Allied Media Conference

Presenters: Andrea Ridges, Jon Blount, Starlet Lee and Jenny Lee of Detroit Summer's Live Arts Media Project; Andrea Ritchie and Remy Kharbanda of Research for Revolution; Isa Gonzalez & Paula Rojas of Sista II Sista

Join us for a continuation of the much-loved People's Statistics workshop at AMC 2007. Collectively, we'll share strategies for developing and using survey-based participatory research in campaigns around education, school safety, and violence against young women. We'll analyze struggles and successes through role-playing and talk about how to make sure we address the intersections of race, gender, gender identity and sexuality based oppressions in our research & organizing. And we'll brainstorm ways of overcoming challenges together!

Followed by discussion with Mabel Williams

NEGROES WITH GUNS tells the dramatic story of the often-forgotten civil rights leader who urged African Americans to arm themselves against violent racists. For eight years, Williams and his family lived in exile, first in Cuba and then in China. In Havana, Williams began to broadcast a 50,000-watt radio program called "Radio Free Dixie." The radio show fused cutting-edge music with news of the black freedom movement and Williams’ editorials, which, among other things, urged blacks not to fight in Vietnam. According to the filmmakers, NEGROES WITH GUNS helps to “restore Rob and Mabel Williams to their rightful place as important civil rights figures who defied the white power structure without the protection of large numbers or the attention of television cameras.

Presenter: Adrienne Maree Brown

For organizers, skillful facilitation might be the most important media tool we can cultivate. How do we create the spaces where the diverse members of an organization, community, family, etc. can come together and communicate in a way that is respectful and effective and that draws out every person's best ideas? Come spend time with Facilitation Evangelist Adrienne Maree Brown and learn how to make any meeting, gathering or event burst with energetic input and creative outcomes. This workshop will cover: Your Facilitation Personality, Best (and Worst) Practices, Asking the Right Questions, and Ground Rules. This will be a popular education so expect to participate and co-create!

Presenters: Palestine Education Project, Hook Productions, MNN Youth Channel

The US-Palestine Youth Solidarity Network (YSN) will host a live video-conference with youth in Palestine. Participants will be responding to the media they have engaged with in parallel workshops in Palestine and at the AMC. Both workshops will have introduced digital stories, music videos, radio spots, and other media created by youth in both the U.S. and Palestine and this live video conference will be a chance for them to hear each other's thoughts and questions. YSN partners in Palestine proposed this idea so that their young members can see how the digital stories and music they've created during YSN workshops are used and what impact they have.

Presenters: Malkia Cyril, Center for Media Justice; Edyael Casaperalta, Center for Rural Strategies; Joshua Breitbart, People’s Production House; more TBA

This session is an open conversation about the challenges and opportunities that urban and rural communities face. Our goal is to explore avenues of rural+urban collaboration via dialogue, imagination, and media. In one word, our goal is to UNITE! Our conversation will feature three components: 1) small group discussions about the challenges and opportunities of urban and rural, their differences and similarities, and how media contributes to amplifying challenges and creating opportunities; 2) stories of successful rural+urban collaborations from panelists and the audience; and 3) writing/live-blogging of insights and action steps that emerge from the conversation. Whether you are from a rural or urban community, or somewhere in between, come UNITE and make our efforts stronger for all.

Our bodies, our voices, our experiences are evidence of a life that dominant culture denies. The mostly white male leadership of the Disability Rights Movement marginalizes women of color, while disability is ignored or misunderstood in other social justice movements. We advocate for the integration of a radical disability politic in feminist of color agendas. What would our community look like if we had space to begin acting collectively? In this caucus, disabled women of color come together to envision a world where our individual and collective voices are heard, through blogs, zines, videos, art, poetry, and other creative venues. It's open to all disabled people and allies but centered on the experiences of disabled women of color. From here we will organize and collaborate on a project that explodes our experiences with the non-profit industrial complex, the colonization of our bodies, our histories, onto paper.

Presenters: Sacajawea Hall, Radio Rootz (New York City); Alexis Neider, PS 155 William Paca School (New York City); Tim Dorsey, Youth Media Learning Network (New York City)

This workshop is geared towards an audience of youth media-educators, working in a variety of media types (audio, video, print, web or other) and settings (community-based organizations, afterschool programs, schools, media arts centers, and more). We will look closely at samples of youth-produced media, viewing footage of young people engaged in media-making, then conduct role plays for educators as learners. All will be invited to reflect upon their teaching practices, to approach their work as learners, and to consider how they might support one another and other colleagues moving forward as educators teaching youth media.

Presenters: Zane Scheuerlein and Marisol Becerra Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Open Youth Networks

Google maps enables users to embed pictures and videos. By adding pictures and videos that tell the stories of the issues in communities across the globe, one can network and exchange strategies with other groups. In this interactive and hands-on workshop, we will show "The Cloud Factory," a youth produced video about environmental racism in the Mexican-American neighborhood of Little Village. We will also present our mapzine and teach others to contribute digital content and essentially use Google maps as a tool of social action and community organizing. Workshop participants will create personal stories about the environment through digital media and embed them onto Google maps.

How can we use media to build coalitions among black and Arab communities? What could black/Arab solidarity mean? Organizers from Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Arab American Action Network, Palestine/Israel Education Project, Arab Women Active in Arts and Media (AWAAM), and Detroit's black/Arab solidarity group will come together in this caucus to share their work and collectively answer these questions. Everyone interested in black/Arab coalition building is welcome.

Presenters: Andrea Ritchie, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence; Moya Bailey, Be Bold Be Brave Be Red; Jesse Muhammad, The Final Call Newspaper; Jordan Flaherty, Left Turn Magazine
Moderator: Brownfemipower

How did the story of the Jena Six spark mobilizations that came to be called "a 21st century civil rights movement" in the media? How did the 7 young black lesbians who were attacked in the West Village of NYC in 2006 come to be called a "wolf pack of lesbians" in the media, resulting the imprisonment of 4 of them? This panel will feature the journalists, bloggers and grassroots activists who helped bring both of these stories to national attention. We will breakdown the process by which progressive media institutions fueled mass mobilizations in support of the Jena Six, and also offer an analysis of how and why such mobilizations did not occur in support of the New Jersey 4. We will look at the strategies developed by Women of Color Bloggers to raise national awareness of the New Jersey 4 without the backing of most progressive media outlets. Finally, we will explore what both of these cases have to teach us about the kind of media movement we need for the future.