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Danny Schechter - ColdType

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210<br />

are not ones we can count on. We will live with the legacy of<br />

these crimes for a long time with many homeless, out of work,<br />

and on the edge of losing hope.<br />

I am affected, too. I have been doing this type of work for<br />

a long time as a member of an independent media world that<br />

has survived for many decades living off grants and the generosity<br />

of funders and donors. It is hard to keep going “in good<br />

times,” but near impossible in times like these when major<br />

mainstream media outlets are faltering and folding. You don’t<br />

do this work to get rich. You do it in the hope that readers,<br />

and in the case of films, viewers, will find it and then find it<br />

of value.<br />

My own work, nurtured in the routines of high school journalism<br />

in the 50’s, driven by the underground press in the 60’s,<br />

rock radio in the 70’s, TV producing in the 80’s, and independent<br />

filmmaking and media trouble-making ever since is barely<br />

hanging on, hoping against hope that it will, against all odds,<br />

find an audience and incite concern and demands for change.<br />

I am creating media about a financial crisis that I am living!<br />

And If like it and learned from it, find the energy and sense of<br />

social responsibility to tell others and spread the word. That’s<br />

our only hope for survival<br />

My cry for economic justice is just that, one more discordant<br />

voice in the wilderness, but sometime, the winds blow<br />

it into places and minds that will learn from it, resonate with<br />

it, and pass it on. I do this work in part because I don’t know<br />

what else to do, in part because of an injunction in that song<br />

by Leonard Cohen, which is now part of the soundtrack of my<br />

life, to keep ringing those bells “that can still ring,” and trying<br />

to let the light in.

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