I don’t consider myself an activist by any means. However, I have been ‘active’ in quite a few causes over the years, because I care about anything and everything that affects our own lives, the lives of others and the lives of everything on the planet. I have always thought that, as informed and conscientious citizens, it is our duty to get involved in something and work towards making a change for the better. My mother tells me that I went to anti-war demonstrations when I was a toddler, so I guess that would have been my introduction to letting your voice be heard – although I am loathe to go to demonstrations these days. I guess I have grown to prefer doing and making things to act out your values rather than chanting in the street.
My first conscientious participation in political events was when I was in college in Rochester, NY. They held anti-apartheid demonstrations in the streets of downtown. I remember the slogans – “Gay/Straight/Black/White, Same Struggle, Same Fight” and “Victory to SWAPO/ANC….” Oh well, I guess I forget the end of that one. I didn’t know who SWAPO was at the time anyway. Soon after that, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and apartheid folded through global economic pressure. South Africa was free, or so it seemed at the time.
I moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. Soon after arrival, my friend Chris convinced me to learn Spanish. We started taking classes and soon I got involved in some other international issues centered in Latin America, such as ending the embargo of Cuba, and supporting free and democratic elections in post-war El Salvador. I even got to travel to both countries and made a video documentary about the electoral process in the tiny Central American nation of El Salvador. I also made a video about Breaking the Blockade of Cuba, having traveled there with the non-profit activist group, Pastors for Peace. I also began to curate and host film screenings at non-profit cinemas around town. We would show Cuban films and have discussions about the Cuban revolution and the US embargo.
Pretty soon, while still traveling back and forth to Cuba, I became aware of other international issues and began to curate and host more film and discussion events. My friend Mustafa, a Jordanian living in Minneapolis at the time, told me a lot about the Palestinian situation and the Israeli occupation. Even though he was an ethnic Jordanian and the Palestinians had assassinated his uncle during the civil war, Mustafa was still very pro-Palestinian and in favor of their right to self-determination. So, we started showing documentary films and hosting discussions, and we even brought a dance group from the West Bank to come to perform in the Twin Cities.
Mustafa and I got involved in other “issues” as well. Mumia Abu Jamal was a journalist on death row for supposedly killing a police officer in Philadelphia. We went to demonstrations, put up posters, and even got arrested for spray-painting “Free Mumia” on the boarded up windows of an abandoned house. We were also marching in the streets and demanding freedom for another person of color in jail for the murder of law enforcement- Leonard Peltier. We marched in the streets and shouted “Free Peltier” and spraypainted his name on buildings and signs.
All during this time, along with the activist experiences mentioned previously, I was pursuing my career as a youth media educator. This was my “political work”, founding and managing a non-profit agency dedicated to giving teens a media education and production workshop experience, mainly as an out-of-school time program. This work stemmed from my undergraduate degree being in film and video production, and my desire to do grassroots community-level work. Also, a stronger source for the genesis of this practice was the media literacy education movement. The main tenets of this initiative being that young people had to be taught to be critical media consumers, able to dissect, unpack and critically analyze all media as a “construct” made by someone with a purpose in creating that work. Part of that education was also teaching youth how to make their own media, which we certainly did. We started two or three different youth-produced cable access TV shows. The main program, Our Turn, was a monthly teen magazine style show that aired for about ten years, making it perhaps the longest running teen produced program in the country.
The other part of this praxis was the critical media viewing piece. A lot of this work was being done in schools, led by a wonderful, pioneering group of passionate teachers and educators in Minnesota, around the country and around the world. We thought that the work was crucial, for if youth didn’t learn to recognize, critically analyze and deconstruct media content, they would be at risk of being vulnerable to misrepresentations, propaganda and what came to eventually become called “fake news”.
Also, key for me in this work, was countering the objectification of women in the media. Of course, sex sells and the silly men in charge of producing content for the mainstream media made sure that there was a healthy dose of women in submissive, alluring, inviting poses infused throughout most programming and advertising. And then when music videos really took off, the roles women got in those productions as scantily clad sexy background dancers took it even a step further.
I did this youth media work for over 25 years from about 1993-2020, working with thousands of students and co-producing hundreds of projects. Most of the participants were American Indian, African-American and immigrant youth from Asia and Africa. The media production learning experience was also eventually wrapped within a broader positive youth development model that included academic success (high school graduation), cultural connections, civic engagement opportunities, career and college readiness, asset-building and other less programmatically specific youthwork initiatives.
I would add that another major social issue that had my attention during this time was the environmental movement. Way back in college, I had even worked for Greenpeace for a while as a canvasser. We tried to raise money and talked to people about the whales, the acid rain, pesticides and pollution in general. The Greenpeace staffer that guided all of us young canvassers was named Bruce and he called me Long Tall Sally Jesse Raphael.
A lot of favorable memories can be recalled when I think of all of these experiences, I think that we did a lot of amazing work and left a pretty good legacy of trying to contribute to a little bit of social progress in this society. However, as we move into the Year 2025 in a couple of weeks, these are very unprecedented times, It seems that way, anyway. This reflection on past experiences has led me to ask myself: What is the consequence of all this experience? What happened as a result of the campaigns that I greatly cared about and was either tangentially or centrally a part of?
- Cuba: Still embargoed; an economic disaster; huge scarcity of food and electricity; mass emigration out of the country
- El Salvador: Turned into a gang-controlled nation ruled through murder, rape and extortion
- Palestine: wiped off the map by Israeli genocide and USA funded ethnic cleansing
- South Africa: “free” and ruled by wealthy corrupt Black capitalist class
- Mumia Abu Jamal: still in prison on death row
- Leonard Peltier: still serving life in prison
- Media Literacy movement: cultural environment polluted more than ever with fake news and misinformation
- Youth Empowerment: Guns and drugs now kill more kids than any other cause
- Anti-war movement: still war all the time
- American Indian youth: still facing the same immense obstacles
- Environmental Movement: hanging on by a thread
- Feminism: copped out and bought in to raunch culture as somehow empowering
All of Our Campaigns Have Failed
THE MOSSY BOG 