You are cordially invited to a hybrid discussion August 17, 2-4 PM Central US time (19:00 – 21:00 UTC), at the Bluford Library, 3050 Prospect, KCMO, of deterrence without threat, media and democracy, and a proposed campaign to reduce nuclear dangers. The discussion will be led by Spencer Graves, Secretary of PeaceWorks and President of Friends of Community Media. (Zoom credentials below.)
The session will end with an exercise brainstorming and prioritizing topics for research and writing and recruiting reviewers and editors to help sharpen the presentation. In this way, we hope to have a bigger impact with our message without sacrificing a commitment to facts. This is similar to activities planned in our recent application for a grant to support a “Campaign to reduce nuclear dangers“.
Graves spent 6 years in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. He had been on active duty for about 3 months when it came to him in 1967 that the South Vietnamese should have a “home team” advantage. So why did they need foreign troops when their enemies, the Viet Cong, did not? Only one answer made sense to him: We were supporting a totally corrupt government selected for them in Washington, and they were not about to put their lives on the line to defend it.
Correctly or incorrectly, he concluded that the most important information that humans in the US need to be responsible citizens will rarely if ever appear in the major media if it threatened the ability of US multinationals to get unwarranted favors from governments at the expense of their own citizens. He has since published a number of research reports related to this issue.
Audience comments will be solicited August 17 on three topics:
1. Spencer’s fortnightly “Media & Democracy” series syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations, available on Wikiversity under Category:Media reform to improve democracy with background available in the Wikiversity article on Information is a public good:Designing experiments to improve government.
3. A proposed campaign to reduce nuclear dangers with two major activities:
3.1. News reports and videos for social media prioritized and shaped using focus groups of youth and marginalized groups.
3.2. An anti-nuke art contest.
ZOOM credentials:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85785311804?pwd=elMm0EIUwZdddD0q4ZrHT4uhztvexU.1
Meeting ID: 857 8531 1804
Passcode: 123280
Dial
- +1 646 931 3860
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kQBnnw1JH
Copyright 2025 Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license except for photo of newspaper from Wikimedia Commons File:Newspaper reader.jpg: copyright 2008 T. Voekler CC BY-SA