Session 2: 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m.

Schedule may be subject to change
Click here to return to Conference Schedule and view other timeslots.

Media Policy for Media Makers
Timothy Karr, Free Press; Eric Klinenberg and Anthony Riddle, Alliance for Community Media

For many media producers, making media is where the action is, while media policy can seem obscure, inaccessible or just plain irrelevant. Yet increasingly, independent media's ability to reach a wide audience, and thus achieve its broader goals of social change, depends on structural policy changes. Policy debates around Net Neutrality, video franchising, Low Power FM and municipal broadband will have a profound impact on independent media makers and will shape our media for decades to come. While crucial these policy issues are often wonky and esoteric, and many media activists don't know how to get involved. This panel will offer a review of pending policy issues - and what these battles mean for the future of OUR media. We will also discuss how average citizens can get involved in media policy activism, overview political organizing tactics, and familiarize attendees with a variety of tools, web sites, and organizations they can tap to support their activism.

Artist Freedom Campaign (AFC)
Omowale Adewale and Terry Nakamur, International Artists Union - G.A.M.E.; and Terry Marshall, Hip Hop Media Lab

With the recent raid against mix tape artist DJ Drama, and other attacks on independent artists by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) it is clearer now than ever that Artist Freedom is key to balancing the power of music and media conglomerates. In order to be free to make and distribute their own music, artists must first be empowered and educated about the tactics being employed by the music industry to suppress independent music. This workshop will shed light on recent attacks against independent artists, and discuss the Artists Freedom Campaign and Creative Commons as potential solutions to empower artists and diminish the power of media conglomerates.

Performance as Creative Resistance
Madeline Nelson, Bicycle Clown Brigade; Barbara Ross, Judy Ross and Christian Guittierez, Time’s Up; and Monica Hunken, member of Reverand Billy’s Stop Shopping Choir
In this panel, presenters will show short video of past rides and initiate a discussion of trickster as activist in historical context. They will then facilitate an interactive workshop of clowning skills with audience members playing the roles of car drivers and bicyclists.

Dead Trees: Small Magazines and Newspapers in the Digital Age
Chris Anderson, The Indypendent; Francesca Fiorentini, Left Turn Magazine; and Juana Ponce de Leon, IPA-NY

With the closure of Clamor Magazine and the collapse of the Independent Press Association (IPA), small, mission driven magazines find themselves confronting a difficult future. At the same time, all "dead tree" publications, from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the NYC Indypendent, are dealing with the digial challenge: what is the relevance and purpose of print in a world of flexible, largely free digital culture. The panel will address: the mission of magazines and newspapers; the specific challenges faced by small, progressive magazines and newspapers; possible roads ahead. The panel will include representatives from a diversity of print publications, in order to better understand the scope of the possibilities and challenges ahead.

Media as an Organizing Tool
Dottie Harle, Gary Levin, Mark Jones, and Jennifer Stearns, Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled
Over the past three years, the Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled (CIAD) has used a variety of innovative video production techniques to enable residents of New York City's adult homes to speak out about conditions in the homes and successfully advocatefor reforms from the NY State legislature and the NYS Department of Health.. CIAD's three years of trial-and-error grassroots video production provides a model for what works and what doesn't work with nonprofessional practitioners, and a case study in why video can be a powerful organizing tool.

Radicalizing the Familiar: Stories, Symbols, and Props for Action
Beka Economopoulos, Winnie Fung, Ian Hart and Jason Jones, Not An Alternative
Not An Alternative functions as a public relations, prop construction and cultural production company whose mission is to assist community groups in the preparatory stages of their mobilizations. The collective will present an integrated multimedia presentation, coupled with a hands-on how-to workshop to take place in the hallway for the duration of the conference. This session will serve as a toolkit for individuals and organizing groups who are interested in guiding the media’s obsession with spectacle toward telling a story that you would like viewers to experience. A focus on advertising, story-telling, theatrical processes and interventions will expose participants to a strategy that treats symbols, stories and events as vehicles whose meanings are available for hijacking.

