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2008
Nicolas Lampert: This years AMC topped them all. As always, the conference had great energy and optimism, but what really stood out for me was the incredible range in diversity, ages, and the feeling that women were not just equally represented in the conference, but leading it.
The keynote set the tone for a conference that celebrated not one vision - but many and the closing remarks by Grace Lee Boggs summarized what the conference and the social justice movements of today are all about.
Much thanks, love and respect to the AMC crew for organizing such a remarkable event.
Colleen O'Brien, Ozone House Drop-In Center, Ypsilanti, MI: We had a blast! The programing was excellent and we all took so much information in and will use it with the youth we work with and each other. Thanks to all of you who made this happen. It was truly energizing and beautiful.
Lisa Hoff: I just want to let you guys know that it was THE most well-run, smoothest, most organized event of its scale that I've ever been to. I got so much out of the conference, out of interacting with interesting and knowledgeable people, but it's really easy to forget that what enabled all of that was the way the whole thing was run. You guys did an excellent job in organizing the housing, the workshops, the parties, everything so thank you!
beanqueen: This was my third AMC and it was terrific. Childcare was a million times improved, and "The Art of Awesome Facilitation" workshop was... awesome. The lecture on monuments ("History, Memory and Public Space:Taking Back the Plaque") on Sunday was fabulous. I cried during the U.S. Palestine Youth Solidarity Network video conference. Such an important event and time--I feel so lucky to have been there.
You folks rock!!! Grace Lee Boggs' words are still echoing in my head. Next time I will come with institutional support and will want to bring a youth contingent, hopefully anti-violence organizers.
Lee Ann Shih-Ching Wang: Thanks for creating this space where folks can come together to think strategically about the role of media in organizing, developing political ideas and relationships. I like the workshops I attended because they were developed by folks who are doing work in their communities but also, the actual workshop was a space for folks from all different places to dialogue together. I came with Detroit Asian Youth Project folks and the youth just had a conversation about the conference today and were ranting and raving about it. The exhibition room with all the org tables was great. I wish I could have gone to more caucus sessions and just more of everything in general cause i had such a great time at the conference!
Oh and lastly, I wanted to say that I was in the criminalization workshop ("Undoing 'Crime': Media to De-criminalize and De-colonize") on Saturday and what was really powerful about the conversation was that people weren't just talking about what they already know from their experience, but talking about what we don't know - what society has tried to prevent us from knowing about prisons and "law and order."
Carlos Nunez: I loved it and enjoyed every second of it. Getting to meet all those different people and just showing love. It was great. Thanks for having me and I would love to attend next year!
Jackie Kook, People's Production House: Hope. There are so many images and moments to capture and keep and run away with, but one that is imprinted in my mind is of a girl I met.
She is traveling the world, meeting people, asking them about their dreams and taking pictures of them --pictures of them enacting those dreams, articulating those dreams, or imagining those dreams.
Their dreams could be the kind that they have while they sleep or the kind that happen as fantasies in the day. Their dreams can take them somewhere to escape or to fully be. Their dreams may not ever be able to come true, but may be able to manifest itself in other ways.
Meeting someone who acted on an instinct, who wasn't planning on an end goal, but was being fully present in experiencing her process and other people --that is what AMC was for me. It was a place where people were fully open, ready for action, ready to share, and dreaming. The people there helped me to reconnect with my dreams and hope again.
Thank you! Thank you for providing the welcoming space, the critical framework, and the labor that yielded the fruit of so many dreams!
Robbt, Columbus Indymedia: The AMC was amazing and inspiring and great. It gave me ideas and much needed perspective and lots of great contacts. I really appreciated all of the spaces provided for women and the kids track. It's a shame I haven't been up to Detroit for so long because it really isn't that far.
Mia Henry, Chicago Freedom School: MUCH LOVE to the AMC Organizers!!!!! The Chicago Freedom School folks had a great time. We only wish we could have been there on Friday. The youth that came have been inspired and are already using some of what they learned in our youth leadership council plans for the following year.
