I'm in New York City right now, here for the memorial of my friend and colleague, Brad Will, who was assassinated in Mexico recently, while filming the peoples struggle in Oaxaca. Brad was a well known and well loved media activist.

There are two days solid of memorials, concerts, processions through the streets ala New Orleans funerals, complete with giant puppets and marching bands, plant -ins at the community gardens Brad helped to save from development, and 'encuentros' on the current situation in Oaxaca. Below is an excerpt from a speech I gave in front of the Mexican consulate, shortly after Brad was killed...

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Shot in Oaxaca, Mexico on October 27th by plain clothes policemen. They were standing up against statewide oppression. They were standing for new possibilities.

Last week my friend and fellow media activist Brad Will was killed in service, killed for pointing a camera at injustice, killed for daring to side with the people who were rising, killed in the zocalo of Oaxaca, killed in the midst of possibility, killed on the same day as his companeros Emilio Alonso Fabian and Esteban Lopez Zurita, killed by a police officer in plain clothes, killed with two shots to the stomach, just to make sure, killed so they could say in the media that there is anarchy down there in oaxaca and it's time to send in the troops. killed so we would question. killed so we would answer: "ya basta" - enough. enough killing. enough lies. enough corruption. enough brutality. enough silence. enough. ya basta!

Brad wrote, in one of his last dispatches:

"what can you say about this movement -- this revolutionary moment -- you know it is building, growing, shaping -- you can feel it -- trying desperately for a direct democracy

-- it is a point of light pressed through glass -- ready to burn or show the way -- it is clear that this is more than a strike, more than the expulsion of a governor, more than a blockade, more than a coalition of fragments -- it is a genuine peoples revolt -- and after decades of PRI rule by bribe, fraud, and bullet the people are tired --

you cannot mistake the whisper of the lancandon jungle in the streets -- in every street corner deciding together to hold -- you see it in their faces -- indigenous, women, children -- so brave -- watchful at night -- proud and resolute"

Brad had a big open heart, a heart that met you one on one, and a heart that opened to the wider wounds of humanity. He has died, as have so many before him, and more, I fear, to come. But if we take courage from their lives and their deaths, if we are inspired to pick up and carry on their unfinished work, in whatever way each and every one of knows is our own true path, then they will not have died for nothing. I know that would be their greatest wish - that our tears will water our parched hearts and grow into the fruits of action, of possibility, of continuing the great unfurling that is happening around the world, building power from the ground up, not waiting around for someone to do it for us. It can grow inside your own heart, at any moment, when you choose to be autonomous. Choose to be free. Enough is enough. Ya basta!

-Velcrow Ripper

more info on Brad Will at: