Brad Will, and independent American journalist working for the alternative media site indymedia.org, was fatally shot by Mexican paramilitaries in October, 2006 while reporting on massive civilian protests. Will, unlike many reporters who send reports from their hotel rooms when reporting on violent issues, stood in solidarity on the front lines with the thousands of Oaxaqueños who were protesting the corrupt and brutally repressive state government under Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. In many cases, fierce street battles erupted between the protestors organized under the Asemblea Popular de Los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), an umbrella group that declared itself the de-facto rulers of the state, and paramilitaries in which protestors molotov cocktails were met by bullets. Will was filming one such exchange when he was shot. In fact, you can actually watch the video in which Will gets shot on youtube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=quq4zoeZaqU). I must warn you its quite chilling as you can hear him scream as he get shot and then you see the camera bobbing up and down as people rush him to safety. The reason I included this video was that I felt it was an incredible sacrifice made by a journalist to bring the APPO perspective to light. I found this video similar to Robert Cappa's famous image of a Spanish Partisan being shot (http://www.westga.edu/~preinhar/Robert%20Cappa.jpg) as well as the image of the South Vietnamese Police Chief shooting a supposed guerilla (http://www.abc.net.au/southwestwa/stories/Execution_m931614.jpg) as they show normal people at the moment of death. These are not drawn out scenes, rather they are fast paced snapshots of conflicts and the deaths that they provoke. In other words, the photographer or in this case, the videographer, uses technology to fragment and preserve time into single or multiple framed images, freezing that death in time. I find this video particularly interesting on multiple levels, as Will films his own death. First of all, death is almost never recorded by the dying. Also, I find it strange that death would ever be recorded as it is, in my opinion a very intimate, personal experience. I also find it strange that such a video would be available online given its gruesome content. At the same time, that might just be the point. I mean Will was reporting alongside the protestors in an attempt to get a news story that was more gritty and real than the sanitized perspectives of the conflict provided by mainstream media types. The fact that he was shot and that that event was preserved on film represents the gruesome, violent nature of the conflict as well as the government's brutal reaction to rock wielding protestors. Any way you slice it, Brad Will's death was a tragedy and huge loss to the independent media community.