Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
As media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to decline, Brave New Films has stepped up its online efforts to help bring the war home.The weekly Web documentary series, “In Their Boots,” is funded by a grant from the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund (IADIF), produced by Brave New Foundation (BNF) and will be live-streamed beginning tonight at 6 p.m. (CST).
The online show will broadcast a new episode every Wednesday and will feature Iraq and Afghanistan service men and women and their families, who share how their lives have been impacted by these ongoing wars.
Then, in a live forum, the series host, Jan Bender, will interview the participants and lead a discussion that includes experts, service-providers and individual viewers in an interactive discussion of the issues raised. Bender is a veteran of the war in Iraq who served as a rifleman/combat correspondent in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, in 2004 and 2005.
“In Their Boots” Trailer
The idea for the new series stemmed from a conversation between Jim Miller of BNF and a supporter, which Miller documents in an e-mail message sent out to other supporters:
Last summer I got a call from someone who had seen some of our past work. She started off being extremely complimentary about the issues we were bringing to light, marveling at how widely we were able to distribute our short videos to not only inform, but to motivate viewers to take action. She then asked if Brave New Foundation would be interested in taking on a large project to help amplify the stories of a group of Americans whose efforts and sacrifices weren’t being acknowledged. She warned me that it would be a difficult task since it only directly affected less than 1 percent of the US population.
Being a bit headstrong (even in my middle age), I said that no task was too difficult. If there is an injustice, we could tackle it and help to make it right! But what she wanted was difficult. The task we took on was to tell the stories of service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the past several months, as we gathered our staff and began to meet the men and women who have served, we knew that it would be a privilege to be able to share the stories of these service members and their families so that the other 99 percent of the U.S. population can better understand what is happening to our troops when they return from war.
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