Media and Racial Justice at the Facing Race Conference 2010

The Applied Research Center’s (ARC) 2010 Facing Race Conference in Chicago, Illinois, September 23-25 was a great gathering of national racial justice leaders, educators, organizers, journalists such as Melissa Harris-Perry, Van Jones, Tim Wise and Rinku Sen the Executive Director of ARC. At a time when many of us feel frustrated with where policies and [...]

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Indigenous Peoples Green Jobs Coalition

We recently hosted a Placestories training with the Indigenous People’s Green Jobs Coalition.  They developed six powerful stories that will be displayed at their May 5th Community Forum on Green Jobs.  Here are some pictures of the training.  To view the stories click here

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Research and Storytelling: Building Power, Creating Change

I recently led a training with seven organizations on digital storytelling.  All had one thing in common.  They were all featured case studies in a report titled “Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities” published by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. The report “looks at data from 15 Minnesota nonprofits, which shows high return on investments and [...]

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OneWebDay: A Bold Idea

“We believe that we need to transform the social infrastructure of our communities to match the increasingly digitized and technologically mediated environment we live in.”

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When Media is in Our Own Hands: Storytelling as Organizing

Storytelling predates the written word. People have been telling stories for as long as we have had speech. Stories are learned image-by-image, rather than word-by-word, and are retold from the heart. Throughout history, stories have been used to educate, express, advocate and organize. It is through the sharing of stories that communities build their identities, [...]

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I am, we are, POWERFUL!

The ¡Justice/Justicia 2.0! initiative is a new program at Main Street Project.  Grounded in a media justice approach, the program was designed to support rural Latin@s, other communities of color and allies to use interactive Web 2.0 technologies, including blogs, Facebook and Twitter to advocate for immigrant rights and other issues important to their communities, [...]

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Why the Employee Free Choice Act matters to me

By Niel Ritchie I grew up in Iowa, a right to work state. There were a few union jobs in big companies like John Deer, Firestone and Amana, and a few construction jobs in the cities, but that was it. The guys that had those jobs did okay, at least seasonally. The rest of us, not [...]

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DTV Day of Action: It’s Time for a Socially Responsible DTV Transition

In 2005, the federal government passed the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act.  Signed into law by President Bush Feb. 8, 2006, the legislation established a hard date for broadcasters to cease analog television transmissions and transition to digital technology. The bill gave the FCC the authority to terminate analog licenses for full-power television [...]

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Faith and Food

By Kat Vann When I’m not at Main Street Project, I spend a fair amount of my time hanging out with church people, — so I gravitate towards news stories that talk about religion and social justice in the same breath. Katherine Glover at MinnPost.com wrote yesterday about a forum at Faith Mennonite Church in [...]

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