Radio and Print Coverage From Austin Green Scare Event
Mar 6th, 2008 by Will Potter
KVRX radio also aired the audio of my talk (the intro is from a student). Apologies if some parts are confusing, because I was using a projector for images and that doesn’t translate well for radio. But anyway, here it is.
Also, The Daily Texan covered the event, and had a great article about it by Katie Petroski. An excerpt:
“It doesn’t matter how you feel about environmental issues because at the end of the day, recklessly labeling people as terrorists puts everyone at risk,” he said. “At the point where any reasonable person doing legal activism within the community has to pause to think about the risk of being labeled a terrorist, it’s gone way too far.”
Groups that choose to distance themselves from illegal or questionable activities do not save themselves from being targeted by corporations with a political agenda, Potter said. He accredits this targeting of eco-terrorists to a culture war between environmental and animal activists and industrial capitalists.
[They also ran a pretty hilarious photo, in which, as a friend said, I look "like a very, very angry person." I prefer to think it looks like I'm summoning armies of the undead.]
A question, though. I get plenty of hatemail, on a regular basis, and see plenty of blog comments about “you’re a terrorist” blah blah blah. But one comment on The Daily Texan article takes the cake: What, exactly, is an “asshat”? Does that mean my hat looks like an ass? Or my ass looks like a hat? Or that he would like to wear my… you get the picture.
And ma, if you’re reading, sorry for saying “ass” so many times. Shit, I did it again.
I think it was good that you were called a terrorist. As you have written so well before, that word is used as a scare tactic to manipulate people. The more often the word “terroist” is misapplied, the more often the power for using it as a scare tactic is drained away.
Leave it to Texas. What a hellhole of a place. And don’t even get me started on UT. Armpit of the universe.
there’s only one word for the likes of you, matthew: asshat!
Will, “asshat” is a term of endearment for those with politically confused ideologies. it refers to people wearing their asses as hats (ie. having their head up their ass). in the austin radical community, it is most often reserved for conspiracy theorists and right-wing Libertarian types, as in “Alex Jones is the asshat-in-chief,” or “the 9/11 conspiracy bookstore sells a most peculiar brand of asshattery.” I guess all the good insults don’t make it to DC as fast as they should. I’ve been saying asshat for well over a year now.
anyway, thanks again for venturing southward.
Ha! Thanks James. And children, if you work hard enough, and really apply yourself, one day you can grow up to be “asshat-in-chief.” It’s the American dream.