Bradley Roland Will (June 14, 1970 – October 27, 2006) was an American activist,

videographer Videography is the process of capturing moving images on electronic media (e.g., videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage) and even streaming media. The term includes methods of video production and post-production. It used ...

and journalist. He was affiliated with

Indymedia The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seatt ...

. On October 27, 2006, during a

labor dispute A labor dispute is a disagreement between an employer and employees regarding the terms of employment. This could include disputes regarding conditions of employment, fringe benefits, hours of work, tenure, and wages to be negotiated during ...

in the Mexican city of

Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...

, Will was shot twice, possibly by government-aligned paramilitaries, resulting in his death.

Early life

Brad Will at the Dreamtime Village Corroboree

Will was born in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

, and raised in

Kenilworth Kenilworth ( ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Warwick (district), Warwick District in Warwickshire, England, south-west of Coventry, north of Warwick and north-west of London. It lies on Finham Brook, a ...

. He graduated from

New Trier High School New Trier High School (, also known as New Trier Township High School or NTHS) is a public four-year high school, with its main campus for sophomores through seniors located in Winnetka, Illinois, United States, and a campus in Northfield, Illinoi ...

in 1988, then attended

Allegheny College he, תגל ערבה ותפרח כחבצלת , mottoeng = "Add to your faith, virtue and to your faith, knowledge" (2 Peter 1:5)"The desert shall rejoice and the blossom as the rose" (Isaiah 35:1) , faculty = 193 ...

Meadville, Pennsylvania Meadville is a city in and the county seat of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. The city is within of Erie and within of Pittsburgh. It was the first permanent settlement in Northwestern Pennsylvania. The population was 13,388 at the 2010 censu ...

, where he earned a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. Beginning in the summer of 1991, he was a regular attendee at the

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is a school of Naropa University, located in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It was founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, as part of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s 100-year experim ...

, the summer writing program of

Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself as B ...

and was a teaching assistant to

Peter Lamborn Wilson Peter Lamborn Wilson (October 20, 1945 – May 23, 2022) was an American anarchist author and poet, primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control. During the 1970s, Wils ...

(a.k.a. Hakim Bey). In 1995, after spending time at

Dreamtime Village Dreamtime Village is an intentional community in West Lima, Wisconsin, United States, whose residents participate in various permaculture, hypermedia, and sustainability projects. Dreamtime was founded in 1990 by Madison artists mIEKAL aND and Lyx ...

in southwest

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, he moved to

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

where he

squatted Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...

on the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

before moving to

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Williamsburg is a Neighborhoods in Brooklyn, neighborhood in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, bordered by Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Greenpoint to the north; Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Bedford–Stuyvesant to the s ...

Activism

U.S.

At Naropa, Will participated in a satirical

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

piece designed to mock the Colorado socially conservative Christian community and protest a proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution which sought to limit

gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 3 ...

. Will pretended to marry another man in a ceremony conducted by

, a

Universal Life Church The Universal Life Church (ULC) is a non-denominational religious organization founded in 1962 by Kirby J. Hensley,James R. Lewis, The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions' (2001), p. 769-70.U.S. Department of the Army, ''Religious Re ...

-ordained minister. The mock ceremony included a procession of their wedding party in drag, parading in front of a

Promise Keepers Promise Keepers is an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization for men. It originated in the United States, but independent branches have also been established in Canada and New Zealand. Promise Keepers describes its goal as "to bring abou ...

event in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

. While in New York City, Will became involved in the squatters movement of the

, and also became involved in what has become known as

freeganism Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans ...

, an effort to live outside the mainstream economic grid by means that includes collecting and eating food discarded by stores and food manufacturers. He fought the removal of

community gardens A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...

, including the Chico Mendez Mural Garden on the Lower East Side, named after Brazilian activist

Chico Mendes Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes (; 15 December 1944 – 22 December 1988), was a Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader and environmentalist. He fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and advocated for the h ...

. Will was an active participant in protests across the country, usually for various

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

and

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

causes, and was involved with

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

movements such as

Earth First! Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group that originated in the Southwestern United States. It was founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar. Today there are Earth First! groups around ...

and the Fall Creek Tree Village in the

Willamette National Forest The Willamette National Forest is a National Forest located in the central portion of the Cascade Range of the U.S. state of Oregon. It comprises . Over 380,000 acres (694 mi2, 1,540 km2) are designated wilderness which include seven ...

outside

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...

. Will gained some notoriety for his efforts to prevent New York City from demolishing a squat on Fifth Street in the Lower East Side. When construction crews arrived at the building to begin taking it down, he stood atop the roof waving his arms. His efforts stalled the demolition, but the city eventually leveled the building, which housed a café, a meeting place and a performance space. Will later talked about the building in a program produced by

Paper Tiger Television Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) is a non-profit, low-budget public access television program and open media collective based in New York City. Currently operating from Brooklyn, PPTV was co-founded by media activist and Academy Award nominated doc ...

called "ABC Survives, Fifth Street Buried Alive".

