By Betty Yu The regional Anchors of The Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) will be kicking off our 4-day annual retreat and meeting starting tomorrow, April 17th at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland. The gathering will bring together 14 organizational leaders from 11 MAG-Net regional chapters from across the United States.
By Hakim Bellamy, Media Literacy Project (member of Black Voices for Internet Freedom) Blog cross-posted from Media Literacy Project's website S31. Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read or write, shall, upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than two hundred fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars. – Alabama Slavery Code of 1833 (Alabama Department of Archives and History)
By Clarissa Ramon of Public Knowledge (originally posted on Public Knowledge's policy blog Staying connected with loved ones behind bars is an expense that many families struggle with today. Aside from exorbitant phone rates charged by private companies who provide phone services to prisons, families are also charged excessive amounts for money transfers and Email.
By Betty Yu, Center for Media Justice (an original blog post for NAMAC's policy salon) My journey to the media justice movement actually started with my involvement in a local Public Access television station over 17 years ago. When I was in high school, I became actively involved with a local Chinatown workers center, Chinese Staff & Workers Association, a 30-year old organization that has been in the frontline of labor organizing. Hundreds of immigrant garment and restaurant workers were fighting against exploitative working conditions, but their courageous voices were being blacked out of the corporate media and even the local Chinese press. The local Chinese dailies relied on labor law-breaking restaurants for large advertisements dollars so they didn’t want to rock the boat. So in the mid-90’s with very little positive press attention, the organization decided to start their own Public Access Television show to provide a platform for workers to create and tell their own stories.
By Betty Yu, Center for Media Justice / Reposted from NAMAC.org As I wind down my adventures at the South By Southwest’s (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas this week, I reflect on the fact that the most powerful and poignant moments didn’t actually take place in halls of the Convention Center. The Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net), Brown Paper Tickets, and Prometheus Radio Project co-hosted a Sunday brunch with a half a dozen local groups located in and around Austin who were interested in taking advantage of a once in the lifetime opportunity to start a Lower Power radio station thanks to the Local Community Radio Act that was passed back in December 2010. Prometheus Radio Project led a 10-year grassroots fight to win the Local Community Radio Act. The new law mandates the government to expand the Low Power FM (LPFM) service, creating the potential for thousands of new community based organizations to start radio station across the country, including availability for the first time in big cities!
Listen Now! "A Dialogue about the Role of Arts and Culture in Movement Building"
by Rob Wildeboer, WBEZ 91.5 Inmates in the Cook County Jail have to pay severely inflated rates when they make phone calls from the jail. That's because Cook County has a contract that requires the phone company to pay almost 60 percent of what it makes from phone calls back to the county. It's a subject we started looking at yesterday and if you missed that story you can hear what kind of impact the policy is having on poor families by clicking here.
By Steven Renderos, Center for Media Justice We now have the opportunity of a lifetime to empower our communities through radio. The Federal Communications Commission has just voted to clear the airwaves and expand community radio across the U.S.! This is our chance to own media that reflects our voices, culture, and stories. The time is now to take back our the airwaves, SIGN UP NOW to start your own radio station!
MAG-Net members attended this year's South By Southwest, hosting a LPFM Community Radio Brunch with Brown Paper Tickets and Prometheus Radio Project and a Media Mixer with Free Press and Allied Media Projects. In addition Andrea Quijada of MAG-Net Anchor, Media Literacy Project presented on a panel about Mega-Mergers and the Future of the Internet. Check out the Photos!
The Vermont Workers' Center is really excited to participate in the Left Forum. We're sending a six person delegation down to New York, and we are participating in three panels. The first panel will be a reflection of our work as part of a collaboration with United Workers, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, the Media Mobilizing Project, the United Taxi Workers Alliance PA and the Poverty Initiative to build a model of statewide organizing that has key components of using a human rights framework, direct organizing, media, leadership development, and political education. It's really exciting to be able to highlight our work with these other organizations, and talk about how we are building a replicable organizing model that can build up to a national movement.