The Tatters

Note: Bradley Roland Will, 1970–2006

47 noTe Bradley roland Will, 1970–2006 Everyone kept telling me I should leave town or go into hiding. I was lost but something was holding me there. There was an image I couldn’t get out of my mind. A thin woman curled up fetal and broken, lying in a short pool of water at the bottom of a well. I was haunted. — from “Fragments of a Shattered Hope,” Brad Will’s dispatch from Goiania, Brazil, February 2005 Most of the accounts of Brad’s life list him as an anarchist, activist, Indymedia reporter, freight-train hopper, forest defender, squatter, fire-eater, and poet. Although Brad published very little poetry, he kept journals of poems and ballads. I don’t know how or why, but in the early ’90s Brad found his way to Boulder, Colorado, and to the Naropa Institute (now the Naropa University), where he became an honorary student receiving beat transmission from Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and other faculty. He made lasting friends with emerging poets on the scene such as myself, Eleni Sikelianos, and Akilah Oliver. His legacy as a superhero among anarchists began when he came to the East Village in 1995 and found a place in the 5th Street Squat. When that building was demolished by the city after a fire, he famously broke into the squat to rescue pets and other belongings, and made it out seconds after the first wrecking ball hit. On Wall Street, he pranked bankers by handing out bloody (red-inked) dollar bills, and sometimes 48 he chained himself to trees to defend New York City’s community gardens. “Hey Kids, Stay in Trouble,” was one of his regular signoffs . He was involved in Steal This Radio, a pirate radio station in the neighborhood, and broadcast a live poetry show from a hidden studio where he mixed whale sounds and poetry with Bernadette Mayer or played ballads with the poet John Wright, his close friend from Naropa days. Poetry remained his love, and on the last New Year’s Day of his life, around midnight at the Poetry Project’s annual marathon reading, he read this poem: haunTed There was a woman I am trying to forget An image Slender hands turning the leaves in a garden Looking for squash An image Wiping dirt away from beneath her son’s eyes An image Gripping the door and tugging to make it forced shut I wish I could forget Haunted by her embrace Her bones reverberate with the bulldozer’s growl She is in the dark Waiting for a reprieve For a strange wind to change the sky For the earth to shift and to open 49 Beneath the broken bricks Beneath the twisted pieces of steel Beneath the fragments of a dream In the short pool of water She is snapped between stones Curled fetal not hiding but waiting For the last breath of light The last moments of sunset To kiss her broken face and be reborn And finally to say Goodnight. Brad saw journalism as a means to achieve social justice by giving a voice to oppressed and marginalized people, so he shot footage of grassroots social justice movements in Latin America, which he planned to edit into a documentary. He was very excited when Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia. He was also torn between spending Christmas with his family or returning to Bolivia, where he had been staying with indigenous communities, to witness the inauguration of Latin America’s first native president. Photographs from his birthday party that summer show, behind his glasses, a weariness in Brad’s eyes—but also humor and gentleness. Brad’s “The Last Dispatch,” his eyewitness account of the events that were unfolding in Oaxaca, Mexico, shortly before his murder, can readily be found online. Although his camera was rolling when he was shot, and two arrests have been made in the past eight years, responsibility for his murder has remained controversial. As I write, his family and friends still seek answers from the Mexican government. 50 For a long time, I thought Brad was just the poet’s hero, but I soon found out he was everyone’s hero. His death was mourned globally—in New Zealand, South America, and Europe. European newspapers compared his fallen image to Christ’s. Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista leader, called Brad a kindred spirit, a friend...