POPULAR CULTURE/MASS MEDIA ACTIVISM
Studying the often negative impact of mainstream media can sometimes lead to a sense of frustration in the face of overwhelmingly powerful forces. The best cure for such feelings is to become involved in one or more of the many media activist and guerilla art projects that offer an alternative to dominant images and ideas. Below is a sample of some of these activist projects.
Featured Site
- Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).Great site for one of the most important public art centers in the world. Learn about the hundreds of community murals SPARC has created, preserved, and recorded.
Activist Media
- Alternative Press Center. A guide to alternative press.
- Alternative Press Review. "Your guide beyond the mainstream."
- Bad Subjects. "Political Education for Everyday Life." An interesting new political journal out of Berkeley, CA.
- Bitch magazine. Its a noun, its a verb, its a feminist magazine for young women and girls. Incisive critiques and commentary on our media-driven world from feminist perspectives.
- Bullfrog Films Major publisher and promoter of progressive films; especially strong on environmentalism.
- Deep Dish TV. "The first nationalgrassroots sateslite network."
- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Spots and counter-attacks conservative bias in media.
- Mediachannel. A global network of media issues affiliates. Includes a searchable database of articles from various sites on the web.
- Media Rights. Utilizing unfiltered documentaries to promote social change.
- MediaWatch. "The Media Watchdog" website.
- The Monitor. Online version of an interesting progressive biweekly paper.
- Ms. magazine. One of the oldest and most influential feminist magazines.
- The Nation. Online site for America's longest-running progressive magazine.
- Our Media Voice. Promoting media rights and the building of a national coalition for media responsibility.
- Pacifica Radio. A long-standing, important activist media group in Berkeley, CA.
- Paper Tiger. The most important alternative TV production group.
- Radio for Peace International. Shortwave peace.
- Reclaim the Media. Fighting the private takeover of public broadcasting resources.
- Speak Out. Institute for Democratic Education and Culture. Progressive speakers and artists for campus and community events.
- Z(eta) Magazine: A Political Monthly. An important progressive magazine.
- The Z Media Institute. About Z Magazine’s summer Media workshops.
Art Activism
- African American Music and Culture Archive. Fine resource on jazz, blues and other African American cultural/political forms.
- Art in the Public Interest. Fine resource on community art movement(s).
- Black Cultural Studies. Compiled by Tim Haslett, Nimmy Abiaka, and Paula Lee. Includes information about Manthia Diawara, Arthur Jafa, bell hooks, Paul Gilroy, and a host of other black cultural critics.
- Black Film Center.
- Carol Simpson Design Works. Labor movement cartoons.
- Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia. Activism at its funnest; 101 ways to subvert mainstream culture.
- Chicana/o murals in LA. A site from Brown Pride. Also check out the featured site above.
- Cyber Vato: CyberSpace Conquered CyberBarrio. A performance space from Chicano political artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and friends.
- EnviroArts page. Visual, verbal, and dramatic environmental arts.
- Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopia. An excellent, extensive resource.
- Frameline. National organization supporting gay and lesbian filmmaking.
- Guerilla Girls. Feminist conscience of the art world.
- Movies, Race and Ethnicity. Fine resource from UC Berkeley library.
- Names Project AIDS Quilt.
- The Praxis Group. Radical performance art.
- Refuse and Resist! Youth activist network, including text files on several current issues, an art gallery, and downloadable stickers.
- Visual AIDS: Day without Art. Art world response to AIDS death toll.
- Women Artists Archive. From the University of North Carolina.
- World's Women On-Line. International women's art site.
- AdBusters.Includes ad parodies and a variety of tools for exposing the seamy side of the ad business, and consumer capitalism generally.
- The Noam Chomsky Archive. Chomsky is a very active, prolific, progressive cultural critic and this site is information-rich.
- Drawing the Line at Place: Environmental Justice Project. Fine article by Mat Schwarzman on an art project linking toxic waste and the old plantation system in Louisiana.
- South Asian Literature Chai Room. Political and cultural studies. Interesting site on Asian and Asian American literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
