Some years ago, a building a few doors down from my apartment collapsed on a construction crew, crushing a few of the workers. One of the big TV network affiliates sent a camera crew to get witness reactions. I approached the reporter and explained that he should talk to my immediate neighbors who had been fighting the building’s landlord for years and had actually won an injunction against him after their own building had been structurally damaged. The reporter looked at me like this was the craziest thing on earth. Then he said, “That’s not what happened. I’m the journalist, and you are not.”

The story he filed consisted of superficial man-on-the-street reactions to the terrible “accident.” The tragedy wasn’t really an accident, but a predictable outcome of a for-profit t housing system built on cutting corners and exploiting labor. That didn’t matter for our TV news reporter who has gone on to win several awards for his ability to deliver lines in front of a camera.

Throughout my life, I’ve had several similar experiences where I’ve witnessed something happen firsthand and corporate media contorts the incident in a way that has little to do with the truth. Maybe you have gone to a protest where the police rush the crowd, beating people with impunity. Shortly after you check the news reports and learn of the “violent protesters” who “clashed” with the cops. My experience with the TV reporter was that kind of scenario.

The Indypendent is so different from conventional journalism because it belongs to its readers and writers and the various social movements that inform its reporting. In some neighborhoods, the red and white boxes hailing “A free paper for a free people” and the stories contained on the newsprint therein are as much a part of the streetscape as graffiti or bodegas. The Indy is not owned by a corporation or big advertisers, foundation donors, or a “vanguard party of the proletariat.” This paper is a real public good, and like all public goods, it needs to be nurtured and supported.

My own involvement with The Indy came after I got tired of the way journalists were covering some of the pitched housing struggles in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Too much of the reporting I was seeing fell on the real-estate-porn side of things (“This new luxury condo tower will leave you salivating”). I have years of writing and research experience, and I’ve read enough news sources to know when a story is lacking critical content. I would send established journalists information on developers’ various conflicts of interest. I was usually met with dismissal. “That’s just the way the world works,” was a common refrain. It was clear that some of these people were so invested in the status quo that they couldn’t deign to cover stories of vital importance. By contrast, when I contacted the Indy asking them to cover these issues, the response was, “Why don’t you write it up and we’ll take a look?”

Starting in 2017, The Indypendent gave me a platform to delve into the type of stories that I would like to read. Corporate landlords and the tenants fighting them, the on going attempts to privatize NYCHA, homelessness, the reactionary anti-shelter movement—these are some of the issues I’ve been able to explore. That some of these stories have been picked up and utilized by tenant and community groups in their campaigns makes this work that much more rewarding.

Like everything else in this society, it takes money to make this happen. I know, I know, these are rough times for all of us. If you are able to contribute anything, please consider supporting this worthwhile project. And maybe the next time a building collapses on your block, you can help us tell the story of what really happened.

Read other testimonies below!

• How the Paper Got Started
• Covering 9/11
• A Young Reporter Finds His Calling
• Discovering AOC
• I Started Covering My Neighborhood
• The Indy is New York
• From Office Manager to Managing Editor