Remembering Three Giants of Authentic Journalism….
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Journalist, organizer and musician Al Giordano.
We live in a digital age in which much of the sum of world history is erased every decade or so as web links break, publications disappear and creators, artists and journalists pass away, and their works available on the internet, if at all, are fractured and buried by sterile algorithms.
In this piece, I write about three of the greatest journalist I ever worked with — and arguably among the greatest ever to put a pen to paper. All left this world too soon, but their work remains extremely relevant in today’s world and beyond — and it should be kept alive for the generations to come.
If you don’t know about them, it’s definitely worth a read. If you do know of them and their great work, then pass the story along to someone who is not aware and who’s world might be expanded by learning of these journalists, their work and the price they paid to tell all of us the truth.
Al Giordano has left us, but his words, work and spirit will inspire generations
Al Giordano, 1959–2023
Al Giordano passed away Monday evening, July 10, 2023, in Mexico. He was at home, in his own bed, with friends at his side, as a hard rain came down on the land.
Al was a gifted journalist and organizer with a keen mind and the courage of his convictions. Those talents, along with good timing from his gift as a muscian and a lot of hard work and lived experience, allowed Al to seemingly see around the corners of history to place himself at the headwaters of seismic world change.
Al did this repeatedly over the decades, in the U.S., Latin America and beyond, often at great personal risk, but never without a sharp sense of strategy aimed at the goal. He was the John Reed of our era. He was there when the world shook to tell us why it was shaking.
Al was an active participant in some of the most consequential moments of political and social change of the last 50 years as an organizer, a journalist or an advisor. As a young organizer in the 1970s, he helped freeze the expansion of the nuclear power industry as part of the “Clamshell Alliance,” which staged successful…