Making the invisible visible
henk - 29.01.2003 13:14
kwru
 http://www.fair.org/extra/0301/poverty.html
Extra!, January/February 2003
"Making the Invisible Visible"
Poverty activists working to make their own media
By Miranda Spencer
"We’d like to thank the mainstream media for showing up," quipped Cheri
Honkala, adjusting her baby son on her jeans-clad lap. The executive
director of the Philadelphia-based Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a
multiracial organization of, by and for poor and homeless people,
Honkala was opening a Saturday press conference last October in a
claustrophobic classroom at Temple University. The occasion: "Break the
Media Blackout: A Conference on Media Democracy and the Struggle to End
Poverty," of which KWRU was a co-sponsor. The absence of mainstream
reporters only reinforced one reason the meeting was taking place: to
address and remedy what organizers saw as a lack of meaningful coverage
of poverty.
Honkala, 39, a former teenage single parent who has been homeless and on
welfare, is no stranger to dealing with the press. Since helping start
KWRU in 1991, she’s become a local celebrity and gadfly, treated as a
figurehead by the city’s press. (The Philadelphia Inquirer has called
her "the queen of civil disobedience"--8/9/00.) It’s a typical problem,
she told Extra!: "The press don’t talk about life-and-death issues the
poor deal with every day. They don’t talk about the poor as a group,
they’d rather do individual profiles to sell papers."
But while Honkala and other grassroots antipoverty activists, along with
members of the independent media from coast to coast, convened in part
to share techniques for working more effectively with established news
outlets, that goal took a backseat to a more proactive focus: developing
and expanding their own media "infrastructure" to convey the untold
stories of the some 33 million people living in poverty in the United
States.
With technical training and advice from more experienced independent
media makers, poor people’s groups composed of struggling citizens,
immigrants and their allies are becoming reporters, video producers,
radio hosts and Web spinners, using old and new media in innovative yet
inexpensive ways.
Why media, why now?
The conference coincided with huge changes on the horizon for both the
news media and government social services. On one hand, there’s the
proposed slackening of Federal Communications Commission rules on
concentration of media ownership. On the other, the question of whether
Congress will reauthorize funding for Temporary Aid to Needy Families,
and the still unfolding effects of dropping unknown numbers from welfare
rolls due to time limits.
"It’s not an option to be media savvy if you want to make social
change," maintains Jay Sand, a volunteer with the Independent Media
Center of Philadelphia, another conference co-sponsor. Ubiquitous as it
is, mass media content "defines reality," declared Honkala. "The rich
communicate across borders. We need to as well."
Participants concurred that the first hurdle to gaining a bigger voice
in the public discussion is visibility. But, they say, the media
monopoly and demographics-driven news values have "disappeared" the
needy from the news.
Joy Butts, a mother of three who still receives some forms of public
assistance, said she daily scans the papers of record, local
publications, and cable news for economics and poverty-related stories.
In any given week, she says, she can count them on her hands. "The board
of ABC, CBS and NBC sit on other corporate boards," she adds. "They
don’t want this story out because people would demand change."
The KWRU, which now claims several hundred members, has direct
experience with being rebuffed. In 1996, some members met with the
Inquirer’s editorial board to discuss dismissive coverage of their
attempts to bring attention to the plight of the city’s poor--which have
included HUD housing takeovers and setting up a tent city at the Liberty
Bell. According to Chris Caruso, a computer media skills trainer, the
group was told, "We refuse to allow KWRU to manipulate the press."
Honkala maintains the incident represents a typical Catch-22: "The only
way we get any coverage whatsoever is by doing actions, yet they call us
media hogs!" Sometimes even demonstrations aren’t enough: A February,
2002 sit-in by KWRU and a variety of antipoverty activists at the
Olympics, she recalls, "got more international coverage than local
press."
When they are covered, antipoverty activists are frequently portrayed as
troublemakers. In 2000, when marchers were refused a permit to march
down the city’s main drag to bring attention to poverty issues during
the Republican National Convention, reporters focused more on whether
there would be Seattle-style trouble than on why they were marching.
When the demonstration went off without incident, Honkala said, it was
framed as "'both sides cooperated.’ But the real story is that our First
Amendment rights were denied." Moreover, she said, the Inquirer’s
pre-convention coverage sought to generate fear of economic human rights
demonstrators by running her photo (12/2/99) with an article about the
1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. The
headline: "Are We Next?"
Missing pieces
Besides limited or slanted coverage, conference attendees said they see
a disconnect between their actual experiences and what is portrayed in
the news.
