Allied Media Conference 2007 Wrap Up
A few weekends ago, I went to Detroit for the 9th Allied Media Conference. This was the first year that I wasn’t directly involved in the organizing. In one sense, that was great. I actually got to go to workshops that I wasn’t presenting! I’ll talk more about which ones I really enjoyed later. It was also weird to be there in a different capacity. A lot of people still put me in that role so people would come up and ask me questions about stuff and I just didn’t know the answers.
But, for the most part, it went amazingly well considering there had been a couple of road bumps in the transition process. Although there were some logistical problems, given that this was the first time for this group of people to spearhead something this big, they deserve much appreciation and congratulations.
The process of transfering from me and Jason and the others who had organized the conference in Ohio to the Detroit group was not smooth, as I mentioned. Looking back, I would have done it differently, and the main reasons it didn’t happen in a better way is partly because of the personalities involved, and partly because when Clamor closed, there was so much fallout from that it made doing anything else near impossible. Jason and I are still dealing with some of the financial aspects of that. I feel like that part of the Lord of the Rings movie where Gandalf fights the Bolrag and you think he has defeated it… except at the last minute one little tendril sneaks up and grabs his leg, pulling him down. So, now I’ve learned a lesson about how I think things should go better in the future, and also that once a transfer has happened you have to let people make their own choices, mistakes, and improvements.
Things were different. For the most part, they just made different choices about some things than I would have made, or than we had made in the past. One thing that was different was a big emphasis on youth participation. This is great and valuable, but this had moved away from an emphasis on intergenerational organizing. I think the two need to go hand in hand so that we don’t perpetuate the problem of youth not knowing that there are experienced people they can look to and that they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. Of course there was active participation by elders and experienced activists, most notably Grace Lee Boggs who was ever present throughout the weekend. She has apparently referred to the AMC as “the most exciting conference since the 1963 Grassroots Leadership Conference.” The conference was inspiring, but I might have to disagree with her on that one. And despite participation from her and other elders, it was a noticeably younger crowd.
I enjoyed all the amazing people I got to hang out with, which included people like my friends Lisa Jervis (cofounder) and Debbie Rasmussen (publisher) of Bitch Magazine, art historian Nicolas Lampert, filmmaker Eric Breitbart, and Detroit activist and teacher Greg Willerer. With amazing people around you, you can’t help but have a good time.I went to a few wonderful presentations. One of them was on Solidarity Journalism, and included Puck Lo, Stefan Christoff, and Jordan Flaherty. They talked about how to report on communities that are not your own, and do it in a way that is not just extracting and benefitting off of someone else’s experience. Puck published her remarks on the AMC website, and you can read them here.
I also enjoyed a presentation by Eoin O Broin on the political murals of Ireland. Eoin, a member of Sinn Féin, gave a part-history-lesson-part-art-appreciation lecture with a ton of photos of beautiful murals in Ireland. The murals have been integral in the political conversation and it was a pleasure to learn about them.
I also appreciated Nicolas Lampert’s slideshow on how photography set the tone for Expansionism into the American West, shaping how the dominant culture viewed American Indians and enabled them to be further marginalized.
I actually learned a lot at all of those presentations.
Of course, the value of a conference is often who you meet there, not what you do. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Matt Dineen, Megan Tady, and Dave Schimke (editor of Utne), which included Megan interviewing Dave and I on our thoughts on the future of print media. Only a few days before the AMC, Punk Planet announced that it is ceasing publication, and that was on everyone’s mind. Megan wrote a great piece following our conversation, which also includes her reflections on the AMC. It’s published on the Toward Freedom website. Dave’s biggest concern is the loss of indepth investigative reporting, as independent outlets can’t afford to fund investigative reporters and mainstream newsrooms around the country are slashing their newsroom staffs. I’ve recently learned about two independent projects which are trying to deal with this by independently funding reporters, but is that really enough? One is the Center for Investigative Reporting and the other is a project through the Media Consortium.
I’m looking forward to what they will do next year, and I hope I will see you there.
pan said,
July 11, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Your observation on the age differential is shared by others. It’s not at all bad that there is youth participation. In fact, it’s very important. However, you are right that context needs to be provided to the younger folks to realize that there is something that came before (and will come after) them. Building a truly solid “movement” involves bridging that gap.
Along those lines, one thing that has disappointed me is the decreasing presence of actual educators at the Friday sessions (i.e. what used to be the somewhat professional “Symposium on Media Literacy”) This year there were many good folks who work for organizations like Detroit Summer, etc. However, there were very few people who are actually part of the educational institutions themselves. The level of discussion during the Friday sessions has become less and less curriculum oriented, and more “hey, this is what we’re doing”. It’s all amazing work and very important in the bigger picture. However, there was something very unique about the early SML and how it brought together people building actual media literacy curriculum.
Another concern is the focus on Detroit. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hometown and am very glad there is a resurgence happening. On the other hand, it seems that making the AMC so Detroit-centric can be alienating to others who don’t live here (or perhaps they will get inspiration to work at rebuilding their own communities). The advantage of Bowling Green was that it was somewhat geographically and socially agnostic. The focus was less on location, and more on networking with folks from other places.
Also, I agree that the Grace Lee Boggs comment is… well, maybe she has been very focused in a particular circle of folks. There is a lot of inspiration happening throughout the country, and many other conferences that I’ve been to have been as enlightening/inspiring.
Overall, though it sounds like the transition was painful, AMC was put in the hands of folks who really do care and tried very hard to create something beautiful. They did succeed at that — which many folks are grateful for.
I didn’t get a chance to attend the print media related sessions. So, hopefully you will post your thoughts on those.
Thanks for all the work you did over the years on AMC. It has been inspiring and very necessary.
sorry for the long comment :)
Jen Angel said,
July 16, 2007 at 8:39 am
I received a personal email from someone who interpreted this post as negative, mean, and destructive. That was not my intention and rereading it, I can still see what I intended to write and not what this person interpreted, so maybe I should just reiterate.
The people who put on the conference did an amazing job. It was a great conference, and a lot of people were really inspired by their participation. While I would have done some small things differently myself, for the most part those things are insignificant and I’ll eventually get around to providing that feedback directly to the organizers. I felt there was a noticeably younger crowd, but that is just my opinion and other people may disagree, and that’s just an observation, not a criticism. I wish the transition had gone more smoothly, but I don’t want to talk about the particulars of that publicly.
And finally, just because I disagree with Grace Lee Bogg’s assessment of the conference does not mean that I am being dismissive of her, just that I have a differing opinion an she does.
It may be weird for me to respond to a private note publicly, but I felt that if one person had that reaction to the post, maybe others did as well.