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2009 Lectures and Workshops by Al Giordano

“The new independent journalists of the Internet, as personified by Al Giordano, play a crucial role in preserving the democratic aspirations of First Amendment protection.”

- Electronic Frontier Foundation

“The Walt Whitman of the ground game ode.”

- James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

“We have kind of a ringleader in Al.”

- Nate Silver, fivethirtyeight.com


Lectures



The Organizing of the President: Madison, October 2008
The Organizing of the President: The 2008 election of Barack Obama as president of the United States came as a result of the country’s first multi-racial, multi-generational political movement in more than 40 years. Al Giordano reported on the Obama movement through his popular political blog, The Field, termed “prescient” by Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott for his accurate journalism and predictions of what would happen at each step before it occurred. Obama, a former community organizer, “organized the American people,” says Giordano. “Now it is our turn to return the favor and organize him and his presidency from below, by creating events and news from the grassroots that will change the context by which he can govern.” Al offered the first versions of this evolving participatory talk on October 23 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and on November 6 at DePaul University in Chicago. Contact Chris Fee at bazarov3@gmail.com to inquire about bringing Al and this conversation to your local university or organization in the Spring of 2009. (45 minutes plus audience participation.)


The Organizing of the President: Chicago, November 2008
“We invited Al Giordano to Madison to talk about social activism in a digital age -- how do we think about coordinating online and offline channels to effect social change? As an award-winning journalist and renowned community organizer with a track record for real change, Al has unique insights on what's happening right now with the Obama movement, netroots activists, and new media technologies.

“What we got from Al was a lot more. Al's talk brought together students, scholars, activists, and journalists from across the community, on and off campus. Al's generosity with his time before and after the talk enabled like-minded people who otherwise may never have met to gather and discuss the future of our community. We've immediately put these community organizing ideas to work and launched a grassroots campaign to stop home foreclosures in our community as a result of Al's visit. If you want more than a speaker, more than a chance to learn about community organizing in the abstract, but a real chance to learn about how to make change by doing it, I wholeheartedly encourage you to bring Al to your university or organization. You'll be glad you did.”

- Kurt Squire, Associate Professor
Educational Communications Technology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis: Journalist Al Giordano shares his eyewitness observations from twelve years on the ground in Mexico, reporting on the drug war and the struggles of indigenous and social movements: From the 1993 Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas through the 2006 tour throughout the Mexican Republic by its Subcomandante Marcos, Giordano has spend as much as or more time than any journalist taking notes and listening to the voices from below in this country of 100 million people. He provides background on the 2006 Popular Assembly movement in Oaxaca and documents the electoral fraud of July 2006 that imposed an illegitimate president upon the country. He has also reported extensively on the immigrants rights movement inside the United States. By 2009, the US-imposed Plan Mexico will be in full swing, and the costs both to human rights in Mexico and to jobs and the economy in the United States are already heavy on both. Giordano also offers domestic and foreign policy prescriptions for the US to end the harm being done and put US-Mexican relations on a path that could, for the first time ever, benefit the citizens on both sides of the border. (45 minutes plus audience participation.)


Watch a short video clip of Al Giordano with the 2003 Narco News School of Authentic Journalism at a drug policy conference in Mérida, on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. (Windows Media download here) Photo: DR 2003 Jim and Ellen Fields
First Amendment Law on the Internet: The victorious pro se defendant in the landmark Internet press freedom case Banamex vs. Mario Menendez, Al Giordano and Narco News, Giordano and attorney Thomas Lesser share with law school professors, students, legal scholars, Bar Associations and civil rights law firms the story of his David vs. Goliath battle against the National Bank of Mexico (now Citigroup) and its Washington DC law firm Akin Gump. Banamex sued the defendants in 2000 over reports of drug trafficking on the Caribbean properties of the bank's owner, but by December 2001 the Court dismissed the case, ordering:

"Narco News, its website, and the writers who post information, are entitled to all the First Amendment protections accorded a newspaper-magazine or journalist... Furthermore, the nature of the articles printed on the website and Mr. Giordano's statements at Columbia University constitute matters of public concern because the information disseminated relates to the drug trade and its affect on people living in this hemisphere..."
Giordano and Lesser tell the inside story of the case in and out of the courtroom, the failure of the plaintiffs to serve process upon him under the Hague Convention (he eventually waived service in order to enter the case), the boomerang effect of the lawsuit upon Banamex (causing wider distribution of the reports that the bank's owner sought to silence), and how corporate nuisance suits like the one he faced can be utilized to increase the readership and credibility of the defendant journalists and publications. (45 minutes plus Q & A; the speakers reserve the right to decline lecturing for law firms that specialize in representing libel plaintiffs against First Amendment practitioners.)

