Tracks of AMC2010

Tracks are series of workshop sessions connected by shared strategies, issues or identities. Less like “railroad tracks” that would route your interest in a particular direction, tracks at the AMC are more like “animal tracks” that crisscross each other as they travel in unexpected patterns.

The Art and Practice of Disability Justice 

Activists nationally are using art and media-based strategies to develop an analysis and a practice of disability justice.  The goal of this track is to deepen and share those strategies.  This track is open to people with disabilities and allies that centralize a disabled people of color and queer framework. We know that many people may be new to this framework and that is not a problem!  We encourage folks who have thought about disability politically and folks who are just starting to.

Through the Art and Practice of Disability Justice Track, we will deconstruct the dominant media framings of ability and engage in dialogue around what is disabling and the medicalization of the body; we will share and create media that occupies the cultural intersections of race, disability and gender; we will practice inclusion and self-care, exploring the connection between production and capitalism; we will use community performance as a method for community organizing.

Communication Strategies for Ending the Prison Industrial Complex

Hidden immigration detention centers, isolated prisons, prisoner renting, human rights violations, families separated, and a mainstream media that fuels the burgeoning Prison Industrial Complex. This track will strategize around community media response to incarceration. This track is a product of a cross-cultural organizing project in the central Appalachian coalfields called “Thousand Kites” that started with prisoners writing to community radio DJs about human rights abuses and grew into a decade long project.

This track will bring together urban and rural community media organizations to explore the power of narrative campaigns that combine hands on media-making (flip video, radio, web, phone, and viral communication) to organize both inside and outside the prison walls.  Participants will develop grassroots communication strategies by recording their own stories, interviewing others, and develop communication models that bring voices from inside prisons and immigration detention centers to the public.  Radio, theater, web, poetry, and visual arts will all be explored in this track.  We will develop a communication model and platform to continue the work of this track throughout the year.

Indigenous Media and Technology

"Red" Media in the U.S. is often overlooked or reduced to romanticized Hollywood versions of Indigenous identity. Indigenous peoples create and share knowledge through a wealth of media outlets, from art to music to magazines to simply “networking." We use technology to keep our languages alive and for intergenerational education. Through the Indigenous Media and Technology track at AMC2010, SNAG Magazine and 7thGIV (7th Generation Indigenous Visionaries) will build community with a wide network of Indigenous media makers and organizers.  We will continue growing the Indigenous-Palestinian Solidarity Network and exchange media skills and resources from our communities with the rest of the AMC community.

Creating Safe Communities 

We know that police and prisons don't bring liberation to our communities, so we are shifting the paradigm and creating community-controlled solutions to violence! In this track, learn how you can use media to develop and implement transformative anti-violence initiatives in your community. This track has a special focus on using storytelling as a tool for organizing against interpersonal violence. The Creating Safe Communities track uses a variety of media to illustrate how communities are responding to harm without the use of the criminal legal system.

This track is designed to highlight our collective responses to violence, and showcase our creative resources for self-determination, liberation, and community accountability. This track provides a space for artists, organizers and media makers involved in movements for transformative justice, community-based approaches to violence, and PIC abolition to share media-related skills and tools, as well as lessons learned in their work. All sessions in this track reflect the belief that safety is created through personal and social transformation, not criminalization and imprisonment. They also reflect a commitment to intergenerational organizing. Youth and older folks will benefit from the hands-on workshops, discussions, and other interactive sessions in the Creating Safe Communities track.

Medios Caminantes: Medios creando, fronteras derrumbando

Medios Caminantes, es el primer espacio de habla hispana en la historia de la AMC, producto del esfuerzo colaborativo que se desarrolló en la reunión durante el AMC2009, facilitada por Palabra Radio y Peoples Production House.