We were making a home out of a crumbling building. The interior of the building needed help, and we brought that building back to life. It was standing strong. And the only reason it was standing was because people were living in it. If we had let it go the way the city wanted it to go– they tore out the stairwell, they punched holes in the roof. The water– the rain was rotting that building from the inside out. We replaced the joists. We rebuilt the floors. We sheet rocked the walls and made the building alive. What did they do? They killed it. That building is over a hundred years old. It was standing strong.

Will was a proponent of anti-corporate media and he hosted his own program on Steal This Radio, a Lower East Side-based

pirate radio Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially w ...

station. In 1998, he and partner Hazel spoke at the Ecosaloon, a weekly activism forum held on Tuesday evenings at the Wetlands Preserve nightclub. Their presentation connected the struggle to defend the forests of the Pacific Northwest with the fight against the gentrification of Manhattan's Lower East Side. After helping to organize

Buy Nothing Day Buy Nothing Day is a minor event of protest against consumerism. In North America, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden, Buy Nothing Day is held the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, concurrent to Black Friday; elsewhere, it is held the followin ...

and a

Reclaim the Streets Reclaim the Streets also known as RTS, are a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterise the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalisa ...

protest in

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...

, Will traveled to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

for the

1999 WTO protests The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Con ...

, and was a longtime participant in

Direct Action Network Direct Action Network (DAN) was a North American confederation of anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian and anarchist affinity groups, collectives, and organizations. It grew out of the Seattle chapter which had been formed to coordinate the nonviol ...

(DAN) and the

Independent Media Center The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seatt ...

(IMC) of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. In August 2001 he joined participants for a roving exploration of usable food found in

Tribeca Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stre ...

dumpsters; they were accompanied by a TV crew from

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

's ''Life 360''. In his latter years, Will began recording documentary videos, releasing them on the internet through the

network of websites. During the summer of 2006, Will continued videotaping demonstrations, including a June 15 protest at the Mexican Consulate in response to a police incursion into a teacher's plantón (encampment). On June 29 he video-recorded and helped organize a protest against

Victoria's Secret Victoria's Secret is an American lingerie, clothing, and beauty retailer known for high visibility marketing and branding, starting with a popular catalog and followed by an annual fashion show with supermodels dubbed Angels. As the largest ret ...

at the

Manhattan Mall Manhattan Mall is an inactive indoor shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade wit ...

in response to the resources used to print the high volume of mail-order catalogs which the company mails out. He also filmed a street theater performance by the group A for Anarchy, organized in response to the release of the film ''

V for Vendetta ''V for Vendetta'' is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd (with additional art by Tony Weare). Initially published between 1982 and 1985 in black and white as an ongoing serial in the British antholog ...

''. At the time of his death, he was working on a documentary about

folk punk Folk punk (known in its early days as rogue folk) is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was popularized in the early 1980s by the Pogues in England, and by Violent Femmes in the United States. Folk punk achieved some mainstream success in ...

music.

International

In 2000, while visiting the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

Will attended a protest in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

against the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...

Summit. He later traveled through

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

while participating in

anti-globalization The anti-globalization movement or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist m ...

. He reached

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Chiapas Chiapas (; Tzotzil language, Tzotzil and Tzeltal language, Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, ...

and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

in that trip.

Death

Traveling under a tourist

visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

, Will arrived in Oaxaca in early October 2006 in order to document and film the teachers' strike. On October 27, he was videotaping near a barricade erected by pro-strike protesters when he was shot twice. In the last few minutes of the video Will filmed before being shot, voices speaking in Spanish are heard demanding that filming be stopped and cameras be turned off. In the final seconds of the video a voice in Spanish reprimands Will for not having turned off the camera. In the middle of this statement a gunshot is heard, there is a scream, the camera pans down to the ground and the video ends. Will died while being carried from the area in search of medical help. Two others, Esteban Zurita López and teacher Emilio Alonso Fabián, were also killed. Several others were injured. 26 protesters were ultimately murdered during this mobilization. A

truth commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state act ...

later classified his death as an "

extrajudicial Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding. Politically motivated Extrajudicial punishment is often a fe ...

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the State (polity), state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to ...

". During a news conference on October 29, 2006, Oaxaca

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...

Manuel Martínez said that four men, all local public officials, were being detained in connection with the shooting.

