Media Justice and Communications Rights at the First US Social Forum: Atlanta 2007
by Jonathan Lawson, Reclaim the Media
The first US Social Forum held in Atlanta this summer, was a truly historic event. Many thousands of social justice activists and community organizations from across the country gathered for five days of workshops, panels, cultural events and organizing sessions dedicated to the idea that another, more just and democratic world is possible. Youth, people of color, queer folks and immigrants were center stage and leading the way everywhere throughout the forum – indicating the broad kind of leadership that a grassroots social movement will need to be truly transformative.
Grassroots media activists were there, too, in relatively small but enthusiastic delegations. Groups such as Third World Majority, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Youth Media Council, and Media Alliance attended the Social Forum under the civil rights movement-inspired banner of Media Justice, and proselytizing in support of something called Communications Rights. Media justice groups used the forum to discuss how sometimes-obscure policy issues, such as media ownership limits, spectrum management and "network neutrality," can and should matter deeply to social movements, and to develop movement-wide strategies for democratizing our media system.
Media Justice
"Media justice" represents forms of media-critical activism which engage with media policy debates from within the context of broader social movement goals. Distinct from, yet encompassing, "media reform," media justice provides a framework for understanding and responding to media systems whose content and structures help enforce inequality within a racist, patriarchal, capitalist society. A media justice critique asks, where is the media that holds government and corporate power accountable? Where are the voices that fight racism, sexism and homophobia, rather than amplifying them? Where is the media that promotes community engagement, respect, and generosity, instead of commercialism, consumption and competition? Media justice also encourages traditionally underrepresented communities to make use of media tools and technology for community organizing and cultural expression, responding to and resisting antidemocratic trends in how information is shared in our society.
Communications Rights
In much of the world, the phrase "communications rights" is used to summarize these kinds of critiques and organizing priorities. In the US, that concept is less familiar; it certainly lacks the near-universal sacred aura of "freedom of speech." But the basic right to communicate – enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with other concepts sadly unfamiliar to Americans, such as the universal right to health care – has provided inspiration for democratic communications policies and campaigns around the world.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." In this formulation, communications rights suggest a healthy, diverse public sphere in which everyone can participate in conversation and debate with everyone else, rather than relying on elite gatekeepers. The concept provides a powerful gloss on what free speech rights could and should be in the US, where historically marginalized communities recognize that speech is less "free" than it ought to be. Those communities including the poor, women, people of color, immigrants, queer and disabled people as well as political dissidents.
At the USSF and Beyond
Comprising some 900 workshops among many additional cultural activities, strategy sessions, receptions, plenaries etc., the sheer scale of the Atlanta social forum might have drowned out any single set of concerns. However, media justice activists made their issues a highly visible part of the overall forum by distributing hundreds of printed "Media Justice" hand fans, which quickly became popular among forum participants sweating in the muggy Georgia summer.
Dynamic media justice workshop offerings included "Women Make Media, Not War," organized by DeAnne Cuellar of the Texas Media Empowerment Project. The panel brought together an international and multigenerational range of media activists and grassroots media producers. Several other panels allowed participants to dig into questions of how race, gender and class oppression intersect with media content and media ownership structures - and to explore ways to fight back through community organizing. Third World Majority's workshop "Media Justice Now!" led participants to focus on communications rights self-empowerment through the tools of digital storytelling and grassroots video production.
Many grassroots media producers were first introduced to media justice, at 
least in name, through visiting the "Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center" a community newsroom where Pacifica Radio set up a broadcast studio, and where media production workshops took place throughout the forum,. Organizers from Poor Magazine and other groups had planned the center to provide a location for journalists to conduct interviews, file stories, and broadcast, alongside a public space for workshops and hands-on production training. Some organizers became frustrated when the center's location proved to be relatively inaccessible for some forum attendees and journalists, especially disabled and homeless folks.
A high point for media activist strategizing at the forum was a session titled "There's No Justice Without Media Justice," organized by the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) and facilitated by the Youth Media Council's Malkia Cyril. Here, organizers squeezed an incredible amount of work out of session attendees. In just two hours, several dozen folks had identified concrete needs and opportunities for media justice activism in each region of the country, as well as organizing strengths and liabilities. By the end of the session, the group had assembled the outline of an ambitious yet grounded 5-year plan to advance media justice goals around the States. You can find a copy of MAG-Net's 10-point plan for media justice by clicking here.
Jonathan Lawson (Executive Director) has helped Reclaim the Media play a catalytic role in the growth of a national movement focused on democratizing media policy. Jonathan also directs online communications for SEIU 775, sits on the advisory board for the Consumers Union's Hear Us Now project, and is a board member of the Washington News Council. He is a four-year veteran of the Independent Media Center movement, and has worked in community radio since 1986; he currently co-hosts the weekly creative music program Flotation Device on KBCS in Seattle. His articles on media issues have appeared in numerous publications including Adbusters, YES!, Clamor, and Z Magazine. Jonathan holds a Masters degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University.