Laimah, Arts Engine: The 10th annual Allied Media Conference gets bigger and better every year. This year the program was tight. A full schedule was organized into tracks — the How-to Track, INCITE! Women of Color/Trans People of Color Track, Youth Media Track and more — making for a strong balance of voices.
There were many amazing sessions, one being Tools For Creating An Immigrant Safety Net. In this session artivist Ricardo Dominguez, presented a hacked Motorola i455 phone reconfigured into a lifesaving device for immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and US. This device has many tools built in to navigate the deadly desert border; built in compass, vibrates near water sources, tracks border patrol and more. Find out more about it at the Transborder Immigrant Project.
Other sessions like Undoing “Crime”: Media To De-Criminalize And De-Colonize broke down the corporate media’s role in criminalizing immigrants and communities of color and showed ways to combat it by producing first person stories, forming community radio stations, producing rapid responses to racist media and holding the media accountable for misrepresentations.
There are many more workshops/panels/talks to speak of but all in all this conference was and is vital in weaving media/technology/art/journalism seamlessly with creating real change.
2007
Adrienne Maree Brown, Executive Director, The Ruckus Society: It's barely a conference - more like a growing community that comes face to face to conspire once a year. The participants who come are doing work in their communities all year round and come to share the art and media they've created, as well as learn hard skills from experts in how to elevate their work for the coming year. The AMC is a unique space for leaders to emerge as storytellers - come to witness the power of young folks telling the stories of their communities in order to demand better.
Prof. Emily P. Lawsin, Lecturer II, Program in American Culture & Women's Studies, University of Michigan: The Allied Media Conference was an inspirational gathering of activists, organizers, teachers, students, and community folks from all over the country. I was impressed by the intergenerational audience; they were all incredibly enthusiastic about learning and sharing. I have organized and attended hundreds of conferences in my lifetime, but none have matched the energy and enlightenment that infused the AMC. I have no doubt that both participants and presenters will use the knowledge that we gained to better serve our communities. Mabuhay / Long Live the AMC!
Siyade Gemechisa, Prometheus Radio Project: The media justice movement is evolving as a response to the the blatant marginalization of so many wide and varied community voices throughout the country, both rural and urban. While there are many media conferences held throughout the year in different parts of the country, none approach the issue with as much focus, intention and urgency as the Allied Media Conference. It is the only media conference I've attended that repeatedly maintains its focus on building a more connected and conscious movement for real change!
Dan Medow, Publisher, The Hamtramck Citizen: The AMC provides a showcase for all that is current and progressive and lets all who struggle know that they are not alone.
2006
Jenny Lee, Detroit Summer: The AMC 2006 went above and beyond my expectations for what a national media conference could mean to myself personally and to my organization. In the five years that I have attended the AMC I have seen it evolve from a skill-sharing and networking resource for a relatively homogenous activist community to a space where I see real connections being made across movements and demographics. I see the potential for a media justice movement that supports existing social justice work and also brings to life new movements for justice.
As a coordinator of a grassroots youth organization, the AMC 2006 provided me and my organization with an opportunity to connect with many youth organizations from across the region who are engaged in similar work. Particularly for the youth who attended the conference, the AMC's emphasis on media justice and youth leadership made the conference an empowering experience. It also exposed the youth to stories and ideas and strategies that were relevant and exciting to their lives and their communities.
One youth participant was so inspired by the day of workshops and panels he attended on saturday that he not only wrote a poem about his experience at the AMC but performed it spontaneously at the music show on saturday night before hundreds of AMC participants. Furthermore, the strong presence of organizations and individuals from Detroit at the conference has left myself and members of my organization excited about playing a role in shaping what the 2007 conference will look like. Having the AMC come to detroit in 2007 will provide an opportunity for people within the city to build connections with one another that didn't exist before. It will also allow us to connect with a national media movement and showcase our work to a national audience.
Hannah Sassaman, Prometheus Radio Project, Philadelphia: At the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio, workshop leaders and facilitators offered history, best practices, and proven models – but no cure-alls. For those of us with a foot in local, state, and national policymaking, the need for answers, for strategies that won, burned in our stomachs like an acid. At my own panel I spent time shit talking allies and asking the room – begging it – to get together into awar room. Part of me wants one place where we can all come together with our various strategies for policy wins and success, prioritize those wins and fund them, coordinate them, and set them on the path to victory.
