Statement from Console-ing Passions

[Console-ing Passions]

Statement from Console-ing Passions & 

Call for Community Conversations

As the board for the Console-ing Passions International Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media and Feminism, we are outraged by the recent killings in the U.S. of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery, among others, and the aggressively violent acts by police and white vigilantes. This has yet again brought to the attention of the world the United States’ ongoing legacy of racism and white supremacy. Black communities are experiencing a disproportionate number of COVID-19-related cases and deaths which only highlights the systemic nature of these problems. These recent acts of brutality have reignited the perpetually-deferred national conversation on institutionalized anti-Blackness; the continuous, historic oppression of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people; and the imminent threats and persistent acts of racism people of color face.

Console-ing Passions was founded in 1989 by a group of feminist media scholars and artists who were interested in creating a space to present work and foster scholarship on television and video in relation to power, culture, and identity. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen how our mission to interrogate media's propagation of injustices is more essential than ever. The civil outcry around racial inequality in the US--and against the proliferation of white supremacy--offers us another opportunity to use our platform in the name of social justice.

As individuals, we will continue to educate ourselves and use our daily words and actions to fight racism and injustice in our communities and on our campuses across the globe. As a group, we are committed to hosting difficult conversations to support this work. As we hold off announcing our next CP Conference until later this summer (when we hope to have a better idea of what might be possible given the COVID-19 pandemic) we have decided to plan a series of virtual conversations to bring the Console-ing Passions community together now.

To decide on the topics for these conversations, and to gauge how the CP board can best serve you at this time, we have created a short survey which you can access here. Please respond to the survey by Wednesday, June 17, 2020.

We are eager to hear from you about what you want, what you need at this time, and how we can bring our community together to harness change.

The Console-ing Passions Board

Suzanne Leonard, Chair

Amanda Ann Klein, Secretary

Brenda Weber, Treasurer