“Feed Your Alternative Media” Week ~ October 17-23, 2004

“How many people out there today would like to testify that they have triumphed over the filth of nuclear energy, toxic wastes, tainted sex, cocaine and heroin, irradiated food…only to have fallen victim to the vile corruptions of entertainment criminals like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw?” – Rob Brezsny

A growing populace has grown weary of talking business suits, delivering embedded news stories, on a corporate budget. The sterilization of public opinion through the nightly news is no longer effectively sedating American thought processes, and alternative media has never been so powerful, organized, promising, or important, as it is right now. With a growing international alliance of environmentalists, free trade activists, anarchists, etc., and the use of the web and internet for immediate updates and news reporting, combined with new street technology, we are successfully reclaiming the airwaves and press in an alternative media movement, creating an unprecedented threat to corporate controlled media and news.

If you are like us, you were as interested in breaking news outside the Republican National Convention, as you were in what was going on inside the convention. You prefer human contradiction and controversy, to repression of thought. You prefer a media with a stated anti-corporate agenda, as opposed to a clear and unspoken corporate agenda. To keep these channels of alternative access open and growing with professional level reporting and networking, community support for alternative media is crucial, now more than ever. Due to the fact that we are not receiving government funding or corporate sponsorships, due to our political beliefs and stated agendas, we are absolutely reliant on readers for survival. Devoted, unpaid volunteers have gotten us to this level of alternative media savvy. But volunteer hours do not cover internet and equipment costs, rent for community media spaces, publication costs, etc. An inflow of cash is essential to maintaining advances we have thus far secured, and to allow for us to grow.

To meet the needs of alternative media, we are calling for a “Feed Your Alternative Media” week. We ask that you organize local fundraising benefits for your favorite alternative news sources. We encourage you to engage in fun and creative activities to benefit alternative media venues that you frequent. The showing of activist/political movies for a small admission, artistic homemade miniature golf courses, photo booths like those with old west motifs, but with black bloc motifs and police/protest backgrounds could be nice, no talent shows, anarchist carnivals with dunk tanks for Bush, etc., white elephant bag sales (selling bags that you do not know contents of until you buy it) and rummage sales, Frank Zappa or Johnny Cash themed karaoke nights or sing alongs, an experiential workshop to explore writing about what makes you really angry, dance contests, raffles, a plaid party, collect donations to watch a reenactment of a local protest turned riot in your town (playing both the cops and protesters in the skit), haunted houses, tattoo artists’ solidarity days, etc…whatever you can think of that is fun, that people might pay a buck or two to participate in. By helping with community fundraising and support for alternative media, you participate in the creation of a diverse news network, based on community goals and needs, rather than paying for limited news sources that remain controlled by big business and big brother. Little Sister is watching, and is reporting from the front lines. She needs your support. Please donate to the alternative media resource of your choice via active fundraising, during the week of October 17-23, 2004.

Infoshop.org / Alternative Media Project

Contact us so we can list your event or your sponsorship/endorsement:
http://www.infoshop.org/scripts/feedback.php3

On the web:
http://www.infoshop.org/altmediaweek2004.html

Alternative Media Project
PO Box 7171
Shawnee Mission, KS 66207