Reclaim ETS!

To the editors,

I was surprised and disappointed by Geov Parrish's grim portrayal of last month's Reclaim the Media conference ("Media Unreclaimed"). Given the fact that three Eat the State! staff members were involved in the planning or programming of the conference, including Geov himself, who spoke on the "Media Goes to War" panel, his apparent lack of insight into conference programming and organizing priorities was especially surprising.

Reclaim the Media attracted independent journalists and media activists from at least 20 states and Canada; conference panels featured strong representation from women, people of color and immigrant communities.

All the Town Hall events were well-attended, and the keynote address was designed to ensure that the largest audience would get a strong sense of the diverse issues and perspectives currently animating the growing media democracy movement. At a scheduled movement strategy session held later during the conference, several national organizations conceived and launched a national campaign to combat the FCC's proposed "review" (read: erasure) of media ownership rules. Diverse voices from different communities across the country, including from within corporate media institutions, took part in these conversations. Many of the conference's thirteen well-attended panel discussions centered upon the need for grassroots mobilization for federal media policy reform, a crucial aspect of "reclaiming" which animated the entire week-long conference. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what more Geov would have had the conference accomplish in these areas.

There were problems of course. Planned rallies in Freeway Park didn't attract the numbers of people we had hoped, for a number of reasons. Coordinating ambitiously-planned simultaneous events at multiple venues was a strain on inexperienced volunteer organizers, and resulted in some frayed areas. Involvement of local communities of color, while substantial, was not as rich as it could be at future gatherings. We plan to continue building such relationships through regular "media mixers," such as the one held at Garfield Community Center during the conference.

Geov's major complaints seem rooted in idiosyncratic assumptions about the conference's purpose, and ignorance about what actually took place. He seems most confused in his call for greater "dialogue" between Reclaim the Media participants and the NAB. After proposing that corporate and "alternative" media serve unrelated, even antithetical purposes, he goes on to call the lack of dialogue Reclaim the Media's "biggest failure." As he smugly lectures conference organizers on "alternative media strategy," his call for a "meaningful alternative presence" at the NAB conference is just silly. As Geov himself pointed out in the second of his two Seattle Weekly pontifications on the NAB (both of which traded on the ironies of his own transformation from NAB insider to alternative media maven), NAB attendees were mostly sales reps and engineers checking out the latest pricey gizmos.

What were community media makers supposed to gain from their workshops and hobnobbing--those who could afford the pricey entrance fee, that is?

I think it's fair to say that Reclaim the Media organizers had a more realistic, and nuanced, take on the NAB--that its real importance is as an industry lobby serving the interests of media owners--not journalists, or even those busy engineers. We largely ignored their conference programming because we had more important work to do. It is certainly true that so-called "mainstream" media are vitally important for progressives and media policy reform advocates to pay attention to and connect with.

However, the same is certainly not true of the NAB--a private lobby representing the interests of a nefarious cartel of wealthy media moguls whose institutional values are arguably opposed to values of press freedom, open access, and media diversity.

It would be interesting to find out what Geov had in mind for his "meaningful alternative presence" in a megacorporate conference whose organizers have long devoted tremendous resources to the destruction of community media and public interest regulation. The NAB isn't a public forum, nor does it claim or attempt to represent the diversity of even the corporate broadcasting industry. While Orwellian NAB press officials assured local reporters that industry-wide media ownership consolidation is actually enhancing, not smothering, diversity, the NAB's own conference speakers list consisted of a dozen or so white men and one white woman.

Yet Geov reports being "disturbed" by the lack of Reclaim the Media outreach to the NAB conference. If he had bothered to interview any of the conference organizers, which he did not, or even to peruse the conference schedule or website, he would have found evidence of extensive outreach to the newspaper and radio industries. Months of contact with mainstream media unions, for example, allowed Reclaim the Media organizers to gain trust--and endorsements--from local chapters of the Newspaper Guild and AFTRA, representing commercial newspaper and broadcast employees. Geov didn't investigate any of this, and instead wrote a piece based on his own constructed generalizations about the "tendencies" of the "alternative media movement."

Just because Geov believes this movement is stuck in a rut, doesn't make it so. The ease with which he rattles off his usual gripes--about the strident, sneering, insular left and its "inspirational pep rallies"--after so little journalistic investigation, suggests that it is in fact Geov who is stuck in the rut. I, for one, won't read one of his kneejerk dismissals of activist projects the same way again.

