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Journalism for Liberation and Combat




Below is information on Journalism For Liberation and Combat. The course has been completed but you can still engage with it.


Here is the Course Syllabus to follow along with the sessions.


An intensive series of participatory seminars by and for radical media workers, organizers, and everyone with an eye on liberation

Hosts, Presenters and Guests (affiliations):

Jared A. Ball (iMiXWHATiLiKE, Black Power Media)
Too Black (Black Myths Podcast, Black Power Media)
Erica Caines (Black Alliance for Peace & Hood Communist)

Kelly Hayes (Movement Memos & Truthout)

Brian Nam-Sonenstein (Beyond Prisons & Shadowproof.com)

Brandon Soderberg (coauthor I’ve Got A Monster)

Brooke Terpstra (Oakland Abolition & Solidarity)

Jared Ware (Millennials Are Killing Capitalism)


When and how:

- Four 2-3 hr remote sessions
- Sat 3/5, Sun 3/6, Sat 3/12, Sun 3/13
- 1-3 PST / 4-6 EST each session
- Syllabi, required readings/audio/video provided (material chosen to be accessible, multi format; homework will require a few hours for each session)

- Registration Closed, but the sessions can be found on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism (audio) and Black Power Media (video)

What:

Journalism, Media, and other forms of culture exert a profound influence on daily life, how we see ourselves and where we set the horizons of possibility. Take a minute: imagine any revolutionary process or freedom struggle…  what drives and sustains it….. Now imagine it without its own media, reportage, and debate…

YOU CAN’T. It is fundamental. The ruling class knows this instinctively when not explicitly.

Capitalists in the US control corporate media production and, through non profit organizations and foundations, exert strong influence over what we think of as “public” or “alternative” media. 


There are long histories of radical, liberatory journalism which are critical to the development of radical social movements. At the heart of this course is the question: how do we cultivate revolutionary culture? Part of that question requires us to understand the dominant mass media and its conventions, and the other part requires that we explore what makes revolutionary journalism revolutionary.

The course will:

  • Explore the history of corporate media in the US and the concept of “emancipatory journalism” 

  • Explore the importance and functions of an autonomous, liberatory media within the larger framework of culture, movement building, and daily life.

  • Comparatively examine multiple cases of emancipatory or revolutionary journalism within the past century as well as recent struggles to cultivate it.

  • Feature a panel of veteran journalists who cover the violence of police, the state and Capital and also cover movements and culture through a radical lens. These panelists will discuss both participation in independent and autonomous efforts and navigating other media contexts.

What this course is NOT:

  • We are not teaching a particular “media literacy” to produce a “good citizen” or “fix a broken democracy.” On the contrary, we’re looking  to cultivate good combatants and rich, liberatory, autonomous cultures in order to survive and win.

  • We are NOT workshopping ways of reforming the bourgeois, hegemonic, mass media.

If you are looking for material on this tip, no harm, no foul - you have just walked into the wrong space. There are plenty of other panels and workshops oriented towards reform out there. But we won’t be making space for those debates or perspectives here.

Our goals:

One goal is to instill aspiring journalists, creators, activists and organizers with a greater sense of what makes movement media radical and how to engage news and cultural production in a revolutionary manner.

Another goal is to hone and share this series as a public resource. These presentations will be recorded and publicly hosted along with the syllabi and homework materials so that this mini-course can be replicated and drawn upon at will. (Discussion portions of these first sessions will not be recorded so that conversation can flow and privacy be respected.)

Finally, in the material world looking forward, we, the organizers of the session, hope to produce some infrastructure to foster a rich ecosystem of liberatory journalism which could mean:

  • developing a clearinghouse for pitches seeking outlets or campaigns hunting for platforms or writers, platforms seeking content… like a rideboard. But for pieces.

  • Maintaining a standing roster of people available for skill-sharing sessions on any aspect of journalism or complementarily, a bulletin board of projects looking for help

  • Maintaining a funding/hustle announcements and tips board

  • And more….


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