Slingshot Hip Hop: From Brooklyn to Palestine
The Palestine/Israel Education Project (PEP)
Using a mixture of demonstration and discussion, this workshop will share the work that the Palestine/Israel Education Project has been doing with youth, using Palestinian hip hop videos, lyrics, digital stories, role play exercises, documentary footage, and more to jumpstart conversations around racism, occupation, and resistance. We will explore ways to raise awareness about the struggle in Palestine while empowering youth in the US to articulate and address their own
connections to the issues of colonialism, racism, and militarism. This workshop will provide concrete activity suggestions, hand-outs, and audio-visual materials.

Solidarity, Not Charity: A Youth Media Workshop on Katrina
Tiana Nobile, Michelle Lewin, New Orleans Student Coalition
Dick Darby, Christine Gavin-Lathan, NY Solidarity Coalition
Jeongwoon Eun, Jen Meagher, Charise Sowells, Educational Video Center

The goal of our workshop is to enable youth to dissect and read between the lines of mainstream media. This will be done by discussing the commonly misunderstood and distorted topic of the Gulf Coast as a result of Hurricane Katrina. This will be a hands-on workshop that with analyze the media coverage on Hurricane Katrina and ask the questions, what have you seen? and what does it mean? By addressing the various techniques the media uses in order to propagate a certain image, we will
then explore the issues of our own communities that are exploited or left out or misrepresented for the public. We will consider the exaggerations versus the realities, the lies versus the truths.

Stitch For Senate
Cat Mazza, microRevolt.org
The collective microRevolt is launching Stitch for Senate, an initiative of knit hobbyists making helmet liners for every United States senator. While charitable knitting for soldiers during wartime has been a tradition since the American Revolution, the Stitch for Senate project focuses on supporting the troops by bringing them home. The helmet pattern was adapted from a support-the-troops project of knitting helmet liners for soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repurposing this concept, Stitch for Senate upholds an antiwar sentiment reflected in the midterm elections and holds public officials responsible for representing the electorate when making policies about the war in Iraq. Beginning knitting skills helpful.

Talking to Mainstream Media
Nan Rubin
Indy media isn't always enough—sometimes we want to look for mainstream press coverage, and sometimes they come looking for us. Be prepared!! This workshop will help you get ready to deal with mainstream news media, telling your story, and "managing" your message. It is NOT a workshop on the mechanics of organizing a p.r. campaign or how to write a press release—it WILL help you understand how the media works and what they look for in news stories, so your campaign can be successful. This workshop is back by popular demand.

The Story of Daily Life: Connecting people through video collaboration
Ryanne Hodson, freevlog.org; Sandeep Junnarkar,Livesinfocus.org; Markus Sandy, apperceive.blogs.com; and Jay Dedman, NODE 101
Using inexpensive digital cameras and the power of web distribution, we can now help groups around the world to record, distribute, and archive stories from their daily life. AliveinBaghdad.org, Swajana.com, and Livesinfocus.org are three great examples of video collaboration that could only happen through the internet. In this presentation we will show recent examples of these collaborations, discuss the problems and solutions along the way, and walk you through the specific process of how to use the free online tools.

Youth Media Makers: Creating Change
Emmanuel Valentin and Jennifer Dewgarde, Make The Road By Walking; Natasha Santos, Represent: The Voice of Youth In Foster Care; Shelise Roberts, HarlemLIVE; Christen Cofer, MNN Youth Channel; and Karla Cano, Children’s PressLine
A panel of youth media makers from around the City who work with print, web and television/video journalism will discuss with each other and the audience how their work creates change. How has their involvement in producing youth media transformed their own lives? What impact has the media they've made had on the issues they choose to cover? How has doing the work moved them beyond borders and expanded their understanding of the world and their own lives? Can youth media makers from around the City start sharing their work and skills with each other more, and possibly collaborate on projects? Questions will be taken from the audience and any youth interested in media, and adults who work with youth on media projects, are encouraged to attend.