Reaction

Federal Police mobilized

Later on the day of the shooting, the Oaxaca airport was closed to commercial flights as the Federal Police arrived to reestablish government control of the city. The army was also mobilized to provide intelligence support to the police, but not to engage directly with protesters. APPO representatives declared their intention to resist the government's armed response to the crisis. At the beginning of November, violent clashes continued between protesters and police. The government claimed that the Federal Police that entered Oaxaca were unarmed.

Demonstrations at Mexican consulates

On October 30, more than 200 protesters convened outside the Mexican

consulate A consulate is the office of a consul. A type of diplomatic mission, it is usually subordinate to the state's main representation in the capital of that foreign country (host state), usually an embassy (or, only between two Commonwealth coun ...

in New York City to deplore the killing of Will and others and to demand an end to the violence. The protest was organized by the grassroots group named in his honor, The Friends of Brad Will.

Committee to Protect Journalists

The

Committee to Protect Journalists The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an American independent non-profit, non-governmental organization, based in New York City, New York, with correspondents around the world. CPJ promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journa ...

sent an open letter on October 30 to the Mexican

attorney general In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

calling on the

Mexican government The Federal government of Mexico (alternately known as the Government of the Republic or ' or ') is the national government of the United Mexican States, the central government established by its constitution to share sovereignty over the republi ...

to launch an investigation into Will's death. The statement said that David Vega Vera, special independent prosecutor, had begun gathering information related to the case.

Commemoration and memorial

Brad Will-Poster at the NYC Halloween Parade

On November 11 and 12, 2006, Friends of Brad Will organized a gathering in New York City to commemorate Will's life. The event included a memorial service at St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery attended by 250 people, as well as speeches and concerts.Anderson, Lincoln.
Brad Will gets a loving, raucous, anarchist sendoff
", ''The Villager'', November 15–21, 2006. Outside the church was an array of

freegan Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegan ...

food as well as a pile of Will's personal possessions, from which attendees were urged to take. It was followed by a procession through the East Village described by '' The Villager'' as "jubilant and rowdy" and culminated in marchers breaking into the former

Charas/El Bohio CHARAS/El Bohio Community Center was a neighborhood organization and squatted community center in New York's East Village between 1979 and 2001. Background Public School 64, the 130,000-square-foot building in Manhattan's East Village tha ...

, inside which they briefly cavorted, scrawled

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

, twirled fire

bolas Bolas or bolases (singular bola; from Spanish and Portuguese ''bola'', "ball", also known as a ''boleadora'' or ''boleadeira'') is a type of throwing weapon made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, used to capture animals by entang ...

and cycled.

Brad

David Rovics David Stefan Rovics (born April 10, 1967) is an American indie singer/songwriter. His music concerns topical subjects such as the 2003 Iraq war, anti-globalization, anarchism, and social justice issues. Rovics has been an outspoken critic of ...

wrote a song about his life and death, titled 'Brad'.

References

External links

MP3 Edited version of Democracy Now coverage of Brad Will’s life and death
from The Mike Cannon Show – IndyMedia radio.
Friends of Brad Will
activist group created in his name.
One More Martyr in a Dirty War: The Life and Death of Brad Will
by Matthew Power, Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2007

a friend's tribute.
Remembering Brad Will
Kate Crane, Brooklyn Rail
Memoriam and tribute
from American poet

Lisa Jarnot Lisa Jarnot (born 1967) is an American poet. She was born in Buffalo, New York and studied literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1994 she received an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. She has lived in San Fra ...

, October 28, 2006.
''Fragments of a Shattered Hope''
essay by Brad Will on the squatter movement in Sohno,

(reprint of an article that appeared in ''

Boog City Boog may refer to: __NOTOC__ People Surname * Adolf von Boog (1866–1929), Austro-Hungarian Army officer who served in World War I * Horst Boog (1928–2016), German historian * Rik van den Boog (born 1959), Dutch football manager and former player ...

'', Issue 24, April 2005).
BradWill.org: website set up by Will family
prior to his being shot, dated 24 October 2006

Video

*
Brad Will In His Own Words
archival Footage of Will discussing the importance of community media and the struggle against NYC demolition of a lower east side squat (via

Democracy Now! ''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long American TV, radio, and Internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live each weekday at ...

)
Brad Will 1970-2006
friends remember Indymedia journalist and activist killed in Oaxaca (via

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Will, Bradley Roland 1970 births 2006 deaths American anarchists American environmentalists American people murdered abroad American reporters and correspondents Anti-corporate activists Allegheny College alumni Deaths by firearm in Mexico Green anarchists Assassinated American journalists Naropa University alumni New Trier High School alumni History of Oaxaca Protest-related deaths 20th-century squatters People murdered in Mexico Assassinated activists Murdered anarchists People from Evanston, Illinois People from Kenilworth, Illinois People from the Lower East Side People from Williamsburg, Brooklyn