By Harry Haller
Through the hard work of Lukayo Estrella, OPIRG-Carleton’s Outreach and Programming Coordinator, the latest incarnation of OPIRG’s Tools for Change workshops went off without a hitch. Taking place from Jan. 19 to 21, this series of events was geared towards helping students and activists to take advantage of the tools available in this digital age.
Dubbed “From Headlines to Hashtags,” the premise of these workshops was to help show the power social media has to help foster social movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter. Despite mainstream media’s voyeuristic and potentially disrespectful methodology, anyone with a smartphone, an internet connection and a little spare time can take the production of media into their own hands.
The series began on Jan. 19 with a workshop on graphic design hosted by Radiyah Chowdhury. A fourth-year journalism student with six years of experience in graphic design, Chowdhury led a packed room through the basics of her craft. From lines to textures, she explained how all of these simple elements are brought together to create impressive and eye-catching posters, while rendering herself available to answer more technical questions after the presentation.
The main event was the Social Justice Media panel on the following day, where representatives from various socially-minded media publications came to tell stories of “Why Mainstream Media is so Shitty,” as one presentation was titled, and how activists and community members can abandon traditional news outlets in order to create responsible and respectful forms of media. The speakers were comprised of Colleen Cardinal from A Hidden Generation, Kristen Gilchrist from Families of Sisters in Spirit, and Joseph Hutt from the Leveller and OPIRG Roots Radio.
Cardinal and Gilchrist explained their personal histories of dealing with various media publications, vulturish reporters who hung around to film falling tears from despairing family members, content creators who are more interested in “tragedy porn” and self-aggrandizing than they are in being true allies to the cause they are covering.
They explained how their organizations evolved after far too many of these encounters, and how they decided that they wanted to be the ones who controlled just how their stories were being presented to the world. If you don’t like the media, BE the media.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol.8 No. 4 (Jan/Feb 2016).