Workshops


Authentic Journalism 101: A practical workshop in how to investigate and report the news coherently, cause the public and those in power to pay attention to it, and to wield the pen, the computer, the camera and other weapons of the information age from below to get the job done. Narco News publisher Al Giordano – founder and president of the School of Authentic Journalism that has trained more than 100 young journalists throughout the Western Hemisphere - will reveal what he calls the "dirty secrets" of the Commercial Media that he learned in the 1980s and 90s as a newspaper reporter, television and talk radio host, and early Internet commentator. And he offers step-by-step practical advice on how to research and write compelling news stories, produce low-budget and effective video newsreels, light up the phone lines (and the Arbitron ratings) on talk radio, and utilize the Internet to force the stories that big media ignores into public light. (Minimum length of 90 minutes.)

(Workshops may be expanded into all-day or half-day seminars in accord with the desires of the hosts.)

Cultural Events:


The Fund for Authentic Journalism: Narco News publisher Al Giordano will speak at fundraising events (house parties, concerts, video screenings, etc.) that raise resources for The Fund for Authentic Journalism (www.authenticjournalism.org).

Book one or more of these events with Chris Fee at bazarov3@gmail.com.

What the Critics Are Saying

"Al Giordano's NarcoNews is known for its hard-hitting reporting, especially when it comes to exposing the myths of the drug war and government and corporate involvement in drug trafficking."

- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

“Al is the best under-30 community organizer in the United States.”

- Abbie Hoffman, 1987

"David slew Goliath with a stone, and similarly on December 5, 2001 in a New York courtroom, tiny NarcoNews.com cut down the giant Banamex, humbling billionaire narcotraffickers and money launderers, and setting a big precedent for the First Amendment rights of online journalists."

- The Razor Wire

"Banamex didn't know with whom it was picking a fight."

- Rolling Stone

"Giordano's reporting on the serious conflicts of an AP reporter in Bolivia was right on the mark and well documented in my view. The AP was slow to acknowledge Giordano's basic point - that its reporter could not lobby the Bolivian legislature and continue to function as a journalist — but the wire service ultimately distanced itself from its former correspondent, thus underscoring that Giordano hit the bull's-eye."

- Howard Kurtz, Media Critic, The Washington Post

"Narco News has broken a string of scoops focusing on the war on drugs."

- The Guardian (London)

"Even as the (New York) Times was propping up (Venezuela coup leader Pedro) Carmona, Narconews.com was posting a portrait of a blindfolded and gagged Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century hero who liberated Venezuela from Spain... Giordano, a dogged critic of the Times, was vindicated the next day when an international outcry led to Chávez's reinstatement and a virtual front-page correction in the Times."

- The Village Voice

"We at the Phoenix knew we had something special on our hands when, more than two years ago, we published a major exposé by Al Giordano on the alleged drug-trafficking activities of one of Mexico's richest and most powerful bankers (see 'Clinton's Mexican Narco-Pals,' News, May 14, 1999). What we didn't know was that the story and its aftermath would turn Giordano into an international cause célèbre."

- The Boston Phoenix

"For much of the '80s and '90s, Al Giordano cut a wide swath among Massachusetts journalists and political junkies."

- The Boston Globe

"They can grit their teeth and suffer Al's reporting, day after aggravating day, as he exposes the ugly underside of this endless war on drugs - and actually makes things happen, like real journalists are supposed to do."

- Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Gary Webb (1955-2004)

"Authentic journalism has a first and last name: Alberto Giordano."

- Por Esto! (Mexico's third largest daily newspaper)

To organize a lecture or workshop in your area contact Chris Fee at bazarov3@gmail.com.