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Monday, December 17, 2012

Congrats! to The Uptake - Recognition, Well Deserved.



Many of you that were active in the Wisconsin demonstrations may have run into the gang from The Uptake in Minneapolis.  The covered almost every minute of Madison.  The Uptake is a nonprofit that does a fantastic job of streaming/taping live news events you won’t see on MSM

Today on Common Dreams
Glenn Greenwald announced the establishment of a foundation to provide funds to support independent journalism.

Published on Monday, December 17, 2012 by The Guardian
Nothing is more vital than enabling true transparency and adversarial journalism, and preventing further assaults on them

The second purpose is to ensure that truly independent journalistic outlets - devoted to holding the US government and other powerful factions accountable with transparency and real adversarial journalism - are supported to the fullest extent possible. Along those lines, we have selected three other organizations along with WikiLeaks as our initial beneficiaries:


    The UpTake, a Minnesota-based group that uses truly innovative means to break "down walls of power to expose the raw truth by pushing for transparency and access to information." They use citizen journalism, crowd-sourcing and cutting-edge technology to film and document the bad acts of government agents. I worked next to them when I covered the incredibly excessive federal and local police actions and brutality against protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, and was truly impressed with them then, as I watched all sorts of young activists and older ones use hand-held video cameras and phones to comprehensively cover all sorts of police abuses being ignored by most large journalistic outlets, which were comfortably ensconced inside the convention hall. They've expanded their operations substantially since then, have a long list of achievements to tout, and - most excitingly to me - can serve as a template for how to engage in real journalism across the country using citizens and the power of technology.

SNIP

Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power. Few priorities are more important, in my view, than supporting and enabling any efforts to subvert the ability of the US government and other factions to operate in the dark. It's particularly vital to undercut the US government's ability to punish and kill groups that succeed in these transparency efforts. Those are the goals to which this new press freedom foundation are devoted, and I hope that anyone who believes these goals are important will find ways to support this effort.
Congratulations to Mike McIntee and the folks at The Uptake – one of my favorite nonprofits to donate to.
 
Please read the entire article
This new foundation is pretty amazing and your support does not have to $$$ if you can’t afford it - they have other ways for you to help.

Read the whole thing

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