The Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) is holding its annual Membership Assembly at the Allied Media Conference this week! Our Membership Assembly, happening June 14th in Detroit, is the largest convening of the year and will unite dozens of members from around the country to strategize and strengthen the movement for our digital civil rights – at a time when they are directly under attack.
In addition to holding our convening, we’re co-hosting a Media Justice Mixer on Saturday, June 16! Join us to meet new friends and allies who work, organize, and have an interest in digital security and media justice at the Allied Media Conference. All are welcome at this party, co-hosted by MAG-Net, Global Action Project, and Free Press, so bring your friends! RSVP and find party details here.
Finally, more than a few of our members are leading or participating in their own workshops throughout the Allied Media Conference. Check out the schedule below and follow the #MediaJustice and #AMC2018 hashtags for updates throughout the week!
MAG-Net Member Workshops Schedule:
FRIDAY
Black Touch- Alternate Roots
11-12:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Room 025
Black people need the medicine of our bodies. In a society that demonizes and hypersexualizes Black bodies touching we create a container for liberatory physical dialogue to bring connection, unity, and transformation. Participants will explore somatic techniques rooted in compassion and shared presence, releasing tension and recalling our innate worth and value as beings. Together we share the wisdom of our bodies to organize and heal, to affirm that we are not alone.
#MoreThanCode: Findings from the Tech 4 Social Justice Field Scan – Media Mobilizing Project
12:45-1:45pm / STATE HALL: Room 114
What does it look like to really use technology as a tool for liberation? We`ll share key findings from “#MoreThanCode: Practitioners reimagine the landscape of technology for justice and equity,” a nationwide field scan by the Tech for Social Justice Project that included over 100 interviews and 11 focus groups (including one at AMC2017!) You`ll explore stories, data, and recommendations, then workshop methods to advance design justice in your own workplace.
Building a Research Justice Network – Advancement Project CA
12:45-1:45pm / STATE HALL: Room 131
We’ll review the Research Justice Track’s mission and vision, review what past AMC’s have developed, update our track frame with attendees, and strategize how we can develop and sustain a national network of radical researchers. We will walk away with a plan of action for maintaining our network and defining research justice.
BYP100 Presents the Black Joy Experience – BYP100
2-3:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Hilberry C
Join BYP100 for the first stop on their live listening session tour for the upcoming debut album, The Black Joy Experience. The soul driven project highlights freedom songs and liberation chants from the current Movement for Black Lives.
Can You Hear Us Now? Movement, Techies and Technology Politics – Progressive Technology Project, May First/People Link, 18MillionRising
2-3:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 134
As the vitally important information technology is being threatened, how should our movement and our movement technologists collaborate? Coming off the historic movement techie convergence at Highlander last year – attended by about 90 percent people of color, over half women, and a large number gender non-conforming and LGBTQ people – and the Movement Technologist Statement published this year, this workshop will discuss the question: What is the role of technology today and in our future?
Data-Driven Research for Abolition – Media Mobilizing Project
2-3:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 115
What happens when systems adopt “data-driven reform” without engaging with the communities they study, sort, and control? We’ll explore practical tactics we can use to reclaim the role of data in the conversation about criminal justice reform. By drawing from our experiences collaborating across academia and grassroots organizing, we`ll workshop a set of strategies that organizers and academics can use jointly to develop research that supports an abolitionist agenda.
Archiving Movement Media – Media Mobilizing Project
2-3:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Hilberry B
How do movement media organizations preserve raw media content? Over the last 12 years the Media Mobilizing Project has been documenting movements in Philadelphia and beyond. In the summer of 2017 we began the process of cataloging and preserving our raw media with the intention of deploying a public archive of movement media. In this session participants will learn what our process looks like and strategize around how MMP and other movement media organizations can take on preservation.
Data for Police Accountability – Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
2-3:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 114
Revisiting Asset-based Mapping – Advancement Project CA
4-5:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Room 384
What community assets should you be mapping? Revisit asset-based mapping with two interactive Los Angeles maps that show cultural points and movement building tools to see what tips you can take back home. Asset-based mapping highlights existing strengths and creates a usable community map. This goes against the grain of research that points to deficiencies in communities for long-term recommendations. Participants will walk away with new ideas to bring research into the hands of communities.
Digital Consent is Coercive – Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
4-5:30pm / MCGREGOR: Room F/G/H
This session will collectively explore if algorithmic accountability is even possible in an oppressive and unjust system. We will explore where our fight begins in the establishment of consent in the ever expanding digital world. Participants with collectively map and understand the trajectory of coerced consent. Participants will learn about tools that facilitate informed consent and resistance.
