An offhand comment in Robert McChesney's book Rich Media, Poor Democracy mentions a relationship between the ACLU and Big Tobacco.

A search for 'ACLU Tobacco' led to mentions of the name Morton Mintz, who turned out to be a former reporter for the Washington Post. Mintz reported on the 1,000,000+ dollars paid by RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris to the ACLU, apparently in exchange for help arguing against tobacco-related safety labels, workplace restrictions, and advertising restrictions. Of particular interest is the fact that the ACLU had made no comment on these issues before the industry's payment, but promptly began working on them once the check had been cashed.

I might have been mollified if the ACLU had made a statement refuting Mintz' version of the story, or had admitted it, but realized that it had been a mistake and would avoid such shenanigans in the future. Unfortunately, they haven't.

The ACLU does still seem to be doing good work on some critical issues, most notably in fighting off the things Bush, Ashcroft & friends are doing to work around the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections. Is this tobacco-money-for-p.r. move really reason to stop supporting them?

For me, it is. There are plenty of other groups fighting important fights that manage to avoid selling out to organizations as corrupt and malignant as Big Tobacco; in fact, avoidance of such deals means that it's all the more important that I lend my support to such groups.

The clear connection between the tobacco money and the ACLU's sudden interest in the freedom of commercial speech is also troubling, as it creates doubts about the validity of the ACLU's position. Can we believe that the ACLU truly thinks that the freedom of individual speech depends on unrestricted commercial speech? Must ACLU supporters agree that advertisers be free to mislead and manipulate the populace, if we are to retain our rights to speak against the government?

It's a good example of what's wrong with this system / country / world. We have dairy subsidies in place to help farmers stay in the milk-producing business, but we produce far more than we can consume. Milk exported from the US is so cheap that foreign nations can't afford to sell their own domestic milk. Why, then, risk our health with e.coli - grown hormones that create even more milk?

The answer, as with most of these things: short-term profit for the already wealthy. In this case, the chemical industry & its PR firms have used strategies straight out of 20th century munitions firms; sell your product to one farm so that it can produce even more milk, then tell the other farms that the price of milk is going down even further, so they better up their production if they want to make their mortgage payments. A farm would be foolish to get into this race, but the factory farms have never been known for long-term thinking, and the small guys are doing everything they can to tread water, so it's not suprising that some bit.

The real surprise is that most dairy producers aren't biting. It's not clear how much is due to consumer concerns, which have been widely publicized. Surely some enterprising reporter has dug into this?

For some good citations and reasoned arguments, check the Oct 02 issue of Harper's.

Spent yesterday at the Rolling Thunder "down-home democracy" tour, which in Saint Paul happened to coincide with the local unions' regular Labor Day plans.

It was interesting to see how the organizers approached the Blue Collar / Progressive mix. Although the mainstream media likes to divide the population into the smallest possible groups, there are clearly large areas of overlap between the unions, the environmentalist groups, the political reformers, etc. Most speakers didn't go into much depth, but I think that makes sense given the event's billing: a celebration of just-plain regular folks who are working together to make their neighborhood, city, state, country, and / or world a better place.

Between volunteering and being a bit late to the paddle boat / conference room, I missed most of the workshops. I did manage to make the Alternative / Indy media workshop, MCd by Leif Utne of the rag with the same name. The room was packed, and the panelists had a wealth of collective experience communicating outside the mainstream.

My favorite bit came from the editor of Minneapolis' Skyway News, in response to a question about the value of having progressive people put all this work into communicating with one another. Shouldn't we focus on converting the masses, whose worldview depends only on the mainstream media? The answer - Well, no, because progressives have plenty to teach each other, and the lines between alternative and mainstream media aren't always as hard and fast as people tend to think. Some mainstream reporters do look to progressive media for story ideas and information, and some progressive media people do end up working in the mainstream.

Addendum, 1/21/03 - it was on this day that I saw Paul Wellstone for the last time. He looked a little rough - his walk was a little stiff, and he seemed tired from the campaigning - but he was as fired up as ever when he took the microphone, and he still got out in the crowds and talked to anyone who wanted a word with him. One hell of a guy, sorely missed.