Butts, who lost her educational funding due to welfare revision, says
the "vicious cycle" of obstacles to getting on one’s feet has not been
addressed. Commenting on recent articles in the New York Times on
welfare and homelessness (10/6/02, 10/13/02, 10/14/02), Butts said they
were "OK, but didn’t go far enough…. They need to take the case of a
woman with small children and do a budget on a day-to-day basis." She
added, "No one talks about women in poverty in rural areas, who are very
isolated."
Glenda Adams, whose grandson died after being unable to receive medical
treatment because he was on welfare, says the indigent’s struggle with
health care costs also get short shrift. "The mainstream media don’t
care," Adams, a member of the Atlantic City, N.J.-based Poor Voices
United, told Extra!, "If a tragedy happens, they will bring [cameras],
but as soon as that day is over, they’re gone."
Conference participants concurred that reporters often ask the wrong
questions, based on clichés and assumptions about welfare recipients and
other groups of poor people similar to those documented by FAIR (Extra!,
5-6/95; 5-6/97; 11-12/97). For example, a participant at one workshop
described questions she is commonly asked when arguing for the need for
a better government safety net: "You talk about your rights, but what
about your responsibilities?" and "Come on, aren’t you grateful to live
in a country with a standard of living so much higher than in the rest
of the world?"
Honkala is convinced that "there are lots of good writers who want to do
content, but they can’t," because higher-ups won’t allow it. She cited a
demonstration by KWRU last fall at the local housing department, at
which children spoke about what it’s like not to have safe, permanent
homes. "One reporter told us he would lose his job if he went forward
with the story."
The biggest critique echoed by antipoverty and media democracy activists
alike was the media monopoly itself. Media giants are "like chain
stores," commented Liza Dichter of Media Channel, a website focused on
global media issues. "They try to take over all communication so people
can’t talk to each other or speak with a collective voice." Many
participants noted that Philadelphia is headquarters of ComCast
Corporation, the country’s third largest provider of cable services
(currently merging with AT&T, the first largest), yet also the only
major U.S. city without public-access television. And participants
feared that, as such companies rush to control cable, broadband and
Internet portals, their voices will be completely pushed out.
Grow your own
Antipoverty activists, determined to "make the invisible visible," have
turned to homegrown magazines, video, Internet sites and more. In this
way, they intend to "break the isolation" and communicate directly with
one another and the general public. Explained Terry Maguire, chair of
KWRU’s Media Committee [sic – Joy Butts, Chris Caruso, and Rachel Gazda
co-chair KWRU’s Media Committee], "We need to take our small scattered
voices and collect them into one powerful voice that people have to
listen to," uniting the poor into a mass that will "force the issue"
into public policy debates.
Among the most promising channels for such a project are relatively
high-tech media like computers or television. "Experience is not
necessary if you have vision and commitment," said Butts, who began
producing and hosting Marching On, a half-hour local interview show
focusing on economic human rights issues, in 1999. "Walked through" the
basics by the station manager of DUTV, the Drexel University cable
station that carries it, she runs the show on a budget of zero. College
interns and volunteers serve as camera people and stagehands, using the
university’s studio and equipment. Recent segments have ranged from
healthcare for the elderly to finding employment after prison.
With technical assistance from award-winning filmmaker Peter Kinoy,
about 20 KWRU-affiliated volunteers shot and edited Copy This Tape, an
18-minute video on how mass media affect public perceptions, for about
$100. The short was cobbled together from talking-head interviews and
found images, from TV screen captures to book and magazine
illustrations.
Kinoy works with the web-based Media College of the University of the
Poor, which provides a free virtual meeting place and live training in
sophisticated media techniques to antipoverty activists. He and partner
Pamela Yates have made numerous documentaries through his
Manhattan-based Skylight Films, which these groups in turn use as
educational tools. He believes films like his--which include 1991’s
Takeover, about homeless people moving into abandoned HUD housing--have
helped these issues "break into the national news…. It was the first
time I heard the term 'economic human rights' used by the media."
Then there’s good old print, like Survival News, a biannual Boston-area
newspaper written and read by poor women. Put out by Survivors Inc.,
which focuses on welfare rights and economic justice, it costs about
$4,000 per issue to publish, raised from grants and subscriptions.
Written in both English and Spanish, issues are handed out at welfare
offices. The most recent issue (Autumn/02), themed "We Are a Movement,"
includes "Survival Tips" for dealing with bureaucracy; "Dispatches from
the Front Lines," a journal documenting people’s struggles to obtain
social services; and a discussion of "What We Want from a Welfare Bill,"
such as childcare and access to education.
Survival News was spearheaded by Sharron Tetrault, a single mother who
said she once believed it was easy to get off welfare--until she herself
was forced to turn to public assistance. The paper, she told conference
attendees, requires "meetings, meetings, meetings" and "never gets out
on time," but is worth the effort because of reader response. Tetrault
said that when women see these stories, they realize, "'Oh my god, it’s
not just me!'"
