people who dismiss the potential of RevComs to help emancipate citizens from the ties of multi-national corporations or corrupted policies, and still others who disregard the movement as ‘doomed to fail’. Cindy responds to the naysayers:

“With this we cannot fail, because we will be touching people’s lives in a positive way… when Yoko [Ono] was on my show she said we have to drop the pebble in the pond and the ripples will go to infinity… Everybody that went before us that tried to make positive change did make positive change. They did not fail. I shudder to think where our society would be today if we didn’t have people like Martin Luther King Jr… I know that many of those people… were thinking the same way that we thought. They were thinking that they failed, they were thinking that they didn’t change society. But they changed it in a very profound way. The only way we are guaranteed failure is if we don’t do anything. That is the beautiful, wonderful miraculous thing about this project: that we will have a 100% success rate.”

RevComs will begin putting this plan into action during the first round of community gatherings slated for the first week in March 2011. The meetings are going to start locally, with anticipation of then going regional, and eventually national.

The seeds of revolution are already being sewn, now it’s up to you to join in.

To learn information, gather resources or to get involved with Re-creating Revolutionary Communities, please visit their website at http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-creating-revolutionary-communities.html or become a part of their facebook community here.

Writing and art by Abby Martin

Check out an exclusive Media Roots interview with Cindy Sheehan.