Friday, May 13, 2005

Meet Me In St. Louis

Well I am now in St. Louis, as immortalized in the famous song, I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair. I showed up just in time to catch the opening (plenary?) session. It was pretty interesting. They had several speakers (including Robert W. McChesney, Amy Goodman, Janine Jackson, and Malkia Cyril), all of whom gave rousing speeches.

Malkia Cyrill in particular has a powerful presence as a public speaker. She spoke, essentially on how Media Bias and the sidelining of minority groups ties together, and postulated that we cannot get further progress on racial issues without addressing media control, and we cannot get further progress on media control until we make real progress on racial issues. I'm not sure I completely buy that postulate, but it certainly merits further thought.

I am sitting in a hallway, a stair well really watching media activists walking by and talking and stuff. So far my networking skills really really really suck. But I'm going to do better now. I took extensive notes in the meeting I just attended (on the victories experienced by the Media Reform Movement, and am considering tightening them up, adding random references to Gilligans Island. What do you think?

No comments: