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 Editorials | Issues | October 2006 
Slain Journalist Remembered as Courageous Activist
 T.W. Farnam - Newsday.com
| "Haven't seen too many bodies in my life - eats you up - a stack of nameless corpses in the corner."
- Brad Will |
Brad Will, a New York City journalist and activist, went to Oaxaca, Mexico, to report on killings he feared would go unnoticed by the world, his friends said Saturday. His death Friday at the hands of paramilitaries focused attention on the city that has been held by workers for several months.
Will, 36, of South Williamsburg, was killed while reporting for the independent media organization Indymedia.org. Friends described him Saturday as a talented poet, singer, filmmaker and writer dedicated to exposing injustice.
Will was shot in the abdomen while filming a demonstration in Oaxaca, where he had been writing about workers who were trying to oust the provincial governor by occupying buildings and barricading streets, said Brandon Jourdan, 27, a friend from Williamsburg.
'He never thought about the danger of the situation as much as the necessity of getting the truth out there,' said Dyan Neary, 25, a friend and fellow freelance journalist from New York City now living in Hawaii. 'That was what he lived for. He didn't see himself as being any different or having any privilege.'
About 100 supporters gathered Saturday night for a candlelit memorial for Will in front of the Mexican Consulate. Tearful mourners focused on the ongoing violence in Oaxaca and the irony that Will's death may have been spurred Mexican President Vicente Fox to send in police. 'That means a lot of people are going to die,' said Josh Bregman, 31, of Washington Heights, who just spent two weeks in Oaxaca. 'The people I talked to were determined.'
Will typically spent months working 50 or 60 hours a week as a stagehand and lighting engineer in order to finance his trips to places such as Goiania, Brazil, where he recently documented families brutally evicted from their homes, Jourdan said.
Will's last dispatch to the Web site from Mexico, on Oct. 17 - written in his trademark poetic style, filled with dashes - described the death of protestor Alejandro Garcia Hernandez, 41, who was shot in the head. Will accompanied demonstrators to the same city morgue where his body now lies, according to published reports.
'Haven't seen too many bodies in my life - eats you up - a stack of nameless corpses in the corner,' he wrote. Will is survived by his parents, Howard and Kathy Will, of East Troy, Wis., and three siblings: Wendy of California, Christy of Chicago and Craig, of Japan. |
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