Forward Radio was well represented at the 2023 Grassroots Radio Conference in Charleston, WV Oct. 20-22 (https://www.2023grassrootsradioconference.com/) On this week's Access Hour, we begin the roll-out of some of the highlights from the conference, this week featuring the keynote address given by Amy Goodman on the morning of October 21st. Amy Goodman co-founded Democracy Now! as an alternative to what she and others perceived as an insular and ineffective mainstream press that was beholden to corporate sponsors. Goodman anchors the Democracy Now! daily one-hour broadcast and is also the program’s executive producer. Under her leadership, the show became the fastest growing independent news source in the United States, boasting syndication on more than 750 radio and television stations by the first decade of the 21st century.Goodman’s investigative journalism in East Timor and Nigeria earned her the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, an award often referred to as an alternative Nobel Prize, marking the first time a journalist had been so honored. In 2016 her coverage of protests against construction of a pipeline in North Dakota led to a criminal trespass charge, after state prosecutors claimed that she “was not acting as a journalist.” The trespass charge was soon dropped, but Goodman then was accused of rioting. The case was dismissed by a judge.​ She coauthored the best-selling books The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004); Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006); Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008); and Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America (2016).