SC Media Summit Action Step Reports

Full Transcript
January 27th, 2008 Sunday, 4 PM

Action Team 1

We have a very very simple messageTake Back the Media. Take Back our Media Month will be July 2008. We are calling upon citizens in Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C. to engage in visibility and out reach actions focused on Fox, CNN and the FCC. And what our group discussed was the need to create a spectacle; a spectacle in New York City, in Washington D.C. and in L.A where one thousand plus people converge on these media centers. Throughout the month of July there will be a boycott of General Electric and of Fox in particular (G.E. because of their exclusion of Dennis Kucinich and because of their ownership of Raytheon and because of their firing of Phil Donahue prior to the Iraq War). We think that this is a month long boycott. It's decentralized. People in L.A., New York and the North East and Chicago, we talked about Chicago too. If there are enough people here we are willing to go with Chicago also. It's broad enough so that people are free to do what they want and July forth is the one day that we're going to encourage people to engage in civil disobedience. We're asking for two hundred people in each city who are willing to get arrested by occupying CNN, Fox. That's where we take it to the next level. We really show what we are capable of.

Action Team 2

This is a group of Latina and Latino youth who asked me to introduce them. The corporate media all to often ignore people of color and women and leave them out of the stories unless they're perpetratorspeople of color especially, perpetrators of violence. The alternative media all too often marginalizes people who have been marginalized by only treating them as victims and not as the people carrying forward the leadership and the future of our social movements. So I just said that during one of the workshops and they asked me to introduce them. This is Evelina Modena who is going to model for us what that leadership is about

Evelina Modena: So we want to take two minutes. Our goal is to create a microcosm today of the reframing of the immigration debate via education and information. The reframing of the debate, our metta-narrative is that immigration is a direct result of U.S., Mexico and Latin America trade policies that displace families, creating push out and pull in cycles and the goal is to have each and every one of you reflect, investigate. You may think immigration does not affect you, but you can start with your vocabulary, we're asking you here today. There is no such thing as an "illegal human being". There is no such thing as an "illegal alien". They are migrant economic refugees and you can start by educating your own vernacular, your own people, your own community to put a face, a human face; women, children and our working class community that is reflected here today. So thank you very much.

Action Team 3

(Reform of Government Media Policy) What we discussed is the law. Now it turns out that the FCC as a matter of fact of the Communication Act of 1934 which guaranteed unequal access to all people involved in the media what has been u-served by both the Regan and Clinton administrations to the point where the Fairness Doctrine has been affectively eliminated. There is no such thing as equal time. Therefore on an action level we recommend that you write your congress people directly, especially on the mailing list here and all the five people that everybody else knows to the point where we can reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine on the Communications Act of 1934. In the meanwhile we also came to the conclusion that the FCC has also vow to eliminate, it's a bill before congress as we speak, and can't name the bill, I'm sorry to say, which will eliminate the 88 to 92 on the FM band as exclusively non-profit. In other words they just want to take back the FM band. Now, you're all probably familiar that the 88 to 92 is in fact been historically non-profit. They want to eliminate that process We need to write our congress people on that. That requires mailing lists. There are a number of ways to do that. MoveOn.org has got a gigantic mailing list, so you know, might want to use that, that's an outside possibility. Meanwhile we can accumulate our own. And lastly, Gerard Colby who is a member of the UAW, a union man, is promoting individual copyright protection for freelancers. In other words if you publish something on an ezine or whatever, if that is republished somewhere else you have to get paid. That's how it reads. So that is a practical application as we all make a couple of dollars doing what we do. The fact is, in order to do that, we're going to have to, once again, contact our Congressmen. So the bottom line is it's about Congress. We have to force the issues with congress, as a practical issue; to make sure the communication act of 1934 is promoted, so that individual copyright protection for free lancers is promoted, that the congress is aware of this matter, and in that case we might be able to achieve some affective action. Thank you.