Internet as information backbone
The Internet is the format that seems to most excite these media
activists. For those needing to reach a global audience on a shoestring,
it’s the most accessible and efficient means of disseminating their own
news and commentary. It’s also a way of correcting or augmenting the
reporting of major media outlets. As Chris Caruso put it, "the Internet
is an information backbone for other media."
Poverty activist-journalists at the Blackout conference told of reading
web pages and other digital data at the library, then printing out
useful information and stapling it into booklets. Or using donated (or
discarded) computers to start a multimedia and link-filled website,
purchasing Internet service from discount servers. Or "culture jamming"
--creating parody sites by copying open-source HTML code from sites like
that of radio giant Clear Channel.
One popular use of websites is to chronicle ongoing activities,
providing frequently updated, even daily, dispatches. That’s proving
effective for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization
of mostly Latino and Haitian farmworkers in southwest Florida who are
battling exploitative labor conditions. Working with Human Rights Tech,
which trains activists in computer technology, they decided to use the
Web to chronicle a "Taco Bell Truth Tour" they staged in March 2002. The
goal: establish a boycott of Mexican restaurant chain Taco Bell, whose
major tomato supplier is the company whose crops they pick.
CIW decided to target the fast food giant’s favorite demographic,
18-to-24-year-olds--who also happen to be the most common users of the
Internet. Trainers followed Truth Tour buses with a van that became a
rolling Internet and media newsroom for the farm workers, who learned
web design and digital video editing software as they went along.
A new site called economichumanrights.org plans to highlight
"tribunals," featuring personal accounts of economic human rights
violations from activists and other citizens. "Jurists"--movement
leaders, legal experts and, they hope, celebrities such as Michael
Moore--will have an opportunity to weigh in on the charges and
consequences. This may sound one-sided, admitted Willie Bishop [sic –
Willie Baptist], KWRU’s education director, but "it’s meant to be more
of a mock trial or moot court to encourage discussion and debate."
Reframing the issues
As the invention of economichumanrights.org suggests, one of the
fundamental goals in creating these new outlets is reframing poverty as
a human rights violation. As conference attendees emphasized, food,
clothing, shelter, education and healthcare are guaranteed by the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a party. So
is a right to communication--the "freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers." As Honkala explained,
it’s important to "use those terms. A homeless child is a human rights
violation!"
Such concepts are not so accessible to the public in a country that
often portrays poor people as undeserving. So these activists have made
it their mission to collect a critical mass of real-life stories of the
effects of budget cuts and lack of services by interviewing neighbors
and, say, people in shelters.
Such stories are designed to "get past people’s defenses, people’s
sleepwalking" by presenting images that are as "moving, striking and
outrageous" as anything broadcast on the six o’clock news, said Greg
Asbed of the CIW.
Said the KWRU Media Committee's Maguire, "You can’t end poverty without
winning the hearts and minds of people. It’s a battle of ideas, a battle
of images and ultimately a battle of stories." Added Galen Tyler, a
formerly homeless father of four, "The secret is, people don’t respond
to statistics, they respond to human beings who could be them." A family
that’s just been evicted from a rat-infested building. Workers stooping
to pick produce in blazing heat. An exhausted but determined phalanx of
marchers.
Besides using a human rights frame and vivid testimonials, another
benefit activists see in homegrown media is the context omitted from the
mainstream, the connections between issues typically viewed as distinct
social problems: globalization, disability, and healthcare, for example.
As Jay Sand of IMC told Extra!, anti-poverty efforts and the
globalization movement are "inextricable." Both question the fairness of
"billions in poverty simultaneous with great wealth." As Tyler put it,
"Every question is summed up in the poor…. The power of these stories is
in [making] the connections."
Eyeing the future
These people believe there is a demand for these stories, however harsh,
especially in a tanking economy. Said Chris Caruso, "People…don’t
believe Dan Rather at six o’clock anymore. They’re looking for something
else."
And if they wish, mainstream news outlets can use poor people's media as
reference material for their own work--if only when they stumble upon an
economic human rights website while doing a keyword search for a
business and technology story.
Kinoy, though a self-described "high-end filmmaker," maintains that even
those who work for powerful media companies feel stymied by corporate
control. He believes the economic human rights movement, through
gathering support by reporting its own news, will ultimately help ignite
a "cultural explosion," in much the same way the civil rights movement
did some 40 years ago.
Small wonder KRWU and others have made staying "wired" a top priority.
As Honkala told Extra!, "If we have to use a tent hooked up to a pole in
North Philly, we will!…The last thing you really have is your voice."
Miranda Spencer is a frequent contributor to Extra! who lives in
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