BOSTON/Allston - Prof. Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke on current events in Palestine tonight at Boston University to a crowd of over 300 attendees. The talk was one of a series of events sponsored by Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine as part of "Israeli Apartheid Week" - an week of action being held March 1-8 by human rights activists in cities around the world. Full audio of the event follows below the photo set.

Cambridge, Mass. - Ralph Nader - citizen and consumer advocate, presidential candidate, and author - spoke at Harvard Law School last Tuesday. Nader covered a variety of current topics, from the quality of law school education, the bailout of the corporations, the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the recall of Toyota cars, and more. He was preceded by Bruce Fein, progressive author and Harvard Law graduate 1972.

Cambridge, MA - The Men of Color Task Force hosted the panel discussion “Civil Rights : Policing, Discretion & Race in Cambridge” at the St. Paul A.M.E. Christian Life Center on Thursday, February 11. A follow-up to last July’s controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his Cambridge home, the panel was introduced by interim mayor City Councillor Kenneth Reeves and moderated by Richard Harding. The keynote speaker was Northeastern School of Law professor Deborah A. Ramirez, who is also the executive director of the Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Initiative. Prof. Ramirez joined the other panelists, who included former Cambridge Police Commissioner Perry Anderson, local hip hop artist Imam Firmin, activist and journalist Irene Monroe and Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker.

Cambridge, MA - On the one hand, newspapers like the Cincinnati Post, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Christian Science Monitor are going out of business or becoming on-line only publications. On the other hand, what remains of commercial print, broadcast, and online news, according to authors Robert McChesney and John Nichols, tends to favor celebrity and scandal driven reporting.

BOSTON/Boston Common - On Monday, people in Boston and around the U.S. celebrated the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But while many recognize his civil rights accomplishments and his many campaigns for racial justice, few people acknowledge his radical anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-socialist platforms. He was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, for example, long before it became fashionable.

Remembering this aspect of the man, a group known as Black Cross Anarchists, along with the Stop the Wars Coalition, honored Dr. King by speaking out against war and injustice at the Park Street MBTA station in the north east corner of the Boston Common.

Subrata Ghoshroy, an MIT researcher and former Congressional whistleblower on faked "Star Wars" missile defense tests by government contractors, spoke to a group of 250 striking students in early December at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The students have been demanding that their college stop all military research - part of a national movement towards that end. In his talk, Ghoshroy gave a summary of the history of military funding of U.S. academic research, the significant role MIT leaders played in creating that military-academic complex, and discussed the struggles of the many MIT students and faculty that have protested the military role in higher education since the 1960s.

Cambridge, MA - On November 10, noted historian and novelist Tariq Ali spoke about his new book "The Idea of Communism" at Harvard Book Store to an audience of over 70 people.



The 1 hour 6 minute audio recording of the talk can be played directly on this page or downloaded from the Internet Archive audio service in the free software Ogg Vorbis format. Download the free software VLC Player to play Ogg Vorbis files on your own computer.

Although Open Media Boston staff were busy helping to run the National Writers Union Digital Media Conference last weekend, we did find time to get some photos, audio and video of some of the key events we were involved in. We post our multimedia coverage here in the public interest.

Press Pass TV joined forces with Dongoson Productions to create this powerful video, featuring some of Boston's top talent and an important message for the President.

Cambridge, MA - It was September 2001 and Josh Steiber was in middle school in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The TV footage of airplanes flying into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon made an indelible impression on the young man. Years later, he would carry thoughts of revenge with him as he fought those he was taught to think of as the enemy.