Medios Caminantes, esta buscando apoyar y avanzar en la promoción de medios de comunicación basados en la organización de la comunidad inmigrante latina y del caribe radicados en los Estados Unidos. Enfocados en construir una red de medios comunitarios hispanos, este espacio promoverá el intercambio de recursos y modelos de organización entre los mismos participantes (Organizadores y creadores). Durante el AMC2010, Medios Caminantes nos enfocaremos en compartir e intercambiar las habilidades radiales en talleres practicos y talleres sobre como usar la radio como herramienta de organización; Medios Caminantes tambien tendrá un foro abierto para compartir los diferenetes modelos sobre como usar la creación de medios para empoderar a la comunidad inmigrante de habla hispana y generar ideas para la continuidad de este espacio.

- - -

Medios Caminantes, the AMC's first Spanish-language media track, was initiated during the Spanish-language caucus, hosted by Palabra Radio and People's Production House during AMC2009 .

Medios Caminantes will support and advance Spanish-language media-based organizing in Latin@ and Caribbean immigrant communities throughout the U.S. With a focus on building a Spanish-language community media network, this track will promote the exchange of resources and organizing models between Spanish-speaking media organizers. Medios Caminantes will focus on the sharing and exchange of radio communication skills with hands-on production trainings, workshops on how to use radio as an organizing tool, and a radio building workshop. Medios Caminantes will also have an open forum to discuss models for using media to empower the Spanish-speaking community and to generate ideas for next year's track. 

Do-It-Yourself Technology 

The DIY technology track is about demystifying the various technologies we need to create media - from video and audio production software programs, to hardware such as cell phones, computers and wireless routers.  This track will provide hands-on opportunities to discover how these technologies work, and to share skills in media production and technology.  Our goal is to make all sessions accessible to anyone willing to learn, whether or not you have prior experience.

This track will also highlight Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS).  Knowing that it can be a challenge to transition to the open source world, we will provide introductions to a variety of programs as well as the FLOSS philosophy and why it's important to independent media makers. We will provide a forum for free software developers to interact with media producers to figure out more points of collaboration.

Radio Active: From the streets to the airwaves

Have you ever wanted to make your own radio? Do you want to report on your own community? Are you tired of being misquoted or ignored by the news media? If you responded yes to any of these questions then this track is for you. Experienced reporters from various news outlets and radio stations will offer trainings on conducting and recording audio interviews, using digital audio equipments, mastering the skills of audio editing, hosting a live radio broadcast and webstreaming and podcast content. Participants will have the opportunity to air completed audio pieces on the Allied Media Conference radio station or possibly host a live broadcast show.

This track isn't just about the technology and skills.  It will feature discussions about the role of radio in social justice struggles, highlighting examples from immigrant rights organizers, youth education justice organizers and many others.  Because some of the most inspiring community radio projects are happening in Spanish-speaking communities, this track will intersect with the Medios Caminantes track to offer some of the technical workshops in Spanish as well as English.  Radio Active participants will learn how they can get involved with organizing to expand access to low power radio through the Local Community Radio Act.

Rad Art: 2-D images for 3-D movements

We will explore the theory of and hands-on techniques for creating effective political art, whether on the streets or on your fliers.  In the silkscreen station and other hands-on workshops, participants will learn how to integrate graphics campaigns into their work.  Workshops will offer models for collaborative design-making processes and cooperative businesses. 

As an integral part of this track, the Beehive Collective, Justseeds Cooperatvie and local artists will partner with a Detroit community organization to produce a mural and a poster series that will go up in and around Detroit.  This project will span the month leading up to AMC2010 and the week of the U.S. Social Forum, following the AMC.  The Rad Art Track will provide a space for artists and organizers of the AMC community to evolve the role of art in movement-building.

Trans & Queer Youth Media 

LGBTQ young people are using digital storytelling, participatory action research, community mapping, and performance and documentary film as tools for healing, education and community organizing. The Trans & Queer Youth Media track is a space to highlight this liberatory work and strengthen the skills and networks among youth organizers. While our analysis is rooted in LGBTQ youth identities, we see ourselves as participants in broader struggles of liberation. The workshops in this track explore a diversity of media tactics and intersections in organizing for social justice. The Trans & Queer Youth Track is a creative grounds for year-round collaboration furthering our growing movement.

