community building

Over a year ago, when NAMAC chose Boston as the location for its 2009 biennial conference and chose “commonwealth” as its theme, nobody involved knew how important this convening would become.

Almost one year ago (in 1998), I wrote an article for MAIN called "I Need Help" which imagined a future where NAMAC members could access their peers through the member listserv. My theories were based on issues of isolation that I think media arts administrators feel on a daily basis - feelings that are assuaged when we come together, face to face, at NAMAC s biennial conferences. How can individuals who are in the same field - yet separated by geographical constraints - thrive and build necessary relationships (without having to wait two years for the next conference)?

While most people in the United States were celebrating the 4th of July last year, some of us gathered for three exhilarating days on the other side of the Americas to discuss and organize for global democratic communication.

Videazimut, an international coalition of community and public media activists, convened its fifth seminar and first general assembly of its membership at the Instituto Cajamar, near Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Picturing a radical future - again! Of course, I know we are in for four more years of eroded rights. Of course, I can anticipate the continued war with Iraq, the capitalist schemes that further only a meager percentage of the population, and battles where church and state are conflated. Of course, the things that I value are devalued: education, history, diversity, culture. We live in a state based on lies and deceit, built on fear and consumption.