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It's Monday, November 15th.

Ralph Klein has big plans if he's re-elected in Alberta's provincial elections next week. Alberta's Premier says he's seriously thinking about a new ministry to streamline the bureaucracy that has piled up in Alberta. Mr. Klein calls the new ministry, ‘The Ministry of Restructuring’.

Currently, the Ministry of Restructuring’s primary mission is to rid the province of those responsible for all the duplication and dead weight that’s collected in Alberta’s government over the past 11 years. That’s why, if Premier Klein is re-elected, he’ll be the first one to go.

This is the Current.

Greensboro Massacre – Reverend

It happened more than twenty five years ago. But for many in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina---November 3, 1979---still feels like yesterday. It was on that day that the Communist Workers Union Party sponsored an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally and parade. In the middle of the event, a caravan of nine cars filled with Klan members and Nazis drove up and opened fire. Five people were killed and ten injured. Four TV crews captured the killings on film, but the accused were twice acquitted of any wrongdoing. Eventually, in a federal civil suit, members of the Klan, the American Nazi Party and the Greensboro police were found jointly liable for one of the deaths.

But 25 years later, it's a day that still divides the community. Harold Greeson, a lawyer who defended a Klan member, described his version of events.

Over the weekend, community and faith-based activities in Greensboro commemorated the 25th anniversary of the shootings. Friday night a service was held at Genesis Baptist Church. A public march through city streets took place Saturday. NPR reporter Jennifer Curry brought us some sound from those events:

Reverend Nelson Johnson was at the march this weekend - he was also wounded twenty-five years ago. Today, he hopes to heal the scars left after the massacre, and he hopes to do it with the first ever Truth and Reconciliation Commission held in the United States. Reverend Nelson Johnson is the president of the Greensboro Justice Fund and he was in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Greensboro – Against Commission

Not everyone in Greensboro thinks a Truth and Reconciliation Commission will help the city put the past behind it, and move forward. Florence Gatten is a Greensboro city council member and we reached her at her home this morning.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

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The Current: Part 2

Photojournalist Documentary

The images of death and human misery are difficult to forget. But without the work of photojournalists we might never truly understand the horrors of war. Photojournalists are a breed apart from their counterparts in other media, because they can never keep an arms length from their subjects, or the story. They have to be right there, right in the heart of the violence - risking, and sometimes losing, their lives because they want to show the rest of the world exactly what it is they are seeing.

Greg Kelly and Eric Foss of CBC News Sunday are preparing a documentary on the world's top photo journalists. They gave The Current some of their tape for our own version, called The Eye of the Beholder. Greg Kelly joined Susan Ormiston in studio.

To hear more of their words, and of course, to see their indelible images, watch for it on CBC News Sunday. We'll keep you posted on the air date.

Photojournalist Factboard

The American Civil War was the first war to be extensively photographed. And one of its primary chroniclers was a wealthy portrait photographer named Matthew Brady. Though he didn't take all of the photos himself, he assembled a group of photographers, some who traveled with various battalions---you might call them the first embedded journalists of modern warfare.

A Matthew Brady photograph was characterized by its informality, and its gory reality. He did not shy away from showing the true horrors of the Civil War---the impossibly young faces of frightened soldiers, the filthy campsites, the rotting bodies studding a pock-marked battlefield.

Matthew Brady's first public exhibit was in 1862, a year into the Civil War, and it featured stark photos from the vicious Battle of Antietam--and the country was shocked. The New York Times wrote that, "Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them on our dooryard and along the streets, he has done something very like it."

During the four-year American Civil War, Matthew Brady invested about 100-thousand dollars of his own money in photographing and collecting pictures from the front. He assumed the US government would want to purchase them for its own permanent record. In the end, Congress granted him 25-thousand dollars, far less then his enormous debts, and most of the photos became lost or deteriorated while in storage.

As for Matthew Brady, he became an alcoholic and died in a charity ward of a hospital in New York City.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

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The Current: Part 3

Kingston Penitentiary Segregation Cell

As you may have heard on the news, the actions of a few guards at Canada's most notorious prison -Kingston Penitentiary- are under investigation. This comes after inmates in the prison's new segregation unit - called the dissociation cells - allege they are being abused. Two of the inmates alleges the abuse amounts to torture. One inmate's complaints have now initiated a judicial review.

Despite being threatened with further harassment, several of the inmates did speak to CBC News about what was going on in the unit. Maureen Brosnahan is with CBC News Investigations. She spent several months looking into the allegations. She interviewed dozens of sources including inmates, staff and the prison warden. She joined us in our studios.

Segregation Expert

Being isolated in segregated cells can have devastating effects on a prisoner's mental health. Doctor Stuart Grassian is a psychiatrist who has been studying the consequences for more than two decades and has written extensively on segregation cells in prisons. We reached him in Boston.

Music Bridge

Artist: Ray Montford
Cut: CD1 “May It Begin”
CD: “The Early Sessions”
Label: Softail Records
Spine #: ES04CD

Last Word: Greensboro Music

Earlier in the show, we told you about the Greensboro Massacre - in November, 1979, labour activists held an anti-Ku Klux Clan parade in North Carolina.

At 11:23 in the morning, a caravan of nine cars filled with Klan members opened fire on the crowd. Five people were killed and ten injured. We ended today’s show with a song inspired by those events called "88 seconds in Greensboro", by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark.

Music

Artist: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
Cut: CD6 “88 Seconds in Greensboro”
CD: “Crush”
Label: Virgin Records
Spine #: VL 2333

Listen to The Current: Part 3

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