June 29, 2007

Allied Media Conference -- Day 3 Blog & Conclusions

Posted by Elijah Barrett-Aviles at 5:53AM

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Sunday June 24 recap: Yesterday's solidarity journalism workshop ties in well with today's workshop, "Briding the Gap: International Solidarity and Alternative Media in Mexico." The presentation today was by a two reporters, one for Narco News and for an Independent Media Center, who worked in southern Mexico in Chiapas and Oaxaca. One the most helpful messages from both workshops was a warning to journalists who report on movements abroad. The presenters said that the temptation for foreign journalists is to choose for themselves who they see are the leaders and key players in a movement based on, for example, past experiences with community movements in the U.S.

For example, Simon Sedillo, who lived in Oaxaca, Mexico on and off for several years while a popular movement was building there against the state governor, explained his experience with other journalists there. When journalists go to Oaxaca and look for interviews and quotes, they find that the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), an umbrella organization that had been getting all the headlines in Oaxaca, is made up of more than 50 smaller groups. The journalists, Sedillio said, will choose a group based on how much it fits the journalists' own idea for what the Oaxaca struggle is and who represents it. Other journalists are too overwhelmed by the numbers, and just leave.

Another lesson I learned here at the Allied Media Conference is the importance of keeping media simple and local. As RJ Maccani, who wrote about Chiapas for Narco News, explained, "I don't only have to go to Mexico to report on Zapatismo anymore because La Otra Campana [the Zapatista's 'Other Campaign,'] is also in New York." Community movements are building in Harlem based on the ideas of the Zapatistas, such as the group Movement for Justice en El Barrio.

If I hadn't received help from my college to go to AMC, I probably wouldn't have been able to go (for just me, it was $450 including airfare from Connecticut to Detroit, conferences fees, and other expenses). The difficulty of getting to a national conference probably kept a lot other groups who would've been important voices to hear from (media groups from the South and Southwest, smaller media groups) unable to attend.

I think the Allied Media Conference is something that's good for the independent/alternative media community, and I'd encourage everyone to go who can afford to. But parallel to AMC, maybe we can replicate this sort of gathering on the local level. Last spring, I went a similar conference in New York (about two hours from home) called the New York Grassroots Media Conference. It was a one-day conference filled with many of the same workshops, a diverse group of publications, people, and age groups, and it cost me about $40 total to attend. There's a lot happening in our own neighborhoods -- movements that parallel international struggles (take immigration, for example) -- and I have a lot ahead of me just to get a grasp of what's going on here in New Haven.