What are Women of Color Media Makers and Community Organizers Ready For?

[RADICAL WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA: This is an image that was created from the results of an extended 3 hour conversation between women of color media makers and community organizers at the 2008 Allied Media Conference. The participants created a collective definition of what radical women of color media is and what it aims to do. Post will be updated with full text of the poster.]


What are women of color media makers and community organizers ready for?


This is the first in a traveling series of blog conversations leading up to the *Eleventh Annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, July 16-19, 2009* and based in the definition of radical women of color media offered here. Please join the conversation by commenting and inviting others to participate.
READ ON...

Our media expands possibilities and incites dialog. It heals, inspires, builds confidence and radical love. We use media to time-travel, to communicate past barriers, to be heard and to share survival strategies. When we come together we make zines, tell truths, start blogs, record CDs and videos, come up with plans and make moves on them. We use media all year round to open up space, to consider creative solutions, and to build networks of support.


The theme of the 2009 AMC is We Are Ready Now: Media and Creativity to Transform Our Selves and Our World. AMC organizers are Ready. We are ready to organize the best Allied Media Conference ever. We are ready to accept your session proposals and registrations. Detroit is so ready for you! INCITE! Track advisors are ready; they've already begun inviting all the women of color they know making new worlds out of media and started fundraising to bring more people from their communities.


We Are Ready Now. The inspiration for this theme comes in part from Alexis Pauline Gumbs' poem Archaeology of Freedom (performed at last year's keynote), which ended with audience members repeating "We are ready now" to each other, before the final line: "We are ready. For now."


Inspiration also comes from a strong shift many of us feel is in the works or at least possible. Things have happened that were previously unthinkable. This image on Radical Women of Color Media represents what Alisa Bierra called "a paradigm shift and a practice of opening up definitions, which hopefully gives us the imaginative space we need to imagine new strategies."


If WE ARE READY NOW, what are we ready for?



A specific goal? A fluid process?



How do we know "ready" when we see it?



How do we express readiness?



What are you personally ready for?

What are women of color media makers and community organizers ready for?


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An active, thriving, decentralized network of women of color centered blogs informs these questions with our own process of questioning and answering, speaking and listening. Online, women of color blogs have become intersection points for queer, trans, immigrant, disabled, survivors of violence, sex work and poor communities to connect through all our many intersections and create a shared analysis that centralizes our communities needs in terms of media access.

Join these conversations on women of color blogs which inform and inspire my questions about readiness:


My Ecdysis: Who You Calling Radical? Conversations Between WOC and RWOCand part 2
guerrilla mama medicine: isolation, communities, and international womens day
Hermana, Resist: healing by any means necessary (nonviolently)
no snow here: media against sexual violence
She Who Stumbles: The Revolution Will Not Be Published
guerrillamamamedicine: raven's eye

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Other Blogs that will be hosting these conversations:
Mamita Mala
Vivir Latino
Flip Flopping Joy
INCITE! Blog
No Snow Here

...add your blog to the list in the comments. If you've already posted the image, link us!

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p.s. i edited this whole post in full HTML...yes I'm a diva! but from now on i'm editing all my posts in wordpress then pasting them over here, sharing advice to ya'll to make it easier to post on the AMC site.