But that doesn’t last. If you are trying to build a media justice and democracy movement with the appropriate technology ethos at its core, you have to start at places like the Allied Media Conference, where no strategy or technology is the only way or even the hot way, the sexy way. There are so many many ways. The organizers there understand that it’s the people we work with and the media they make and how they come to decide that such media is what they want to be doing – that combination of local organizers and space to connect them — that leads to new great ideas like low power FM radio, or like a front of women of color bloggers.
Now that this conference is moving to Detroit, Michigan, easily accessible and in the midst of diverse, well-connected organizing initiatives that cross movements and connect them – I know we’ve created the right petri dish of chemicals for the next intersections of community organizing and media policy. We won’t find one solution but dozens, hundreds, and we’ll use gatherings like the AMC to connect them in important, countless ways.
Looking forward – really looking forward.
Angela Jones, Detroit poet activist: In this digital age, activists are leading a revolution by using technology to affect social change. Detroit is a part of that revolution. It was all too clear at the conference, where Detroiters came out full force. We came to listen and learn. We came to represent, facilitating more than 5 different workshops, as well as blowing up the AMC After Party with such local talents as Invincible, Finale, Velvet Audio, and DJ ‘munk. Even youth from Detroit Summer’s L.A.M.P. shed light on their lyrical talent and stage presence. Everywhere they went, Detroit youth were recognized and greeted with warmth and respect by folks from Philly, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, New York, and L.A. “Hey, Detroit!” fellow organizers would shout, and our youth would beam. For me, it was like a new way of being called Sister by strangers; a kind of politicized Namaste. “The revolutionary within me recognizes the revolutionary within you.” It was a good sign, since next year’s Allied Media Conference will take place here in Detroit.
People are expecting great things from us, as well they should, and they are coming to witness the power that we possess as a community. But this is not merely a sign. It is a wake-up call. When asked what the next media conference theme should be, a L.A.M.P. youth joked, “AMC: Better than the Super bowl”. Detroit is being recognized by others not merely for its new glamour and quaint neo-metro appeal, but for something which it has possessed all along: a fighting spirit, a grassroots, from the ground up mentality, and a collective unity in the face of adversity. We must claim this recognition because, if anything, a revolutionary struggle requires confidence in one’s ability to win that revolution. I think we can; because I see our headstrong and heartfelt potential everyday, walking down the street. (excerpted from an article written for the Michigan Citizen newspaper)
William Copeland (a.k.a. Namaste Brown), Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, Detroit: I am excited that the Allied Media Conference is moving to Detroit. Detroit, Michigan a city maligned in national media as the United States' poorest city, its "blackest" and most segregated, its most violent city or "Murder Capital," and other such labels. The people of Detroit have a vested interest in developing media skills, creating parallel structures for economics and education, and in supporting media that is oriented towards healing and empowering. In Detroit you will find significant communities of those currently most vilified by the mainstream U.S. media: Arab-Americans, Mexicans (U.S. citizens and immigrants), and African-Americans. Detroit has already revolutionized American culture twice by hosting the industrial auto revolution and the Motown R&B sound. The Detroit newspaper strike put an every(wo)man's face to the threat that globalization plays to local control of news media as we saw our fathers and sisters and friends shut down by police and corporate media.
As we face an "Information Age," it is extremely appropriate that Detroit is the place we convene to envision how this information is produced and whose interest it will serve. Detroit is hungry for the language to understand what is happening to it in the city where global economics and local racism mix and mingle. The people on the street, in the hoods, in the coffee shops, and in the jobs know that we need new sources of information, education, and empowerment. I am excited that Allied Media Conference will host conversations with media producers and artists, yes; but also will begin a new relationship with the City of Detroit and its people.