Eco-Justice Media Making for Sustainable Communities

Some studies suggest that over the course of our lives “most people spend only 4% – 5% of their time outdoors.”  As youth, what is your relationship to your environment? Do you use media (digital tools, traditional storytelling, graphic and performance art) to connect social and environmental justice?  As adults, how often do you engage in critical environmental and social consciousness through the lens of grassroots media?

In this track, we will create a transformative learning space that promotes self-determination. We will get outdoors and gain inspiration from nature.  We will create media that supports sustainable relationships with each other and the natural world. We will use media to connect with the environment, and as a lens to examine eco-justice issues.

Environmental issues and social justice issues are not competing agendas. It is not possible to care for Mother Earth without also caring for all creation: air, animals, humans, plants, soil, and water. Join us as we holistically redefine sustainability in ways that make sense to us, and move beyond stereotypical roles for people of color in the "green" movement!

Media Policy for Social Justice

The connections between media – its form, content, and who owns it – is inextricably tied to issues of social justice, power, and equity. Media Policy shapes the social conditions we live in, and the Internet has become a part of our daily lives. Communication is a fundamental human right, yet many marginalized communities are denied this right every day.  Of the 37 percent of U.S. adults that don’t have high speed Internet access, the vast majority are people of color, rural, Indigenous, poor, migrants and refugees, and people who speak languages other than English.   In order to create a policy platform that advances the issues we care about – and creates the systemic changes we need – it's critical that our communities develop the capacity and vision to organize and advocate for media policy that advances digital equity and increases racial and economic justice.    

The purpose of this track will be: Surface policy priorities for communities of color, poor, and other historically disenfranchised communities; Define the impacts on these communities; Build policy analysis and advocacy skills; Address media policy issues that people face in their communities and move people towards collective action; Support the development of grassroots leaders based on the lived experiences of those in the room.

INCITE! / To Tell You the Truth 

The INCITE! / To Tell You the Truth Track is a place to build a shared approach to ending violence against women and transpeople of color through diverse media – from blogging and graphic design to zine-making and textile design.  This track will build off the past two years of analysis-building and skillsharing that has taken place through the INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color track, and the groundwork that has been laid by the Speak Women of Color Media Collective and the Cyberquilting Experiment at the AMC.   It will provoke critical dialogue about gender, class and racial violence and the role of online and offline independent media in movement-building. 

This year, INCITE! will collaborate with To Tell You the Truth to highlight the transformative media strategies of m/others & caregivers for family and community-building.  Through this year's track we will build solidarity between movements, organizations and individuals that are headed by and support m/others and community caregivers. We will initiate collaborative projects that use truth-telling in media for healing and liberation.   Through this track the INCITE! Media Task Force will also convene strategy sessions to develop the internal and external communications infrastructure of the INCITE! Network.

Pop Ed Intifada: teaching and learning for collective liberation

This track is a space for youth and adults to share how we have been using popular education in our communities, including but not limited to classrooms, refugee camps, youth centers, and street corners.  Intifada is an Arabic word meaning "shaking off" and is a reference to the grassroots Palestinian uprisings, in which marginalized people developed creative ways of transforming their daily lives and capturing the world's imagination.  Driven by the same need to "shake off" the forces of colonization, displacement, and imprisonment, people from Chiapas to Gaza to Brooklyn continue to develop new strategies and tools for survival and resistance. We believe that all of our communities and movements are strengthened by sharing strategies with each other, and so we are coming together to exchange concrete, hands-on, multi-media tools for popular education around occupation and resistance.

Kids! 

This track is presented by and for kids. We are nurturing the next generation of creative, critically-thinking media makers.  These sessions empower kids to assert their voices and imaginations through media as a form of protest, action and self-expression.  There will be sessions for preteens (ages 8-12) and kids (ages 4-7), as well as all ages.  All sessions should create a safe space for children to work and learn together.  The kids track will be collaborating with Allied Media Childcare, which will be an open, safe space where any young person can hang out.  Childcare will be supervised by caregivers with experience caring for infants (ages 6 months and up). Childcare volunteers will also support parents to bring their children with them to non kids-track sessions and all sessions will be rated for kid friendlieness.