Category: the grassroots

  • Indie Beer Garden Movies

    For my Champaign-Urbana readers: Micro-Film’s Jason Pankoke is presenting independent movies in the beer garden at Mike N Molly’s (105 N. Market St, right down the block from WEFT). The next showing is tonight at 9:30 PM when you can see the low-budget horror flicks UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS VS. A MUMMY and THE MONSTER OF…

  • From the AMC: Representing Detroit – Audio

    I recorded audio from the panel on independent media in Detroit that happened Sunday afternoon. The panel featured Catherine Kelly, Michigan Citizen; Ron Scott, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality; Roshaun L. Harris, Hush Your Mouth! newspaper; moderator: Jenny Lee, Detroit Summer. The audio is posted in MP3 and ogg vorbis on the radioshow page. John…

  • From the AMC: Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

    I’m sitting in the Student Union at Bowling Green State University, where it is unusually temperate for late June, attending the 7th annual Allied Media Conference. I hear there are over 400 people attending, and it looks to be the most diverse group I’ve seen at this conference yet. The first session I attended this…

  • Catching Up with the Radioshow: The Yes Men Spoof Halliburton, Bringing Transmitters to Central America, Musicians Support Internet Freedom

    If you don’t normally listen to the mediageek radioshow, you should consider checking out the last two programs. Yesterday my guests were Bill Taylor and Adrienne Bauer from the Primary Communications Project, talking about their plans to bring a 1 kilowatt AM radio transmitter to the Lenca people of Honduras. I also played part of…

  • Making Waves on Free Speech TV

    Micheal Lahey’s well-done documentary about pirate radio in Tuscon, AZ, Making Waves, is airing this month on Free Speech TV. It airs tonight at 9 PM EDT, and seems to be in regular rotation in the schedule right now. Free Speech TV is on all Dish Network satellite TV packages, and some of its programming…

  • From Today’s Radioshow: Primary Communications Project

    My guests for today’s radioshow were Bill Taylor and Adrienne Bauer from the Primary Communications Project, which works to bring communications technology to indigenous communities in Centarl America. Bill and Adrienne recently returned from Honduras where they are working with Radio Lenca and the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras to build…

  • On Friday’s Radioshow: Immokalee Workers Using Independent Media to Fight for their Rights

    The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is on the McDonald’s Truth Tour 2006: The Real Rights Tour! Today they stopped in Champaign-Urbana for the afternoon, making an appearance on the U-C IMC‘s low-power station WRFU and joining a community potluck dinner at the IMC. A couple of folks on the tour were also nice enough to…

  • Universities as Providers of Neutral Networks?

    Andrew at funferal takes up my question about a grassroots effort for network neutrality via constructing neutral networks, and brings up a good point about Universities: Incidentally, if we’re looking for a useful partner for the grassroots, why not look to the Universities. They probably have as much capacity as Google, if not more, with…

  • Crimethinc, and thinking critically about itinerant recovering-middle-class twenty-somethings

    Burningman has written an eloquent and spot-on review of the newest Crimethinc tome, Recipes For Disaster: An anarchist cookbook for Clamor magazine. For those not aware of Crimethinc, it’s an anarchist publishing collective–they call themselves an “Ex-Workers’ Collective”–that puts out radical books and zines that tend to espouse and promote dropping out of mainstream capitalist…

  • Is There Another, Grassroots Way to Network Neutrality?

    I am always a bit uneasy with policy campaigns, especially those in which the only option for positive political action seems to be, basically, “call your Congressperson!” So, as concerned as I am about the real threat that AT&T and Verizon are about to tier off and filter our internet, I am also uncomfortable thinking…