John Ross, rebel with a cause.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: Rebel Reporting: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists - Book review

Rebel Reporting: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists

Edited by Cristalyne Bell and Norman Stockwell

Hamilton Books. 134 pages. $19.99.

In 2005, John Ross wrote an article for The Progressive on the massive and ultimately successful resistance to then-Mexican President Vicente Fox's vendetta against a popular leftwing mayor. It began: "There are moments here when civil society comes out of its house and fills the streets with righteous indignation, the heat of human bodies fusing into one great fist of frustration."

It's a great lead--vivid, evocative, urgent, mindful of a larger context. Ross, who died in 2011 at age seventy-two, went on to note that moments of resistance in Mexico, where the New York native spent much of his life, are rare "and to be savored." He didn't just acknowledge his lack of objectivity; he reveled in it.

Ross was a participant as well as an observer, a seeker of justice as well as a witness to injustice. The arc of history was forever revealing itself in dramas playing out before his very eyes. He published ten books, including Rebellion from the Roots about the Zapatista uprising, and ten poetry chapbooks. His work appeared in publications including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Examiner, and LA Weekly.

But one of Ross's most important contributions--a true public service--was the series of four lectures he delivered first to students at San Francisco's New College in 2006, and later at colleges and universities across the United States. These are collected, along with Ross's long article on the 2006 murder of Indymedia journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca, Mexico, in a slim but powerful new volume titled Rebel Reporting.

The book has prefaces from its two co-editors, freelance journalist Cristalyne Bell and community radio journalist Norman Stockwell; a foreword by communications professor Robert McChesney; and an introduction by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! All hail Ross as an inspirational figure, then hand him the microphone, to inspire. These are lectures every journalist should sit through, whether or not they choose to follow his example.

Imagine being in a lecture hall as Ross begins his first talk, titled "What Are We Doing Here?," by posing another question: "Who is Josh Wolf?" Wolf, he continues, is a freelance journalist jailed for refusing to turn over to authorities the video he shot of an anti-capitalist protest in San Francisco in 2004. He was locked up for 226 days, the longest...