It felt like I sat in on the signing of the Declaration of Independence this weekend, as I attended the National Media Reform Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Indeed it was a different kind of Declaration of Independence, in which 1,600 progressives from the United States, Europe and South America declared our independence not from Great Britain but from the thralls of our corporate media.

We were inspired by the passions of a truly who's who of American luminaries, including Ralph Nader; Bill Moyers; Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., Al Franken; Studs Terkel; Federal Communication Commission Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein; Senator Russ Feingold; John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO; US Representatives Louise Slaughter (NY), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Bernie Sanders (VT), and Tammy Baldwin (WI); Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now; Pat Mitchell, President of PBS; authors Naomi Klein and John Stauber; Professor Bob McChesney; and John Nichols, Washington correspondent of The Nation -- to name some I heard speak.

I have returned to Kansas City incredibly inspired by the passion of each of these people as well as by the inspiration and integrity of my fellow conference participants. I am propelled by a renewed energy to stay our current course, rallying each Tuesday for peace and justice on the grass roots at 63rd and Ward Parkway; seeking viable corporate and media boycott targets for a future boycott action; and registering voters so that in the 2004 elections anybody but Bush (ABB) is fairly elected.

My hope is that I am able to cull from my copious notes (48 pages!!!) what was most inspiring about the words I heard and the passions I felt this weekend, and share this with you in my future "Satyagraha" updates.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to attend this conference.

If it is true, as one of the panelist's said today, that Madison is 87 square miles surrounded by reality, then the spark of that very democratic and progressive reality that we kindled this weekend must serve as the fire bell in the night to awaken America. This spark that we kindled this weekend must be the shot heard round the world to emancipate us from our corporate bonds.

A huge gathering of America's finest thinkers unabashedly laid it out on the table before us, in the open, that for there to be a truly democratic America, there must be a truly democratic media. Our gathering held these truths to be self evident, that when our media is concentrated in only a few hands, democratic discourse free from the ulterior motives, spin, and lies of those few vested interests cannot occur. And when this happens our democracy will perish.

The lucid and learned FCC Commissioner Copps twice emphasized that there was no more important meeting occurring in America this past weekend than this conference for media reform. Without media reform, our freedoms will die.

You will not read about this most important of meetings in your corporate press. Our hallowed Fourth Estate will not report upon it. And if we did not already know better, we might ask ourselves why.

A huge gathering of America's finest thinkers unabashedly laid it out on the table, in the open, that the Bush administration is like the Emperor Without Clothes, a charlatan who "bamboozled" America about tax cuts and Iraq.

So poor is American journalism that many of us who wished to seek the truth about Iraq did so by seeking news outside of United States sources, such as the BBC or Canadian Broadcasting Network. Those in other countries know more about what's really going on in America than we know in America.

As one of our speakers said: "Journalism and Democracy are going to share the same fate".

I saw so many heroes this past weekend in Madison.

As I flew over the Midwest I looked over our land. We have scooped out that land with huge earth movers, and molded it to our will. We have concentrated our lives in massive communities, alienated from that land, and not living in harmony with it. These comforts seem to be our choice --this alienation our will.

I suppose, given this is our predilection, we ought to obligate ourselves to make the most of it by in some measure honoring our unnatural impulses with the greatest integrity we can muster.

One of my heroes, John Muir, moved with his family to Wisconsin from Scotland around the middle of the 1800's. My first stop in Madison, after my friends dropped me off at the University for the convention, was to stop at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin to revisit John Muir's "gizmo". There's no better word to describe it.

Muir was a naturalist, an author, a glaciologist, whose greatest legacy was perhaps the founding of the Sierra Club. Yet one can get a glimpse into how the gears of his mind worked by looking at this contraption he built as a young man, now entombed in a dusty and overlooked display case in the lobby of the State Historical Society.

The device is nothing short of a Rube Goldberg cartoon made of wood, full of cogs and gears and wheels whose purpose, as best as I've ever been able to understand, was to wake Muir up, tilt his bed, and open a book to specified pages for predetermined times. It's a pretty kooky device, but it embodies the rationality of Muir's mind in all of its logical gears, by its very presence, complete as it is, it makes note of Muir's steadfast perseverance when completing a plan.

Muir has always been a hero of mine for his wild and woolly connection with nature and I always like to reconnect with this artifact and altar when I'm in Madison.

But I met many other heroes this weekend and I hope I am as steadfast as Muir in relating to you at least some of what these people said as was Muir in completing his invention.

I hope to see you among the grass roots @ 5 PM this Tuesday at 63rd and Ward Parkway as we try to shine some light upon the darkness of America today.