Alex Pretti (1988-2026)
I've been able to stay awake to get this Web page done. We talked about more than the most recent government murder in Minneapolis. I plan to update this Web page over the next week, so maybe you might want to check back in to see those updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday February 11, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
•
Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
•
WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
•
There's been a murder, a very public murder, and everybody knows about it. Last weekend there was outrage at images of an ICE agent spraying a lot of that special pepper spray they use into the face of a man who was pinned down on the ground. That illustrated the callous behavior of the ICE agenda in Minneapolis. And then, later last Saturday, we heard that another person, nurse Alex Pretti, had been shot and killed on the streets of that city. This was 17 days after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. And again there was video of it all.
This time there can be no suggestion that he was a threat to the federal agents. The New York Times and other news outlets have analyzed the video frame by frame and what happened is unambiguously shown in that video. You can see Mr. Pretti holding his phone in one hand, and holding his other hand up to protect against the pepper spray that the ICE agents are using on a small number of people on the sidewalk. The agents have shoved some people into the street and Mr. Pretti was helping those people to get back on the sidewalk and away from the agents.
Seven masked agents then rush Mr. Pretti and pin him to the ground and one is hitting him repeatedly in the head with the pepper spray can. Another agent in a gray coat reaches over and takes Mr. Pretti's legally carried pistol away from him. At no time had Mr. Pretti taken that gun out of its holster. The agent walks away from the other agents and Mr. Pretti, who is pinned to the ground by them. The agent walking away very clearly has Mr. Pretti's firearm in his hand. Right after that one of the agents standing over Mr. Pretti takes out his own gun and starts to shoot Mr. Pretti in the back at close range while Mr. Pretti is held motionless and unarmed on the ground. Other agents quickly back away from the shooting and at least one more agent joins the first in opening fire at Mr. Pretti. A total of 10 shots are fired. Mr. Pretti is motionless and no agents go over to see if he's still alive and needs help.
On TV they're blurring the action of Mr. Pretti being shot and killed. In my opinion they shouldn't be blurring the critical moment. It's a disservice to the viewers. If federal agents are going to be executing American citizens in the street people should see the actual crime the agents were committing in all of its horror. Sugar coating that kind of violence will only serve to make it less objectionable to people.
The Homeland Security Department has officially said that the incident began after Mr. Pretti had approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun, and that an agent had fired defensive shots.
This statement is clearly at odds with the video we can all see. Department of Homeland Security head Christie Noem and President Trump both immediately lied about what had happened.
The RKBA activists in the right-wing are put out by Trump and his administration saying that Mr. Pretti should not have been carrying a gun on the street at the time of the event of his killing. That's a stance that is hypocritical coming from an administration that has often sided with the gun lobby, and especially for Trump who pardoned all of his January 6, insurrectionists, including those who were brandishing guns in the Capitol Building during their attack. I wonder if this will affect their support for Trump and the rest of the right-wing in November?
The New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen led off his column the day after the shooting by saying, After the past three weeks of brutality in Minneapolis, it should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear - a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.
I think he's right. Fascism is about intimidating people and scaring them into giving in to the people who are threatening them. We're clearly seeing this now. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he is sending these gangs of rogue agents into states and cities that are led by Democrats. They are his private army to suppress any opposition to what Trump wants.
And we're hearing now that the big recruitment drive for ICE agents is finding that many of the applicants can't even read and write at a fifth grade level, and many are not at all physically fit. In my opinion some of these ICE agents are ignorant people who have hate in their hearts and who are reveling in this opportunity to hurt people. This has to be stopped.
•
There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
•
Back to the Back of the Book page
Back to my home page.
The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2026, R. Paul Martin.
