Indymedia, Zapatistas, Durban Shack Dwellers' Movement

Indymedia US: Happy Mother’s Day???
This was the worst article ever, and by that, I mean that it was deceivingly happy when it was in fact sad. It talked about Rosa Franco, a mother of one of the women in Guatemala who had been killed. She will not be able to celebrate Mother’s Day with her daughter, Maria Isabel Franco. The police did very little to help solve the case of the rape and torture of her child, and instead even contaminated the evidence. It really brings a whole other perspective of the government. You trust these law enforcers to do their job, but some of them just don’t care. It made me realize that I really take for granted that our countries officials aren’t as corrupted as others may be.

Zapatistas: Who’s Not Listening
This article’s introduction really surprised me. It gives the impression that The Los Angeles Times is wrong for distorting information, making me automatically think, “The Los Angeles Times is well respected, and you wouldn’t expect them to let this article to be passed through the editor and published!” Thing is, I actually think that John Gibler is overreacting. The author of the article in the LA Times left out a number of things, yes, but also did report on many aspects as well. There is just so much that had gone on, that it’s hard to talk about every single five-hour meeting in every city. What was a problem, however, was that he spoke about Marcos in a manor that discredited him, saying things like, “it’s hard to resist a masked guy in a natty cap and black-and-brown fatigues who smokes a pipe through the hole of his balaclava and rides a black motorcycle.” In this case, Gibler has a point.

Durban Shack Dwellers’ Movement: Photography and writing from Abahlali women
This article is amazing because it starts off with a picture of these women doing their laundry, and follows with a quote from one of them women named Zama. This article is written in their native tongue, but then translated into English. It gives you a reality check about the lives of others in second or third world countries. The worst part of it is that this is normal for them. “They (children) are playing near the dumping place which is very dangerous for them, as well as unhealthy, because there are toxic things in that dumping place. But even though it is dangerous to them they are happy because they are used to this situation.” All of these pictures show an everyday event that makes you at least a bit sad, or grateful that you don’t have to live like that. Diseases are everywhere, and people die of them all the time. One person even said that everyone has TB because of some trash settled in stagnant water that’s sat there for some time. Year after year it never changes, and these people are still collecting water miles away the same way they did ten years ago. And we live in a society where parents give their teenagers cars and we’re able to bathe with clean water every day.