Nick Cooper

Cooper was born in New York and grew up in Manhattan.^[8] He played in bands in high-school and began political activism at that time with the anti-Apartheid movement. He was an English major at Rice University in Houston, where he joined the band Sprawl.^[8]

Sprawl toured the U.S. many times, and released four CDs, breaking up in 1994. Cooper also worked with Rastaman Work Ethic productions in Houston, and produced a compilation CD, Texas Funk (1990), that included Sprawl and other bands.^[9][10]

In 1996, Cooper started Free Radicals.^[11] In 2000, Cooper travelled to Los Angeles to cover the protests against the Democratic National Convention. Coming soon after the 1999 protests against the WTO, many activists were converging there as was the new indymedia network.^{[citation needed]}

Upon returning to Houston, Cooper began the Houston branch of indymedia with other local activists, and began travelling to work with other indymedias.^[12] In 2003 and 2005, Cooper traveled to Brazil^[13] to document somatherapy, with a DVD eventually being released in 2006. In 2004 and 2006, Cooper traveled to Chiapas to study the Zapatista movement and used the information he learned as the basis for a workshop entitled "Nazis vs. Zapatistas, Struggle and Co-optation" which he has facilitated in the United States and Latin America.^[14]

In 2010, Cooper produced the compilation CD Klezmer Musicians Against the Wall.^[15] In 2022, Cooper co-produced Skye Drynan's debut album, Skye's the Limit.^[16]

• Kapitan, Craig (2008-04-02). "Snook isn't the center of the world for Free Radicals". The Eagle, Bryan-College Station, TX. Archived from the original on 2008-04-07.

• Nick Cooper's site
• Houston Indymedia
• Soma Documentary
• Nazis vs. Zapatistas; Struggle and Co-optation workshop
• Grupo de N'golo Houston (capoeira angola)
• Food Not Bombs Houston