Al Giordano

Al Giordano (born December 31, 1959) is a journalist who operates the Narco News Bulletin, reporting on the War on Drugs, the political blog The Field, reporting on American politics, and the School of Authentic Journalism. Giordano was born in the Bronx and attended Mamaroneck High School in Mamaroneck, New York.

Biography

In 1976, when he was sixteen, he went to Albany and testified before a legislative commission in the state senate against nuclear power, felt completely ignored and concluded that the tactic of lobbying the government was futile. He was arrested for what would be the first of twenty-seven times on May 1st, 1977. When he was twenty and living in a cabin in Rowe, Massachusetts, running the Rowe Nuclear Conversion Campaign, which ended in the first-ever shutdown of an operating nuclear power plant in America, he met Abbie Hoffman, who called him "the best political organizer of his generation." The two worked together until Hoffman's death in 1989, opposing U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and fighting to save the Delaware and St. Lawrence rivers. Giordano was for a time a prominent media figure in Western Massachusetts. He sometimes worked on political campaigns, notably for senator John Kerry and for the legalization of marijuana. Al Giordano is a musician who has performed with numerous bands[.]^[1]

Narco News

On April 18, 2000, Giordano launched Narco News, a nonprofit news organization, to better inform Americans on the actions of the United States and other governments in the War on Drugs in Central and South America. Narco News features both original reporting and English translations of reports from Spanish-language media.

The Field and political reporting

On December 13, 2007, Giordano launched The Field, a political blog initially covering the 2008 presidential election, and later expanded to include American politics more generally. On June 14, 2008, Giordano relocated from RuralVotes to Narco News.

His coverage includes analysis and predictions of presidential primaries, for which his predictions have been very accurate, calling the winner in 51 of 55 primary contests. In September 2007, Giordano wrote an article in the Boston Phoenix describing how Barack Obama would overtake then frontrunner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.^[2] Vanity Fair commented that "[t]he first to grasp the portent of what was taking shape was the prophet of the Obama paradigm shift, the journalist/activist/online editor/blogger Al Giordano, who, as a student of the teachings and tactics of community organizer Saul Alinsky (whose Rules for Radicals is the guerrilla guide for domestic insurgents), divined the advantage that Obama’s small-donor base gave him against old-school juggernauts."^[3]

Other work

In 1983, Giordano led an effort to defeat a referendum to divert the Delaware River. The referendum was supported by the Philadelphia Electric Company, and was defeated May 17, 1983, by a margin of 58-42.

From 1993 to 1996, Giordano worked as a reporter for The Boston Phoenix. He has also written articles for The Nation, the Evergreen Review, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Utne Reader, American Journalism Review, and the New Left Review. He is also a vocalist and dobro player for the band Zapa-Sutra.^[4]

References

External links

• The Field - Al Giordano's political reporting.