Ron Ridenour
 Ron Ridenour    (journalist, author, activist) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1939 |
| Nationality | US |
| Interests | COINTELPRO |
"journalist-author-editor-activist for peace, equality and justice" | |
Not to be confused with Ronald 'Ron' Ridenhour, who played a central role in spurring the investigation of the My Lai massacre.
Ron Ridenour is an American journalist and author living in Denmark. Describing himself as a "journalist-author-editor-activist for peace, equality and justice....I have written for the mass media until blacklisted, for the underground and for social media."[1]
After starting to "question American values" during military service, he became politically active in the early 1960s, inspired by the Cuban Revolution. At first protesting against the Bay of Pigs invasion, he joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He was an activist during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign to force the state to allow black people the right to vote. He later supported the Black Panther Party, and other liberation movements inside the United States as well as revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. He was with the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee occupation (1972), where he wrote about their resistance for the Los Angeles Free Press.
Journalism and COINTELPRO
Ridenour began working as a reporter in 1967. He was fired from three dailies (Hanford Sentinel, Riverside Press-Enterprise, Hollywood Reporter) for failing to self-censor his reportages and for union organizing efforts, as well as support for the Black Panthers. The FBI visited at least two work places to get him fired. In the 1970s, he reported for and edited several alternative “underground” weeklies, including the "Los Angeles News Advocate“, "Los Angeles Free Press” and the “L.A. Vanguard”.
Ridenour tells "Soon after the end of the war against Southeast Asia, I obtained 1,000 censored pages of dossiers various National Security Council agencies had on me. FBI, CIA, Los Angeles Police Department's red squad all tailed and harassed me, even to the point of forging tax return papers in an attempt to convince the left and anti-war movements that I was a military spy."[2]
In 1980, he moved to Denmark for personal reasons. Between 1982 and 1996, he lived for a year in Nicaragua and worked for the Nicaraguan Sandinista government; and eight years in Cuba where he translated, wrote and edited for its foreign publishing house, Editorial José Martí, and its news agency, Prensa Latina.
His work has appeard in many publications, including The Morning Star, New Statesman, The Guardian, Playboy, Liberation News Service, Pacific News Service, Coast, Qui, Skeptic, Sevendays, and Pacifica Radio.
He presently writes for Covert Action Magazine.
He has written many books, the latest is "The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert", Punto Press, New York, June 2018.
