From the Executive Director
From the Executive Director
Summer Issue 2019: The Road Is Long.
The Alliance has been on the road this summer — conferencing, connecting, planning and visioning the future.
Our Youth Media team represented in Minnesota at Free Minds, Free People, the national conference of the Education for Liberation Network that brought together teachers, young people, researchers, parents and community-based activists/educators from across the country to build a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation. Alliance producers Jason Wyman and Kapiolani Lee reported an abundance of knowledge-sharing about the linkages and intersections of equity, social justice, art and healing. The Alliance hosted a Listening Session for media organizations and members in Minneapolis and St. Paul after the conference, where a series of new Youth Media Video Roundtables emerged – we’ll publish the fall calendar soon.
In Spokane, The Alliance partnered with local native producers James Pakootas and Olivia Evans to produce a screening of the documentary RUMBLE: Indians Who Rocked The World (directed by Catherine Bainbridge and co-directed by Alfonso Maiorana) as part of our Monday Movies series. The film on its own was riveting, and James and Olivia also gathered an inter-tribal group of artists who displayed and sold their work in the lobby, and native musicians who performed before and after the film — including Tony Louie, and The Vision Seekerz. The Silent Hill Crew also rocked the Garland Theater with drumming and chanting – the whole thing moved me to tears.
By the time the summer ends, we’ll have hit Philadelphia, working with WHYY and PhillyCAM planning the first Arts2Work Pre-Apprenticeship program; Washington DC for a meeting on Diversity/Equity/Inclusion strategies with a cohort of National Arts Service Organizations at Americans for the Arts; and Los Angeles, for civic partnership building and creative workforce development with the Los Angeles Film Commission, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts + Culture, and a presentation for the City Council of Culver City. We’re working to build abundance, sustainability, access to innovation and creative opportunity for all our member organizations, filmmakers, creative activists, culture workers, technologists and educators.
Photo by Alex Flett
Speaking of our members, we’re starting a round of field calls with diverse cohorts of members to build connections, strengthen the network and share challenges and new resources. Our first call is coming up this week, bringing together creative workforce and folks from our national youth media network. I’m honored to be in collaboration with these visionary partners.
- ReelWorks, Brooklyn
- Venice Arts, Venice
- NOVAC, New Orleans
- Austin Film Society
- Bay Area Video Coalition
- Open Signal, Portland
- Docs in Progress, DC
- Brookline Interactive
- Free Spirit Media, Chicago
- Wide Angle Media, Baltimore
- Ghetto Film School
- West LA College
- Better Youth, Los Angeles
- Youth FX, Albany
- Ghetto Film School
- re:imagine/ATL, Atlanta
- SF City College
- PhillyCAM
- WHYY Philadelphia
- Adobe
- Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship
Such a powerful group, working on the ground in communities, rising up the storytellers and the stories. That’s how we do. Enjoy the rest of the summer and we’ll see you back in September! As always, hit me up at wendy@thealliance.media.
Notes from the Field
Reel Works Movie of the Week: REMEMBER By Wendy Cantoran
A short film by young filmmaker Wendy Cantoran was published by The Alliance member Reel Works last month. In this film, “Wendy interviewed her classmates and friends to talk about immigration issues and how other children from undocumented parents feel about the possibility of being separated from their families.”
Kennedy Center Honors Go to ‘Sesame Street’ and Earth, Wind & Fire
The Alliance member Kennedy Center recently announced nominees for their annual gala. “The R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire, the actress Sally Field, the singer Linda Ronstadt and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas will receive Kennedy Center Honors in December for their lifetime achievements in the arts” as stated by an article published by the New York Times.
Media Policy Watch
by Priscilla G.
by Priscilla Genet
In Puerto Rico earlier this month, Governor Ricardo Rosselló was forced to resign following the news organization CPI’s publication of 900 pages revealing the administration’s apparent corruption. In an article published by Washington Post, CPI’s executive director Carla Minet was quoted saying “Our reporting connected people’s suffering to the administration. It was like a stew that has been bubbling for a long time, and then it finally boiled over.” The documents were largely composed of lengthy encrypted chats featuring a constant use of “coarse, homophobic and misogynistic messages among Rosselló and nearly a dozen of his cronies — all men”. These chats revealed the governor “may have been using public resources for his own political work, and discussed how to destabilize public institutions like the University of Puerto Rico and the public TV station WIPR.” according to an interview published by New York Magazine.
The ACLU filed a petition in the San Francisco district court for a writ of habeas corpus for Jose Belo, a student activist detained by ICE in May, immediately following a public reading of a poem critical of the agency. The content of the poem titled “Dear America” dealt with Jose’s own detainment by ICE in 2018. According to an article published by The Guardian at the beging of this month, “The petition argues that the arrest violates the first amendment because ICE agents targeted activists who publicly criticized its immigration enforcement practices.”We want to hear from you. Are you concerned with any national media policy stories that are underreported? Are there any local stories in your area that need highlighting? Please let us know.
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