A Grassroots Media Conference Report Back

Table of Contents

1.    A Better Media by Andalusia Knoll
2.    The GMC Experience by Ryan Dennison
3.    Films and Forums by Jade Meshesha
4.    Democracia Ya! by Sakura Sanders
5.    View from the Top by Halimah Marcus

Over the past few years, a movement has been growing; a movement of people who recognize that another world is possible, but not without a better media. This movement, known as Media Justice, demands a media that addresses issues of structural racism, economic injustice, and other forms of oppression, while challenging corporate control of our communications systems. On our trip to NYC we visited media hubs like the Public Access TV station, Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, the New York Independent Media Center and People’s Production House. We met with people historically excluded from media who are challenging their marginalization by producing their own radio and TV news.

During a panel moderated by Betty Yu, of MNN and Mag-Net (a national network of Media justice organizations), Ravi Ragbir of Families for Freedom said that the problem is not that immigrants are excluded from the media but that they are demonized and held responsible for a myriad of problems, such as swine flu, crime, job loss, or hospital bills. Through his work with the Community News Production Institute (CNPI) of People’s Production House, Ravi produces radio reports that air locally on NYC’s community Radio station WBAI and nationally on Free Speech Radio News, challenging those stereotypes and digging deep for the true story.

Another panel, organized by Hye-Jung Park of the Media Justice Fund, focused on those who are not just marginalized from media access but completely shut out from it: the 2.3 million people behind bars. The incarcerated and their families have difficulty accessing the most basic tool of communications: the telephone, because of cost prohibitive calling rates. This made me think of the Thousand Kites Project, that uses WMMT’s radio signal to connect families and their incarcerated loved ones through the radio airwaves, and the program, Holla to the Hood, which reaches through the walls of many of Virginia’s correctional institutions.

As we at Prometheus move forward with our fight to expand people’s access to the airwaves, I hope that we can work with groups nationwide, like those at the GMC, fighting for media justice who will use the radio airwaves to tell their own stories.

The GMC Experience
By Ryan Dennison

“She is the one who’s there but yet invisible.” – Domestic Workers United

Greetings, I’m known as Ryan from Tohatchi, New Mexico, of the Navajo Nation. Being from a rural area I thought attending the Grassroots Media Conference in New York City, the cultural hub of our nation, was exciting. You had the cat killers there, dog whisperers, save maggots dot net, (joking) and various groups fighting the system (hell yeah!). But what really spoke to my consciousness was the people. People with different issues and backgrounds, but who share common goals, congregated at the GMC, uniting us and giving us a chance to relate to each other. That’s what it’s all about: having something in relation, something inside you that says, “Hey, that happened to me, I want to help so it doesn’t affect my family and friends!” For example, at one of the panels, a group known as the Domestic Workers Untied expressed the hardships of trying to survive with a low minimum wage income without any benefits. This relates to everyone who tries to break the boundaries of race, color, class and rank.

I realized the similarities between our goals made the obvious point, in one way or another, that we all have one goal and one struggle. No matter how different or special we think we are, we all are connected to this common struggle; this one struggle of surviving and building a better community. We have to open our eyes in order to see the “invisible”, and that’s what GMC helped accomplish: allowing those who want,to see, hear, comprehend and understand to do so. I walked away always knowing that this knowledge will stay in my heart and in my education.

And there, you have it! A commentary from the Native American guy off the Navajo reservation, The Intern at Prometheus Radio Project. PEACE

Films and Forums
By Jade Meshesha

Though I was unable to gallivant around New York City with the rest of the Prometheus crew on Friday, I had a wonderful time at the Grassroots Media Conference! A workshop I attended, entitled “The Obama Phenomenon: Moving From Symbolism Towards Cultural Transformation and Resistance” and led by the Hip Hop MediaLab, took a look at the 2008 race to the white house and offered a forum for attendees to analyze the strategies used by the Obama campaign which can be applied to smaller grassroots campaigns (like ours!). We focused on learning to harness personal stories and encourage political involvement by a large array of people and were provided with some online tools. I was also able to watch a selection of youth-made films from the Listen Up! Youth Media Network's annual online film festival, “The Very Important Producer Awards (VIP2008)”. My favorite was the hilarious “Wake Me Up Later”, by the ChicagoVocational Career Academy.

Democracia Ya!
By Sakura Sanders

On the first day of our New York media tour, we went to Democracy Now's studio in Chinatown to see the show recorded live. The show itself was Democracy Now at its best; It had activist-generated content on mining issues in Appalacia, international news about war and how wars affects policies at home.

Directly following the show, we did a workshop with the interns of Democracy Now! About fifteen ambitious volunteers, mainly from the "Democracia Ya! (en español)" crew, crowded in a room with the Prometheus team to share ideas. We did presentations about our work, showed a video and talked about some of the Spanish language stations that we work with. The DN! interns then told us about their work, expanding Democracy Now's reach by offering part of the show in Spanish. Their work was impressive, with 230 radio stations around the world offering the headlines in Spanish, and goals of expanding their reach even further into countries such as Guatemala. We were also impressed to hear about how they were looking for ways to make their relationship with these stations deeper, perhaps offering more services and thus making the relationship more reciprocal. Meeting this group was especially exciting because of Prometheus' desire to link up Spanish language radio stations in the states and beyond, opening up many possibilities for future collaborations!

View from the Top
By Halimah Marcus

Nan Rubin, one of Prometheus’ Board Members, was kind enough to set up a tour of the PBS transmitters on the 78th floor of the Empire State Building. Besides getting a kick out of the sheer size of the 30 kilowatt transmitter and its slightly smaller, DTV alter-ego, standing ready to take over in June, I also learned a thing or two about the media landscape of New York city.

Over thirty years ago, all of the major television stations in New York City transmitted from the top of the Empire State Building. When the Twin Towers were completed, they acted a veritable wall to the T.V. and radio signals, creating a broadcasting “blind spot” on the other side of the buildings. All of the stations terminated their leases at the Empire State Building and moved to the World Trade Center. However, one station, CBS, forgot to cancel their lease, inadvertently allowing it to automatically renew. Unwilling to have a gaping hole in their broadcast, they ate the cost of paying two leases, moved to the WTC and kept their transmitter on the Empire State Building as a backup.

When the World Trade Centers fell on September 11th, all of those stations were knocked off air. Luckily, due to a mere administrative oversight, CBS was back on air in minutes, transmitting from the Empire State Building. Other stations were off air for hours until they were able to send their feeds through satellites and other smaller working sites. A more detailed description of these events can be found here.

I was in Philadelphia on September 11th, 2001, and sat at home flipping through the stations watching the coverage. Every station on my TV was carrying the story, and so the damage that the attack did to New York City’s media infrastructure never occurred to me. I didn’t realize that when the towers fell, the television screens of New Yorkers without cable went black.

Now, all the transmitters are back on one building again. I see this as a glaring example of the need for diversification of our urban media. At some point in our lives, we’ve all been told not to put all our eggs in one basket. We’ve also been told to learn from our mistakes. We cannot always predict exactly why we will need to rely on our smaller, independent media outlets, but we have and we will again. Although this conversation has been geared toward television stations, radio is in the same situation; over a dozen FM stations transmit from the Empire State Building. Low power FM has a unique ability to react quickly in the event of an emergency, in places where monolithic, more cumbersome media outlets may fail.