Empowering Democracy: Harnessing Community Media for Social Change

Welcome

While hosting a hip-hop show in a rural region filled with bluegrass I challenged the incarcerated people listening to bring forward their best chess player.  Over the next 14 months, I announced the moves  - creating a happening each week.  Turning the station from a tool of transmission to interaction - a public sphere.

Anything that can receive can also transmit and now the listeners who were tucked away in a faraway prison outposts were casually creating content that was looping back to them.  A conversation had started between us about the power of media.  

As reports of human rights abuses in those same prisons rolled in we started to hone our work - collaborating on producing a special show “Calls from Home” which invited their family members to call in and send a message of “love and hope.”  This involved months of intense organizing and careful planning. An incarcerated person made a logo for the program, another wrote a press release, and at each of the seven prisons, someone volunteered to mobilize family calls.  A family whose loved one had died in the prison that year offered to do as much as possible.  

The families and those incarcerated began to organize themselves for the show.  In one case we realized that several family members who all attended the same church had loved ones inside, but had never spoken about it with one another.  Our organizing was breaking down barriers that prevent people from building power.

Very quickly an agent from the prison system visited my home “Who gave you permission to do this?” he asked.  We celebrated this moment of intimidation as a small victory. The authorities had to respond to us.   

The day of the program hundreds of calls rolled in.  Twenty-some odd years later the program and the network of organizers that emerged from it continue to fight and win victories; including recent federal legislation “Martha Wright-Reed Act.”

The act of collaborative media making creates space for new leadership, wins victories along the way, finds and builds networks, and breaks silence.  These are all critical ingredients for building democratic movements. 

I’ve spent three decades working with communities to use the power of media to become change agents in their communities. 

We have created diverse media systems (a weekly radio program with prisoner families, a rural youth media project, a media strategy to resist a corporate power grab, a documentary program for grassroots leaders facing climate change, a hyperlocal podcast production platform, and a series of story banks).  

Some of these projects lasted a few days and others have involved working together over decades.  Along the way, I’ve viewed myself as a media artist, organizer, and facilitator in this work.  This site is about sharing some of our work, lessons, and victories.  

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want to talk about media making.  

Below are images of participants over the years.