Michelle Lin, Detroit Asian Youth Project: The Detroit Asian Youth (DAY) Project is a community-based initiative aimed at raising the consciousness and leadership among Asian youth from Detroit. We work primarily in the upper northeast side of Detroit, where there is a sizable concentration of Hmong families. For the first time, DAY Project sent a representative to attend the 2006 Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, OH, who brought back many resources and contacts to improve our own youth organizing efforts. We are extremely excited that Detroit will be the host side for the Allied Media Conference in 2007, which will give us an opportunity to both learn more about other media organizing tools from other groups around the country, as well as share our own organizing strategies in Detroit. Specifically, DAY Project is currently engaging a group of youth to produce a documentary/digital storytelling movie about the Asian American experience in Detroit. More and more we are seeing and understanding the value of media literacy and advocacy as a way to foster youth leadership and promote positive social change in our communities.
Elena Herrada, Fronteras Norteñas, Detroit: The conference was excellent! I am so glad it is coming to Detroit next year. We have so many issues and we have one weekly paper, the Michigan Citizen to get the word out on all things... Clearly, we need for people here to have more ways to get the truth than to rely on one medium. If we can begin to figure out other ways to communicate ideas and information, we can change things.
Oral history is one way of doing this, as our little committee has discovered over the years of interviewing elders. It has not only been the catalyst for intergenerational discussions within families, which have not been our tradition, it has created for us what we have so lacked: a common experience. We now understand issues in our community we knew nothing about, such as lack of participation in voting, census response, anything to do with any form of government. We have a much greater understanding of our own behaviors than we did before, and that cannot happen without conversations being held all the time, over and over,until we change the way we think about things. Information is the only thing that can do this, and of course, way to excite people.
So come on with the Detroit conference.
Shea Howell, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Rhetoric, Communication & Journalism, Oakland University: For the last three years we have sent young people and adults to this conference via Detroit Summer. At each event, young people returned to Detroit with a much deeper appreciation of the vital role independent, critical and imaginative young people are playing in creating new sources of media information. Based on the strength of this experience we have worked with the journalism department at Oakland University to help bring this conference to Wayne State University in Detroit. The department strongly supports the importance of providing an urban perspective. We think that young, independent journalists and media activists from around the country will benefit from exploring questions within an urban context. They will be able to benefit from the rich history of Detroit as a movement city that has created a variety of media to support, enhance and enlarge the struggle for justice in our country. At the same time, the Detroit alternative media community will gain new insights, skills and connections from those activists who journey to our city.
Ben Chodoroff, Back Alley Bikes, Detroit: As a young Detroit resident and youth organizer, I couldn't be more excited about the AMC happening in my city next year. I have seen this conference get better and better over the past few years: it has always been a barometer of the media justice movement, and judging by the 2006 conference, we are coming to a turning point. The prospect of hosting the 2007 conference is a much-needed catalyst for Detroit media creators. In a city with such an independent-media deficit, but with so much history of resistance and movement, a conference like this will bring out the best of people's media.
Rachel Parsons, Critical Moment, Detroit: The Allied Media Conference was very valuable to me as a media activist. I attended workshops that not only armed me with practical skills, but gave me a framework through which to view the independent media movement. I was impressed with the many different people that I met at the conference. They were from different geographic areas, age groups, gender expressions, races, and class backgrounds. The diversity of participants that attended spoke to the importance of media makers to all different communities and the important role that we play, and provided a large array of perspectives that really added to the depth of the work that was done over the weekend. I am excited to see the conference move to Detroit next year.
Alvin Hill Jr. (a.k.a. 'munk), Youthville Detroit: I had just gotten done working a 14 hour day, gone to play a gig, gone home to get a few hours of sleep, gotten up, worked a 12 hour day, and gotten in my car to drive an hour and 15 minutes or so to Bowling Green Ohio to play at the Allied Media Conference. I was exhausted, not sure what energy I would have to play and worried about staying awake on the ride home. Then I walked into the bar . . . I was completely overwhelmed and revitalized by the positivity and strength in the room . . . I was wired even after I got back to Detroit that morning. All I could think about is having that energy to share with Detroit . . . in particular the youth. Having grown up in Detroit and living here now, I have felt that we are a very misunderstood city with incredible things to share with the world. What I think we need is for our youth to have a healthy understanding of how to use and the power of independent media. We (Detroiters) have a great deal to give and get from the Allied Media Conference . . . it is a good pairing.
