women of color media makers
What are women of color media makers and community organizers ready for?
This is the first in a traveling series of blog conversations leading up to the *Eleventh Annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, July 16-19, 2009* and based in the definition of radical women of color media offered here. Please join the conversation by commenting and inviting others to participate.
READ ON…
Our media expands possibilities and incites dialog. It heals, inspires, builds confidence and radical love. We use media to time-travel, to communicate past barriers, to be heard and to share survival strategies. When we come together we make zines, tell truths, start blogs, record CDs and videos, come up with plans and make moves on them. We use media all year round to open up space, to consider creative solutions, and to build networks of support.
The theme of the 2009 AMC was We Are Ready Now: Media and Creativity to Transform Our Selves and Our World. AMC organizers are Ready.
We Are Ready Now. The inspiration for this theme comes in part from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ poem Archaeology of Freedom (performed at last year’s keynote), which ended with audience members repeating “We are ready now” to each other, before the final line: “We are ready. For now.”
Inspiration also comes from a strong shift many of us feel is in the works or at least possible. Things have happened that were previously unthinkable. This image on Radical Women of Color Media represents what Alisa Bierra called “a paradigm shift and a practice of opening up definitions, which hopefully gives us the imaginative space we need to imagine new strategies.”
If WE ARE READY NOW, what are we ready for?
A specific goal? A fluid process?
How do we know “ready” when we see it?
How do we express readiness?
What are you personally ready for?
What are women of color media makers and community organizers ready for?
–
An active, thriving, decentralized network of women of color centered blogs informs these questions with our own process of questioning and answering, speaking and listening. Online, women of color blogs have become intersection points for queer, trans, immigrant, disabled, survivors of violence, sex work and poor communities to connect through all our many intersections and create a shared analysis that centralizes our communities needs in terms of media access.
[...] « Zines women of color media makers [...]