--Jonathan Lawson, Cascadia Media Alliance/Reclaim the Media, Seattle

As a networking and strategizing event for alternative media activists, it was great. But most of my "journalistic investigation" wasn't as an attendee--it was either as a member of the corporate media asked to go back and forth between NAB and RTM as competing national events, or as a lonely Freeway Park tabler. As such, one of the most striking features was RTM's invisibility, compared even to similar protests in San Francisco two years ago, let alone to what we need. The RTM sessions were broadcast on microradio--I only found out about it afterwards, having seen and heard no promotion of it. I heard the newsletter Blind Spot was great; too bad, as I never saw a copy nor heard it referenced. Outside my Weekly articles before and after, and a mercifully respectful Seattle Times piece, there were few opportunities for the general public to hear about it through corporate media itself. And let's not even talk about what the Freeway Park crowd looked like (outnumbered by bored cops) most of Friday and Saturday. Jonathan brushes it aside, but for many of us that was the public face of the weekend. The point is, we're much better at producing alternative media--Seattle in particular is blessed with an amazing diversity of talented mediamakers--than we are at attracting new audiences to it. That was one of the great original triumphs of indymedia.org, but making those breakthroughs routine and sustainable, rather than the product of a special event, is our biggest challenge. Beyond Davey D's exhortations, I simply didn't hear a lot of that being addressed. I wasn't everywhere at once, obviously, but if a key component of alternative media's ability to reach a new level is to get beyond the choir, one shouldn't have to look so hard to encounter the topic, or to encounter the event itself.

This Old Bus

I was linked to the July 3 issue (No environmentalists on this bus) from www.dtek.tv.

I am often desperately at war with how to do more to help, less to hurt, and better in general. In my experience, at the present time it is more a set of choices of conscience than an actual "agenda", but I applaud your efforts to offer a list to help try to give people some feeling of focused hope.

I want to point out a couple things about your top ten list:

re: items 1, 2, & 3 (car living): Stop and think before taking a possibly lesser paying job that is closer by, or moving (and possibly spending more in rent/mortgage) to a (slightly?) less car-necessary area. Some benefits of one or the other of these could be offset by some combo of biking, mass transit, or even purchasing a fuel-cell or electric vehicle, even though the latter is not currently considered very economically viable--it may be better than furthering one's involvement/commitment/payments into the mortgage banking system and/or going further in debt to live intown or whatever... though lessening sprawl is always a good idea if it can work for you.

#5 is good (eat less meat) and your digestive and immune systems will thank you. But #6 is even better (eat less corporate/mass produced food), because it is probably a lot more feasible for more people. (Getting a meat and potatoes guy/gal to eat tofu ain't gonna happen in many instances, but eating less chemical/hormone/mass-produced meat and potatoes is definitely do-able.)

#8 (dump the TV) Seems to already be gaining some ground, albeit in the smaller circles. But the feelings of liberation most express about it could/should continue to be emphasized.

#9 (buy less) will be directly affected by #8. Advertising is not a multi-trillion dollar industry just because it gives the viewer a bathroom break--it works and works well on most. Insidious. And #10 (don't work a job involved in the above) may be the toughest of all, and brings to light an underlying issue: our entire way of life is ingrained with flawed habits that perpetuate over-consumption. But beware of apathy, and focus on what you can do out of conscience and on principle as best you can, not on some hope of "saving the world" - such lofty aspirations just flat out burn out too many too much too fast. It's a long run, pace yourself. I will also add two more small but powerful items: First and foremost: appreciate your weather. It seems most people have bought into this mono-syllabic foolishness that summer=good, rain/cold=bad.

Which is potentially one of the most lethal dangers of global-warming in that as it happens so gradually, society at large will actually embrace and wallow deliriously in it with a beer in hand, wearing shorts and sandals, and taking that extra round of golf. Of course it is tough for most to "enjoy" having to drive/walk/ride to work in the rain/cold. So OK, don't enjoy it, and maybe you should try working from home more, but at least let's try to stop the mindless sheep act of bemoaning it like it's the end of the world... before it is.

And besides, many people forget just how exciting, peaceful, inspiring, cleansing, motivational, or just plain fun a walk in the rain or cold or snow can be... and then how much better that bake in the sun is made by the contrast in realities.

Second, it is my sincere suspicion that our entire social health would be made better by somehow getting all the scores of millions of movers and shakers to somehow stop spending most of their entire existence in a state of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation has been proven to affect one's health/mind/stability/judgement as much or more profoundly and/or acutely than significant narcotic use... and it is a way of life for so many that I cannot help but wonder how better equipped we would be to deal with all of our ills if it wasn't such a predominant way of life.

But this does lead to deeper questions... for another day. Good night.

Jason Johnson, via e-mail

Bullshit Regarding Teachers

ETS!,

Comparing a teacher with a "real world" employee:

When a real world employee strikes, a day of strike means a day of wages lost. When a teacher strikes, it's just another day of vacation--the day will be made up later.

When a real world company decides it needs to cut back, real world employees lose their jobs, even if the workload hasn't decreased. In the educational system, employment is practically guaranteed, unless demographics dictate a real decline in workload.

In the real world, the work year is 52 weeks, five days a week. With 12 holidays and, say, three weeks vacation, and a week of sick leave, that makes 228 days of work. In the educational world the maximal work year is 185 days. Even with no sick leave or in-year vacation, that is about 20% less than the real world employee works.

In the real world many employees take classes to augment their skills, or learn technologies in their spare time. In the educational system, teachers take classes during vacation.

Yes, teaching is an important job. But a lot of the bullshit thrown about during these strikes is just that. If teachers want to be compared to the rest of the economy, why don't they look at what happens in the rest of the economy.

--Marc Uhlig, via e-mail

And what she does every day changes peoples' lives. Ten to one you can't say the same.