Nandi Comer, Inside Out Literary Arts Project, Detroit: Educators, organizers, journalist and people just interested in hearing a different viewpoint came to Bowling Green last June and showed that there is a very progressive spirit in this country that challenges messages portrayed in mainstream media today. Whereas companies and organizations through mainstream media are conveying messages that prioritize a culture of consumerism, the Allied media Conference created a space for media-makers that attempt to counter these ideas. This conference creates a space for those involved in media to share information about their projects, methods and endeavors. As an educator constantly seeking to develop new methods that engage youth in the classroom while still maintaining intellectually challenging material, I found the conference provided a space for myself and colleagues to become informed on how to use media in the classroom in a way that is productively engages youth. I am please that Detroit has been earmarked as the location for the 2007 session. Detroit has a strong community of alternative media makers and it would be a great location to create dialogue and to also challenge standard mass media producers in the city. I can’t wait for next years conference.
Sterling Toles, Detroit artist and musician: The AMC provided a wonderful opportunity to explore and consider the myriad of ways in which media can evoke progressive social change. Having a place in which the components and constructs of media are examined lays the groundwork for what could potentially lead to the restoration of our greatest social tool. The group that I attended the conference with left feeling awakened to the possibilities of a collective voice constructucting a healthier social model for media. Detroit will be a great place for the conference to continue, being that it is a much more expansive experience than the media generally portrays. Detroit is the perfect backdrop to illustrate how media is most often the artist of social perception, and how the voice of the people needs to regain control of the brushes.
Trevoy Z. Ross, Critical Moment, Detroit: As a life long Detroiter I think it is important that the Allied Media Confernece is coming to Detroit. Detroiters have a history of creating independent media, that have each been consistantly and systematically taken over by corporate interests. This has been muting the voice of the everyday person. Therefore the information has been unbalanced. Detroiters are longing for a better way to get their voices heard. I think hosting the Allied Media Conference will be the catalyst for new and progressive media alternatives to the current corporate controlled atmosphere of mis-information.
Owen Mundy, Your Art Here, Bloomington, Indiana: Its impossible to rank all the great things about the Allied Media Conference because the whole experience is so fulfilling. The top of my list would consist of, making like-minded connections, seeing what creative methods are being employed by others in the quest for social justice regionally and in larger contexts, and its important to remember that the AMC is not only awesome for those in the pursuit of DIY know-how, but also the dissemination of knowledge and inspiration that we just won't find anywhere else besides independent media.
A.C. Thompson, Polk Award-winning investigative journalist, San Francisco: The AMC is great because it enhances the skills of very bright indy media-makers -- bloggers, zinesters, podcasters, radio hosts, etc. -- and it brings those folks together face-to-face, fostering collaboration. While the corporate media steadily dumbs down the public discourse, AMC participants are busy generating smart stories, interviews, and essays.
Gavin Leonard, Elementz: The Hip Hop Youth Art Center, Cincinnati: When I went to my first AMC in 2003 I was impressed by the number of progressive folks getting together just 45 minutes from my hometown in Northwest Ohio. But as an organizer working in communitites of color in Cincinnati, I was disappointed by the lack of diversity both in people and ideas. Since then, I have had the opportunity to watch and work with the conference planners as they have actively addressed the need and opportunity to create a more vibrant and inclusive space. This year's conference was proof positive that the AMC is a vital resource for a new generation of media makers and community activists working for change.
Adrienne Maree Brown, The Ruckus Society, Oakland, CA: What was amazing to me was that at the 2005 Allied Media Conference, Gavin Leonard, Josh Breitbart and I sat at a table and started thinking through how to strengthen the AMC's commitment to media justice. And as an advisor to the AMC 2006 organizers, I felt constantly held and valued in my input. The 2006 conference really opened the space to shift the AMC to be for more people, to bring necessary media skills into impacted communities.
Ora Wise, Palestine/Israel Education Project: At the Allied Media Conference, I was able to connect with some of the most skilled and visionary art, education, and youth workers in the country. Through our workshops, we were able to share with each other the tools we have developed and explore opportunities for collaboration in a way that we could not have otherwise. This allowed me to build the capacity of my own collective, the Palestine/Israel Education Project (PEP), by linking with people who have technical and media skills and resources that our project needs to implement our educational vision. PEP is locally based with a vision that connects the local to the global and a goal of distributing our learning tool kits and workshop ideas across the US. The AMC plays an important role in our process of achieving this.
