Another World (and Media) Is Possible

There sure has been a lot of talk in the media about the changing media landscape. Big media is slowly finding out it's not solely in charge anymore.

Yes, technology is changing the way we organize. The way people communicate. And, of course, media and politics. And people are changing the way we use technology to communicate, the way we organize, and, of course, media and politics. But let me let you in on a secret. It's not the young(ish), white, educated and affluent male in front of a computer screen who is really changing politics and media, as is the common narrative.

The folks really changing technology, politics and the media are those with the least access to it. Let me say that again. The folks with least access to broadband, Internet, dual core silicon chips, or the corporate media are the ones really changing media and forging a new era in politics.

The real innovation is coming from places academia, the media and mainstream culture may think are unusual. From homeless folks. From behind prison walls. From community-based organizations. From young, disenfranchised people of color. From the deep down grassroots.

At this year's US Social Forum, set for June 27 to July 1, 2007, in downtown Atlanta a People's Media Center and press room will break new ground in changing the traditional dynamic and relationships between media and the movements they're supposed to cover.

For the five days of the US Social Forum, this onsite center will offer media training and support to grassroots leaders of the movements at the forum, pair professional media producers with these leaders to collaborate on stories, and deliver breaking news and in-depth stories on the USSF.

Up-to-the-minute radio, print and video reports produced through the center will be broadcast on partnering networks such as KPFA, fed to local and national media outlets and published on blogs, websites and portals all across the country. With daily press conferences and a diverse speaker's bureau, the center will also connect grassroots scholars and leaders with mainstream journalists to generate widespread coverage of the ideas, events and people of the USSF.

From Poor Magazine/Poor News Network and Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia: "As a working poor, formerly homeless, previously incarcerated, mixed-race single mama dealing with the struggle to care for myself, my children and my disabled mama, I have been thought of as lazy, stupid, ghetto, or at best, loud. But a writer, a media producer, a scholar, never.

When a story is written or reported about poor mamas and welfare de-form, I and other mamas like me are lucky to be quoted, scanned in a "stock" shot from the welfare lines, once or twice, and then lost in a sea of census figures, social workers and formally educated "scholars" on poverty.

In the Peoples Media Center and the Peoples Press Room at the US Social Forum (USSF) slated to happen in Atlanta in June, a radical form of media production is set to take place. Launched by poverty, race, disability and youth scholars at POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork, a nonprofit media, arts and education organization, the Peoples Media Center will educate, facilitate and set up collaborations between established corporate, independent, ethnic and alternative media producers and global and local poverty and race scholars. These radical access collaborations will result in several forms of media (radio, TV, online and print) about the multitude of events, actions, arts and education that will happen at the very exciting USSF.

As well, we will work to build long-term collaborations between established corporate, independent, ethnic and alternative media and the poverty scholars to create ongoing channels of media access, syndication and new reporting models, which will provide sustainability to these new media voices and society at large with long-term real and actionable solutions to poverty, homelessness, police abuse, gentrification, displacement, incarceration, violence, immigration and much more."

This story appeared originally on Youth Media Council's website.