Action Team 4

(Build a Large and Effective Movement). We had a bunch of people that really shared in a really beautiful way. And we had some frustrations and we had a little disagreement but we had at least three people, perhaps four at the table that felt that a spiritual component to the movement was absolutely necessary. And we had one (PIG) person in the movement that had been with Martin Luther King 40 years ago this year, more than forty years ago because he died forty years ago. Now, there were a number of people that discussed other issues that are also important, like having a tool box and learning how to be very organized, both 60s tool box, 90's and a now toolbox. Civil informationing was mentioned by Robin Horden. Susan and a bunch of us felt the need for a spiritual component. These people in power do not come from the heart. We have to have a movement with great heart and great sprit; so to be real or in Socrates and somebody said, to know yourself. A number of us felt we have to not only do things in the outer world, we have to be committed to be going deeper into the inner world so that we can deal with the outer world better. We are in a spiritual crisis right now. Yesembracing the shadow. There is a website called www.awakeninthedream.com. The advantage of having a group of people that are enacting our collective shadow is that they're right out there. And if we contact our own shadow, admit it all and learn to forgive ourselves and others we can develop the possibilities of collective shaman. Change the dream of war to a dream of peace. So march in the streets but do this too.

Action Team 5

I'm going to essentially just read right through this. I'm kinda following on what he was talking about. The inner work. The name of our group was originally Building Personal Skills but we changed that to Be the Change You Want to See. The inner work is essential for us to work effectively as activists. Our goal is liberation, personal and political. What it looks like: To be surrendered to the situation now just as it is. To be free of resistance or arguing with the present moment. To be calm alert and at peace To experience life directly, free of interpretation or filters. To see what is as clearly as possible, without misperception, denial, blind spots, etc. To be free of judgments of others, of events or that creates an "imaginary self" through self blame. To be free of manipulation from others that plays on our filters (that is our prejudices) to control us. To be able to relax into anything that is painful (physical or emotional) without resistance, thereby transforming it. What steps are needed: Understand the structure of the ego/imaginary self. Let go of psychosomatic tensions that lock our filters into place. (Free the breath). Observe tendencies to be unhappy with situations, project blame on self or others, be board (waiting for what we want to happen). Bring awareness to problems without needing our ego to "fix" them Sense vibrant aliveness throughout our bodies and in the field around us. Be aware of gaps of peacefulness in the compulsive stream of thought. Observe the flow of our breath. Resources: Set your intentions to be free. Teachers and lessons will arise spontaneously to meet that intention. Observe opportunities to be of real service to others (they are also your teachers). The ultimate resource is the highly alive, peaceful, pervasive consciousness at your very center. By releasing tendencies of obsessive thought it will naturally arise into your experience.

Action Team 6:

Okay, our group is Reducing Consumerism and really central, you guys all know the four R's as they are called; Reduce Reuse Recycle and Rot. These are just general ways of dealing with all the products that we buy, that we either need or want. However we would really like to focus a little outside of just those issues and really get you to think more about how every dollar you spend is a vote. I really think that is central to this idea of consumerism and knowing thatwe really emphasized the importance of getting the vote out and getting people registered and being active in the political process and realize we live in a highly integrated political, economic system and the money that we spend is perhaps the most important way we participate in that system. We need to be absolutely aware of where our money was going, how much of it we are spending, what companies we are supporting, the goods that we are buying because that is who we're indorsing and voting for.

So we'd like everyone to this week write down everything that you purchased and make a list of it and then think about where that came from. The store you bought it from but also where it was manufactured and considers how far of a distance its come. And then maybe, think about what you did with it when you were finished. Did you throw it out? Did you recycle it? And then think of alternatives. Did you need it in the first place? Could you have used something else that you already have in your house? Could you have purchased it locally? So we'd like everyone to try that this week.

The last thing we want to do isWe really want to emphases this is an empowering thing and being resourceful is fun and this is one issue that you have complete control over. You can decide where your money goes, where you spend your free time. How you transport yourself. These are issues that you have control over. To make this point a little more explicit I just want to show you everyone can carry a bag. And in this bag you can have a jar that you fill up with coffee or water or whatever you want. We don't need 1500 plastic bottles around. And you can have a spoon in this bag so you can eat food whenever you come around it and you don't have to continually buy, and you can have a plastic bag that you can reuse and refill. Plastic is a pretty amazing resource when you think about it. Start reusing!

