EW: ACTIVIST MURDERED

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ACTIVIST MURDERED

Bradley Roland Will

On Oct. 27, Mexican paramilitaries shot and killed Bradley Roland Will, a 36-year-old New York City Indymedia reporter who had been filming a citizen revolt against the Oaxacan governor, a subject that has gotten little attention in the U.S. press. Will had lived in Eugene and occupied trees in the Fall Creek anti-logging campaign in the late 1990s, then going by the name "B."

Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos spoke in Sonora, Mex., about the shooting. He said that Will had traveled with the insurgents to various parts of Mexico, including the Yucatan Peninsula, shooting photos and video of their armed struggle. "The government doesn't want to take responsibility for what happened," Marcos said, calling for activists and alternative media to "demand justice for this dead compañero."

Shelley Cater, a Eugene activist, remembered Will as a determined environmental and social justice activist with a wild streak. "He was rail thin, one of those skinny, energetic people that eat all day to maintain a metabolism that resents such things as quiet and sleep," she wrote in an Oct. 28 Indymedia post. "The sad but poetic irony of B's murder is that his goal of shining a spotlight on the atrocities in Oaxaca are now being covered in the mainstream media. It often takes the death of a white American activist for these things to happen. This irony would not be lost on B, who I can imagine saying something like, 'Oh, so NOW you wanna pay attention? Fuckers.'" — Kera Abraham