The 2008 Grassroots Media Tour at Asheville's Firestorm Cafe this Saturday and Sunday!
david clover
The 2008 Grassroots
Media Tour
features presentations and workshops to teach participants how to
interview sources, use recording equipment, plan and make
publications and document history.
The presenters are Jen Angel, founding co-editor and publisher of Clamor magazine; Alexis Pauline Gumbs, founder of Broken Beautiful Press; and Puck Lo, a radio reporter for the world’s only worker-run international daily newscast.
The
seminar begins Saturday at 7 p.m. with performances and presentations
and continues Sunday from noon until 4 p.m. with workshops. Firestorm
Café & Books hosts the 2008 Grassroots Media Tour in its
community space located at 48 Commerce Street, downtown Asheville.
In a time of media consolidation, where a small group of corporations, such as Clear Channel, Viacom, General Electric and News Corp, own the vast majority of media outlets, the tour organizers see themselves as defenders of the tradition of independent media, challenging comfortable truths, highlighting injustice, and joining in struggles for social justice.
While the tour features traditional media makers, such as magazine publishers and radio reporters, the tour is also focused on the future, with workshops on website design and cutting-edge performances. Jesse Muhammad, a reporter for the Final Call Newspaper who helped break the story of the Jena Six, credits new media with spreading the story and activating students and others. “The Jena Six story saw the growth of the net-roots – the grassroots internet activists – as an important force for social change,” he says. “This tour is a continuation of that new movement.” Jesse Muhammad is one of six grassroots journalists and activists who will be a part of the tour.
The tour will be presenting public events, such as performances and presentations, highlighting issues ranging from organizing among sex workers to the demolition of public housing to international protests against global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
More information about the tour is also available online at http://aidandabet.org/.