Strategies for change - conference of community-based organizers and independent mediamakers

"Using Media/Engaging Communities" was a day-long conversation for community-based organizers and independent mediamakers sponsored by dint of the Paul Robeson Fund and organized by dint of Communication for Change. Attended through approximately 60 participants, the presentations and cluster workshops focused on strategizing practical intersections between media production and distribution, community disentanglement local organizing and advocacy. For Communication for Change, which until now has worked exclusively with community organizations outside of the United States, the discourse served as an initial pace towards developing locally-based projects. The small organization is the greatest in quantity recent incarnation of Martha Stuart's documentary production company that began in the early 1970 producing like social-issue programs as the "Are You Listening?" series for public television. For the past 15 years Communication for Change has sought to apply their pattern of "participatory communication" through partnerships with clusters such as the Self-Employed Women's Association in india, an organization lobbying for home-based workers' rights; Action Health Inc., which trains adolescents in Nigeria as compeer educators concerning issues of health and sexuality; and Banchte Shehka in Bangladesh, an organization fostering active opposition to violence against women

One public theme addressed by conference participants was the importance of eliciting the utilitarian facets of media. In practice, this means producing or presenting work in order to instigate an ongoing and critical dialogue, expanding media's applications beyond the confines of the shield as well as posing questions that address a group's understanding of their possess relationship to representation. In her introductory remarks, moderator Anne Lieberman intimateed that one principle objective of alternative media is to challenge the normative form of passive viewership. She also emphasized the "ecological" use of media. Noting the significance of self-representation, she nonetheless cited the resource-intensive character of production and advocated increasing awareness of the abundance of already produc programs from one side outreach and distribution projects.

The conference's morning session was devot to presentations by dint of four featured speakers, each of whom exemplified a distinct approach to utilizing media for social change, with the later part of the day devot to smaller participant workshops expanding upon these themes. As the morning's first speaker, independent agriculturist Judith Helfand explained the unfolding of The Uprising of '34 (1995) a film she co-produc with George Stoney and Susanne Rostock about the General Textile Strike of 1934 Initiated through a consortium of historians, the central themes and goals of the film were conceived and organized through ongoing discussions with Southern textile workers and a number of diverse local Southern assemblages with long-term commitments to working in the community. Distribution and audience disentanglement thus began at the project's inception. With the enduring refusal of trade unionism presaged through the strike's bitter defeat ("right to work" policy remains predominant within the Southern states), it became evident that the film could not simply be about "which side are you on?" The historical circumstances and lived experiences of the tribe most affected by the strike were far more complicated than of the like kind a reductive stance would intimate To address only the strike or unionism for se would mean overlooking the larger picture of the ingrained attitudes and issues felt by dint of people in these communities.

Two essential points were made during the organized dialogues between filmmakers and community members. Foremost among the issues raised was the ne to articulate that the unions emerg from the tenacity and extremitys of the community itself, and were not simply the issue of outside influence by "Yankees" or agitators. The next to the first point emphasized that protest is not an act of disloyalty to one's community. Rather the stage to which many consciously attempted to forget the strike and remain silent, or believed that the union abandoned the rank-and-file, put in mind ofed that the underlying conditions of the situation could make the film useful for the community to re-evaluate its have history. Whereas the issues of labor and unionism are greatest in quantity often encountered in the oppositional or combative circumstances of a picket line or contract dispute, exploring the representation of a community's experience in relation to this fact contributed to a more crafty and complex picture of the fact Drawing on the resources and guidance of community clumps churches, foundations and unions validated the shoot forward for disparate audiences, many of whom would not previously have press outed an interest in a film about a strike. It also serv to forge coalitions between formerly unassociated organizations, and involved potential funder in the shoot forward from its inception. Much of the film's financial backing came from sources already invested in the organizations with which the farmers had established relationships. Distribution efforts for the film also benefited from this targeted at the same time inclusive approach.