Action Team 7

Ours is very short so you don't need to worry about the time, our group was Message Discipline and we came up with some terms. This is not meant to be exclusive, but just some ideas. This comes from the realization that the republicans have been very good at using terms to their advantage. Terms like the death tax instead of a state tax etc. We're familiar with them; I don't need to go into them. Let me suggest that we need to be very aware of the terms that we use and we've made a short list of terms that we should think about. One thing is the war. We've heard it called the war today many times and in fact it was an illegal war, an illegal invasion followed by the current ongoing illegal occupation, so we need to use those terms. -Mainstream media- That gives them too much credit. They're not the mainstream media. They're the corporate controlled, CIA infiltrated media. The new world order is a good term but it turns some people off so we need to kinda watch our use of that new world order term. Maybe something like the power elites or the oligarchs, we've had some other suggestions oligopoly or something. Be careful when you're talking about election fraud that you don't mistakenly say vote fraud. Vote fraud suggest that a voter did something wrong in the booth, in the voting booth. No, election fraud is the people who are supposed to be counting the vote not doing it correctly. So, be careful of that term. Illegal alien or illegal person of any kind. A person is not illegal. A person is a person. They are migrant workers, migrant economic refugees. And the last thing is the 911 truth movement. That is a term many of us are very familiar with but it's kind of limiting, especially since 911 starts to reside into history. A more encompassing term, an umbrella term is the truth movement; media truth, the truth of history, educational truth. So the truth movement is a more encompassing term, we suggest it. Thank You.

Action Team 8

The name of my group is Building Women's Voices. My name is Drew Lewis and the women of the group asked me to represent the group. I just wanted to say the reason I'm with this group of women is because I think that we should all become aware that women are one of the most powerful forces on the planet and that's the reason why the oligopoly is always suppressing women and using chauvinism to oppress them and once we realize that we can use their power, we can unite with their power. So one of the goals of our group is gender balance and how to obtain that is through positive images of women as contributing members of society, not as sex objects. A means to implement that is to use non sexist language, encourage and support women, in equal representation, in whatever endeavors they we're involved in and using resources like Ms. Magazine, Feminist Majority. We think that Project Censored should have more feminist stories in it. We can use video blogs, news, community TV. We should really employ our skills as writers, community activists, and speakers to implement this goal and to make it happen and make it real. Thank you.

Action Team 9

Our group was how we can Pressure the Corporate Establishment Media to tell Untold Truths and Cover Stories they now ignore. We couldn't agree on much. It's a challenge. We couldn't agree on the degree and to the extent to which the C.I.A. was running or controlling, using our corporate media as just a propaganda tool and to what extent it, you know, completely covered the corporate establishment media. But we did agree that it could be valuable to spread the word through whatever media we have, that the corporate establishment media is a propaganda tool of the powers to be, even if it isn't exactly, completely controlled by the C.I.A., or not. We realized that you can sometimes get a little bit of coverage for something, some media event, like say a movie or a book, by publishing a review. Some reviews will get through the censors. We also talked about doing a multi-stage pressuring of any media outlet that is not necessarily us, in telling the advertiser to tell the media outlet to tell the truth. If not, if they don't tell the truth, then we tell them that we will (I had multi stages here and I'm forgetting them). But we would withdraw support from your product. If we can get one major advertiser to pull their ads from one media outlet, for not telling the truth, I think it would send waves, shock waves through some elements. We are funding that corporate media every time we buy a product that is sold, that is advertised in the media. Thank you.

Action Team 10

I have the dubious honor of representing the team that was given the task of considering Tools and Resources. That's an open ended oneone isn't it? What indeed; which tools, what resources, to what end. As we
understood it, what we are really considering here are a number of things,
not the least of which here is the possible creation of what some people
were categorizing as a "no fear" protective network resource. That is to
say a network that gives access to legal resources. Guides to protecting
ourselves, guides to protecting ourselves from abuses, protecting
ourselves from each other perhaps (now, I'm not so sure about that one,
that's another issue to discuss). What does success look like:
User Satisfaction
Subscriptions
Funding /Solvency
Growth
Transactions
Number of hits/Connections
Success stories
Just the beginning I think. What is it that we would consider building in
terms of tools and resources?
Databases, simple and robust ones
Knowledge maps/Lexicography
Knowledge management tools
The identification of subject matter<