There are 6,000 homeless people searching for a place to sleep tonight in King County, and housing prices are going up by the week. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Cascades, there's 177 underground tanks full of radioactive fluid on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation--and one-third of those tanks are leaking. How do these two issues connect? And who's making the connections?

Last week, at a forum sponsored by the Seattle Independent Media Coalition (SIMC) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), activists and independent media folks got together to discuss these two seemingly unrelated issues. Undeterred by the small turnout (around 50 people) on a sunny, Sunday afternoon, the presenters managed to get a lively discussion going about low-income housing, Hanford, screwed up budgetary priorities, and how to get these issues in front of mainstream folks.

This kind of work needs to be done, and it's long overdue. Too many activist groups work on narrowly-focused issues and spend years banging on the same politicians' door, without looking outward and attempting to make their issue relevant and visible to everyone. The best place to begin is by getting the word out to alternative media sources.

Seattle has a remarkably wide range of independent media projects underway, including: public access cable TV shows (Northwest Week, Earth on the Air, Network X, Deface the Nation, Citizen Vagrom, Crack the CIA and many others), on radio (Mind Over Matters on KCMU on weekend mornings), and print (ETS!, the Seattle Press, Washington Free Press, Black Autonomy, On Indian Land, and a number of independently published zines and newspapers). Often, activists gear their press releases to mainstream media outlets and bypass by the alternative media. But mainstream media is narcissistic. Journalists read other newspapers, even small ones, for leads and different perspectives on a topic. TV journalists watch each other's shows to make sure they're not being scooped by another station or some "little guy."

Once a topic is covered in the alternative press, a signal is sent to the daily newspapers and TV stations: i.e., "here's a problem you're ignoring." Then reporters, editors, and journalists get a little uncomfortable: "How are we going to address this issue? We can't let those amateurs scoop us on this!" (It happens regularly with issues ETS! covers first.) Often, it provokes a dismissive or blatantly pro-business, two-paragraph short in The Times or 10-second spot on the Five O'clock News. But if the alternative press fires back with facts in hand, it's harder for the mainstream press to keep dismissing the issue. Solid data, a no-nonsense insistence on basic human decency, a demand for absolute honesty, and a sense of humor (naturally) are all hard to resist.

But alternative media is also volunteer media; we need the facts, and we need it from people working on the issues. If those folks only talk to mainstream news outlets, they're missing their best tool for long-term change: a strong, oppositional, critical, grassroots media.

Which is why now's the time for more people, especially activists, to get involved in projects that bring together activists and independent media people. Kudos to SIMC and the AFSC for providing a place for this to happen.

To find out when the next Media/Activist Forum will be held, how to get in touch with members of the Seattle Independent Media Coalition, or to get a copy of SIMC's Guide to Independent Media Sources in Seattle, contact Arlis at 206-632-0500, ext 112.