For almost a year now, PEP has been a part of building the vision for a US-Palestine Youth Leadership Institute and at the AMC we were finally able to meet face to face with key youth organizers, artists, and media makers who can help make this happen. Sitting in a circle of 20 or so people the last day of the conference, we shared our work in different cities- from LA to Cincinnati to Detroit to Brooklyn- and then laid the foundations of what is growing into a truly national collaboration of artists and youth organizers making the connections between occupation and racism in Palestine and here in our hometowns.
It was also a self-reflective space- the organizers of the AMC were clearly open to examining ways in which the conference could be strengthened and different directions it could go in. I felt that my needs and ideas were valued and taken into account by the conference planners. This facilitated a process of the conference becoming more of a movement-building gathering, an encuentro as the Zapatistas say, than the more conventional conferences which involve passive audiences and boring lectures. There was an excited feeling of community- people learning from each other, getting to know each other, making connections in a warm atmosphere and with the support of the AMC organizers.
Jessica Duda, Associate Director of the Center for Social Media at American University: The eighth annual Allied Media Conference from June 23-25 brought together an energetic mix of independent media makers, educators, and activists. Unlike most media conferences, the participants ranged from high school students to retired experts across a variety of ethnic, racial and international groups.
2005
Debbie Rasmussen, Bitch Magazine: Of all the indie media events, the AMC is the only one I wouldn’t miss. Reflecting a refreshing sense of inclusiveness and accessibility, it connects everyone from grassroots media activists to more conventional publishing folks, all of whom share a passion for creating and supporting independent media. I’m consistently inspired by the participants and amazed at what the organizers pull off. And though I never think my own love for independent media could get any stronger, it always does after this weekend. Reconnecting with the energy of the lovely Midwest makes the conference all the more powerful.
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Independent Press Association: The AMC is the birthing ground for new independent media [and] an excellent opportunity ... to put a finger to the wind and determine what new trends in independent media will be.
M. Szuberla, Collingwood Arts Center, Toledo, Ohio: The Allied Media Conference brings a major infusion of skills, ideas and inspiration into our community in an accessible format for grassroots groups. In a rustbelt town like ours where almost every media outlet is a corporate conglomerate the AMC provides the vital tools and insights necessary for connecting directly with our communities.
Dr. Gregg Brownell, Professor at Bowling Green State University: The Allied Media Conference is one of the liveliest, most informative conferences I’ve ever attended. The concentration of committed, talented, independent media makers (both presenters and attendees) offers a unique opportunity to learn, network, and take the pulse of independent media during a time when independent/alternative media is greatly needed.
Tyler Norman, Cleveland Indymedia: This conference ... was very different from other activist events I have been to, and in the best ways it was more enjoyable and tended toward discussion and productive strategizing rather than speech-making and pontificating. I definitely look forward to next year’s conference, as well as all of the great projects that this one has inspired me to start.
Emilia Wiles, The Point CDC, The Bronx, New York
: The students from the Point CDC had quite an experience at the AMC. Teens who are experienced in using the arts for social change learned how to incorporate other means of independent media to further their goals of community outreach and organizing. The AMC really encouraged and became a catalyst for The Point.
Jeffrey Nolish, BGSU Student: I have been fortunate to know of and grow with the AMC and those involved in it. To me it’s a homecoming, an opportunity to celebrate the progress of a movement.
Hannah Sassaman, Prometheus Radio Project: Zinesters are notoriously hard to organize. But for some reason they flock to the AMC like it was Mecca.
Jenna Freedman, Coordinator of Reference at Barnard College: I thought it was killer. It was really exciting for me to be there.
Paul Riismandel, Mediageek: This event ... is an amazing meeting of the minds of independent media that keeps growing and improving.
Allyson Davis, Instruction Librarian at Ingram Library, State University of West Georgia: I loved it! I loved it. It was the best conference that I’ve ever been to.
