Priya Reddy

Priya Reddy (known also by the name Warcry) is an environmentalist and anarchist activist, filmmaker, writer and political organizer currently living in New York City.

Life and work
As a child, Reddy immigrated with her parents from India to the United States in 1976. She attended college in New York, then Paris, and eventually in the Bay Area, where she studied Cinema and International Relations and also first discovered the writings of the anarchist Emma Goldman which influenced her deeply.

Will, Luers and Earth First!
In May 1998 Reddy worked with Earth First! in an ancient forest defense campaign in Oregon to preserve and protect old-growth forests from loggers. She joined a tree-sit protest in 900 year old about 200 feet off the ground called Fall Creek, where she met and befriended activists Brad Will and Jeff Luers. It was here she adopted the sobriquet WarCry, a conscious response to hippie-like tree-sitters such as Julia Butterfly. Initially grounded due to her inability to climb, Reddy spent three weeks living on a platform neighboring Will's, and went on to live and work with Will on a number of video and print projects. Reddy and Will both worked with the NYC Indymedia collective until a sectarian coup in May 2001 forced anarchists out. In 2000 Luers was arrested and convicted of burning three SUVs in a statement against global warming and in 2001 was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. Reddy has become a vocal supporter of Luers and considers his prison sentence to be excessive, along with the Eugene Human Rights Commission, and several others including Howard Zinn. Reddy gives an explanation of Luers' action in her essay "Burning To Breathe Free".

Media activism
Reddy has been a long time advocate of "democratizing corporate controlled media" and has worked with MediaChannel.Org and other free speech advocacy groups to organize a democratic media movement in the U.S. She was involved with the indymedia project since its inception in Seattle during the anti-WTO riots in 1999. She has since worked as an investigative reporter at the NYC indymedia and also as a documentary filmmaker covering topics ranging from human rights in Palestine to dissent and protest in the United States. Reddy runs her own film production outfit, Warcry Independent Cinema, and organized the first New York anarchist film festival in April 2007 in honor of slain comrade Brad Will, which featured a rough cut of Will's footage from Oaxaca, Mexico called The Revolution Next Door. Reddy has been a radio producer with the Pacifica Network, producing shows on Women's rights movements in the Middle East. Reddy also covered the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005 and the riots at the 2005 European Social Forum in Athens, Greece. Reddy's essay, "My Family Wears Black" about anarchists in the anti-globalization movement appears in a book called Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century.

Protest organization
She has organized protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999, the IMF and World Bank in Prague in 2000, the WEF (World Economic Forum) in New York City, and organized The InterGalactic Anarchist Convention in NYC, the first major anarchist gathering in NYC post-9.11. She was also involved with the the FTAA in Quebec City in 2001, and the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. A feminist, she has organized public support for secular movements for self-determination of Iraqi women, as co-founder of SOWFI (Solidarity with the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq) which opposes a theocratic State. She has also organized What Would Emma Do? - the Anarcho-Feminist Panel at the New York Anarchist Bookfair in April 2007 and is a member of the New York City Direct Action Network. Reddy has been a proponent of property destruction and the black bloc tactic at demonstrations, commenting that "I don't think Seattle would be on the map if it weren't for the catalyzing level of rage that was made visible through property destruction".

Media appearances

 * Breaking the Spell (film) (1999)
 * This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000)
 * "Keepers of the Flame", The Village Voice 2002
 * Jeff "Free" Luers was Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison for Burning 3 SUVs Democracy Now!, July 17th, 2003
 * Jeff "Free" Luers was Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison for Burning 3 SUVs Democracy Now!, July 17th, 2003