Rochester Indymedia has resolved to witness Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearings and trial, first-hand, after observing an ongoing pattern of sloppy and inaccurate reporting of the case by the local corporate media. With the help of a journalist from Boston Indymedia, who was also present on July 1st in Judge Joseph Valentino's courtroom for his rulings, Rochester Indymedia began to notice other disturbingly oppressive patterns developing in Rivera's case, enacted both in the courtroom and in the ongoing corporate media coverage.

Additional Information: A Child in Chains: A reportback from Tyquan Rivera's pretrial hearing | Media Review of Last Month's Pretrial Hearing | Digging for Truth in the Tyquan Rivera Case | Let’s Not Retreat into Cocoons of Expedient Simplicity and Pretentiousness

Audio: Eye-witness e-mail account of police brutality before Tyquan Rivera allegedly shot into police as read on WDKX on February 4th, 2009

Related: AARM Holds Second Event on the Media and Racism | Racism and the Media Community Discussion a Success | Facts about Juvenile Injustice | Activists Against Racism Movement

The Freedom School, located at 630 N. Goodman St., is working to provide education that's centered in it's community and meaningful to urban youth. As part of the summar camp program, students are learning to build houses using earthen achitecture, called Eco-domes.

Right now, students are building a 2-person emergency shelter, which are set up in disaster areas. Later the students will work to build a full-sized house using the same process. I talked with George Moses, the director of the Freedom School, about the project, it's goals and the larger vision of the Freedom School. The Freedom School is part of the larger Freedom School project of the Children's Defense Fund.

The fourth edition of the Rochester IMC newspaper has hit the streets! Get yourself a copy, or better yet get 10 copies and distribute them to your friends. You can find the IMC paper at the Anti-War Storefront at 658 Monroe Avenue, or at various locations around town. The paper is anti-copyright: please make many copies!

• Online PDF of the paper
• Printer-ready PDF

On Sunday, June 28th, a military in Honduras removed the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya from office. Zelaya was placed into military custody and immediately flown out of the country to Costa Rica.

Since then, Honduras has been in a state of military rule. President Zelaya attempted to re-enter the country on Sunday, July 5th by flying into the Tegucigalpa Airport, but was prevented by the military blocking the landing strips. Over 100,000 people rallied to support President Zelaya and greet him when he entered the country. They were met by Honduran soldiers who fired machine guns into the crowd, as well as tear gas and other "less-lethal" weapons. 19-year-old Obed Murillo was killed at the scene.

Recently, Rochester Indy Media interviewed journalist and media critic, Jeff Cohen. Mr. Cohen was the founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), a media watchdog group offering documented criticism of media bias and inaccuracy. He appeared as a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC usually challenging the right wing commentators on their biased and inaccurate information.

In the interview, Jeff Cohen speaks about the increasing importance and influence of independent media, his views about the corporate media model and issues that need the public’s attention.

Video: Watch the interview!