SATURDAY
#Owning Our Stories: Race, Power and Media – Generation Justice
11-12:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 131
It`s time for us to collectively tell the truth about the role of news media in upholding white supremacy. Using the 50th anniversary of the Kerner report to set historical context, our presentation by media makers of color—including journalists, artists, organizers, filmmakers and educators—will examine racism in the media and how narratives are weaponized against our communities. We`ll use this power analysis to engage participants in a discussion about how we strategize to own our stories.
Local Opportunities to Preserve Net Neutrality – Media Mobilizing Project
11:12:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 123
What’s next for net neutrality? With its repeal of rules protecting net neutrality, the FCC gave powerful internet service providers a free pass to shape what you do online. This session will brainstorm new ways to get communities involved. We`ll generate ideas, explore what`s happening now, and articulate next steps to win net neutrality and other digital justice policies. You`ll leave with clear strategies for engagement and partnerships you can count on as you organize for digital justice.
StoryShift: Amplify, Resource & Support Accountable Storytelling – Working Films
4-5:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 134
How can we amplify, resource and support community accountable media? In this session, we will explore the principles and praxis of StoryShift, a new initiative building a generative future through a just and equitable transition away from exploitation of people and the planet. We will screen/show creative work, share our stories around the realities of developing deep collaborative partnerships, then close by collectively exploring the concept of “accountability” in the field of storytelling.
Fight Your Racist Camera – Global Action Project
4-5:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Hilberry D
Is your camera a racist? Yes! The whole history of film and video is rooted in white supremacy, even down to the settings in your camera! During this workshops we will look at the history of racism in video (particularly lighting) and learn how to fight back with F.I.S.T. (FStop, ISO, Shutter Speed, and Temperature). Learn basic lighting and camera techniques for how to best capture Black & Brown bodies on video using professional cameras and also basic skills on your phone. Bring your phones and DSLRs if you have them!
Logos for Change – SPNN
4-5:30pm / STUDENT CENTER: Room 285
Is your organizing dragging due to a boring logo? We will help give your activism a boost by helping you create a new look. In this hands on workshop, youth leaders from SPNN`s Youth Action Committee will help you learn the fundamentals of Adobe Illustrator and Dimension, and make a logo based on simple shapes. You will walk away from this workshop with an image you will be proud of that represents the important work you do.
Staying Power: Creative Tools for Housing Belonging – RYSE Center
4-5:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 128
Come build narrative power for housing justice & belonging! In this session we look at art tactics developed to shape public narratives specific to Black displacement in Richmond (CA) thru a year-long art and organizing process – a know-your-rights mural, videos, poetry, and more. We will explore how these projects supported policies such as “ban-the-box” for housing, and rent control. Participants walk away with transferable creative tools to support material wins for housing justice.
#MediaJustice Mixer – MAG-Net, Free Press, Global Action Project
6-8pm / TBA
Meet new friends and allies interested in media justice at this year’s Allied Media Conference! Join the Media Action Grassroots Network, Global Action Project, and Free Press for a fun mixer Saturday night at AMC — with light refreshments, music, and great company.
SUNDAY
Conducting a “Person on the Street” Style Interview – Frogtown Community Radio
10-11:30am / STATE HALL: Room 116
Person on the street style interviews get real, unscripted feelings and answers from a variety of strangers. With purpose and well researched questions, this technique gathers a public opinion sample on the topics being explored. We will learn how to: ask great questions, build rapport with your interviews, where to interview, how to approach people, how to use a microphone, and what to do with your interviews afterwards. Participants will walk away confident to interview and record anyone!
Black Trans Love is Black Wealth Writing Workshop – BYP100
11:45-12:45pm / STATE HALL: Room 125
We write this call to Black Trans, gender-non-conforming, and non-binary folk with excitement and urgency: It is our time to add our voices and our stories to this vibrant Black queer literary lineage. We are hosting a writing space for Black Trans and GNC folk to write, share, and build the strength of our writerly voices as individuals and a collective.
Character Animation for Every BODY – SPNN
1-2:30pm / MCGREGOR: Room B
Are you fed up with not seeing a true representation of all body types, hues, and abilities in animation? Come right this wrong! In this workshop, SPNN Youth Action Committee leaders will show you how to use the fun and easy Adobe Character Animator program to build an animated character and make the character talk! By the end of the workshop, we will have created a short animated video with messages challenging narrow definitions of beauty and celebrating every BODY.
Mariposas & Unicorns: Narratives Defying Borders and Binaries – Global Action Project
1-2:30pm / STATE HALL: Room 118
This session will show how immigrant and TGNC youth and communities are joining forces to build liberatory narratives. Their stories resist xenophobic and transphobic tropes in dominant culture. Youth producers from GAP will feature their music video “Borders & Binaries Rejects” and speak about their process for building community power through media. National partners will speak on the impact their media has had on culture shifting xenophobic and transphobic narratives and attacks.