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Additional USSF articles aggregated by Mark Randazzo, Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FNTG)
USSF: We Saw Another World in Atlanta by Sarah van Gelder in Yes! Magazine (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1845)
A Grassroots Social Forum by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington in The Nation (https://www.ussf2007.org/en/node/18012). Both seem to capture well the spirit of the event and many of the key longer term issues at stake.
Let's Get On With It
Celeste does a great job of framing major concerns for funders, and her comments can perhaps usefully serve as a starting place for our ongoing deliberations on the USSF and on social movements. http://www.fex.org/news/details.php?id=54
Big Cheers for First-Ever U.S. Social Forum
New alliances between activist communities in the Unites States and those involved in social justice movements across the Gulf of Mexico are in the offing. Encouraged by massive participation in marches and gatherings held in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta last week, organizers of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) are now seeking to forge closer links with activists in the Caribbean and Latin American countries. http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/150989/1/
Achievements and Limits of the First United States Social Forum
The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. That it happened at all seems almost miraculous. It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements. http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/sherman040707p.html
Reflections On the U.S. Social Forum
Last week Atlanta, Georgia hosted the first US Social Forum. Sokari Ekine provides some reflective thoughts on the gathering. http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200707060849.html
Taking the Midnight Bus to Georgia: US Social Forum Diary
As we approached the bus stop over on the north side of Union Square, we knew all of our hard work over the past few months had been well worth it. http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1075/1
Feminists Participate in First-Ever US Social Forum
Twelve thousand activists assembled in Atlanta from June 27 to July 1 under the banner "Another World is Possible; Another US Is Necessary" for the first-ever United States Social Forum. The Forum featured over 900 workshops, a film festival, and multiple plenary sessions organized around six core areas including women's rights. Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. magazine staff joined activists from over 100 women’s organizations at the Forum to help create a new feminist vision for the United States and the World. http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=10401
US Social Forum Reflections: Forum Forges Common Ground
In all, the crowds were huge, the workshops passionate and inspiring, and participants made ideological, relational and personal gains, both large and small. http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0187.html
National Alliance of Domestic Workers Formed at Social Forum
First, a caution: You might read many articles describing wildly different events at the U.S. Social Forum. They could all be true. It was that big. Organizers estimate nearly 10,000 people passed through the June 27–July 1 event in Atlanta. Walking through the crowds, you could hear voices from the Deep South, gravelly New York accents, California slang and Appalachian twangs and Spanish—not to mention other languages my untaught ears couldn’t identify. Participants brought with them their experiences organizing within a wide range of human rights issues working within the many ground zeroes created by corporate globalization. http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/09/national-alliance-of-domestic-workers-formed-at-social-forum/
An Even Newer Left
At first sight, the only applicable description of the first US Social Forum would be chaos. Utterly overwhelming. Ten thousand people mill about the Atlanta Civic Center and its environs, trying to choose between dozens of workshops, issue-themed tents, merchandise and information tables, meetings, and plain old socializing. It is a scene perhaps best captured in fragments rather than full sentences. Organizers. Housing. Immigrant workers. Vision. Prison abolition. Puppets. Speeches, newspapers, fliers, banners, flags, books, shirts. Laughter. Dance parties. Water. Media. Fundraisers. Collaboration. Resisting state and interpersonal violence. Imagining. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, ghetto, barrio, reservation. The city. Youth. Networking. Strategy. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070716&s=berger
At the US Social Forum 2007, in the city that hosts CNN and Coke, in hotel venues where debutantes ironically were on parade, the progressive community stood tall and steadfast, proud and capable. The forum’s over 900 sessions were truly diverse in those presenting and those attending. Indeed, I cannot remember - going all the way back to an also highly diverse Black Panther Party Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in September 1970 - any other large leftist event in the U.S. as consistently multi-cultural as USSF 2007. More, I can remember very few that were as gender and sexuality balanced. And the USSF 2007 even had youth in abundance, a feature sorely lacking in recent activist conferences. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=13271
Another world is possible
The political discussion in the United States is, for the most part, disappointing -- not merely because it is too ideologically and intellectually narrow, but also because it is too backward in focus... At a certain point, you just want to say: "Get over it! At a point when only one in five Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, isn't it time we changed course?" That's the message of the thousands of Americans who have gathered in Atlanta in recent days for the U.S. Social Forum. http://www.madison.com/toolbox/index.php?action=printme2&ref=tct&storyURL=%2Ftct%2Fopinion%2Fcolumn%2F199769
For five days, Georgia has been the epicenter of liberal activism during the first U.S. Social Forum, a convention of sorts for more than one hundred groups. This wasn't like the national conventions the Republicans and Democrats hold every four years. People at the two major political conventions, for example, only have two choices of bathrooms while those at the Social Forum have three - male, female and neutral - courtesy of the Queer Visibility Committee of the organizing board. http://savannahnow.com/node/317099/print
