AMC 2010 Reportback
Good Morrow!
Sleep-deprived Macio here with a lovely reportback on Detroit’s 12th annual Allied Media Conference. In case you are sleeping on this empowering collaboration of media, technology and communication in the name of social justice allow me to break down the essentials.
The Allied Media conference happens in the summer of every year. Its’ mission: to inspire and supply tools for do-it-yourself media as a strategy for social justice organizing. Throughout the AMC over one hundred workshops are conducted in hopes of sparking change through education. Some sample workshops include Build a Mini Radio Transmitter, Radical Comic Book Making, Media Tools for LGBTQ Youth Organizing, How to Create a Multimedia Renewable Energy Demonstration Vehicle, How to Make Mud Stencils, Indigenous Media Organizing to End the Occupation and the list goes on! There are even ‘kid only’ tracks for children under the age of 12.
Aside from these amazing workshops, AMC organizers implement fun social events for attendees. Some of these include karaoke while bowling, and various musical events with artists like Climbing Poetree, Defiance Ohio, and Tamar-Kali. The Detroit community really opens its arms to this AMC. Local eateries provide discounts, Cass Café hosted an all-night dance party and local community members were in high attendance.
The AK Press table was stocked with great titles AK and Distro alike! We had new stuff like Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, Procesos revolucionarios en América Latina, We Are an Image from the Future, and Dispersing Power. And our oldies but goodies like The Coming Insurrection, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Other Black Leaders, and Come Hell or High Water. Our excellent and varied selection of vegan books was a hit, as always.
We were happy to be aligned with other vendors like Just Seeds, The Beehive Collective, and Incite! Thanks to our volunteers who helped table so that I could eat and catch some sun periodically. AK Press is honored to get an invite to the AMC every year and looks forward to attending next year!
Signing off!