2020 Program Topic:
Writing and Journalism on Race

As we face the multiple collective crises of 2020, we need journalism and information produced by and for oppressed communities. Building on the conversations held at Allied Media Conference and Facing Race 2018, this session will gather journalists and media activists to strategize about producing journalism that supports movements, reflects grassroots communities, and fights white supremacy and racism. We’ll talk covering the uprisings, the effects of COVID and economic crises on communities of color, and safeguarding democracy. Most importantly, we’ll build community among movement journalists and media activists in order to share resources and support one another.

The session will be facilitated by Press On, a southern movement journalism collective which has a strong presence in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. The session will include political education about histories of journalism and resistance in the South. We will draw on the work and wisdom of southern media organizations and movement organizers to collectively build strategies for supporting, sustaining, and expanding the liberatory practice of journalism. Small group breakouts will focus on building community among movement journalists and sharing resources.

For hundreds of years, the people of the African Diaspora have lit paths towards liberation across the Western Hemisphere, lighting the way for each other with spiritual and cultural power. Black people birthed new traditions rooted in the art and religious practices brought from the continent, informed by new environments, and fashioned against the evils of slavery, colonization and systemic racism. Today, in the legacy of that repression, the resistance continues on all fronts. Black artists and writers lead the cultural charge to innovate and hew new freedom, new futures in our imaginations as well as on the streets.

Authors, song writers, vocalists, priestesses and witches, our three panelists will discuss the words, songs and spirits that have come forth in the art and their freedom work. Each a cultural icon of Black feminist creativity in their own right, their ground-breaking conversation will explore histories, personal and collective, survey some of the contents in their current tool kit and offer future visions. In this moderated plenary, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Michaela Harrison and adrienne maree brown will delve into the spiritual technologies of music and magic that they create to bring protection, healing and justice to the earth, their communities and themselves. Racial Justice Reads founder, Rosana “RC” Cruz will moderate, to proffer questions and support the panelists as they weave their magic.