This compilation was co-produced by... Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective, The Climate Confluence Network, Remedia, Toxic Soil Busters, and Outta Your Backpack Media.
Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective is an innovative, grassroots job-training program in Ithaca, New York (
changents.com/green-guerrillas), which values teen’s creative insights and capacities to transform our reality as leaders and participants for change. Green Guerrillas study documentary and narrative film making; make our own media from posters to movies; do outreach at community events; advocate for equitable living and learning environments; get our “hands dirty” learning about renewable energy; and, analyze important social, political, economic and environmental issues which affect our lives as low-income youth of color.
The Climate Confluence Network is comprised of educators, activists, artists, media-makers, parents, grandparents, and young people across the Northeast who are engaged in eco-justice related work (
confluence-09.ning.com). Members of the network organize and participate in the annual Climate Confluence gatherings, which began in 2008. The gathering is just one space where we come together to share resources, inspire and support one another through our various projects, campaigns, life-styles, and visions for a just world where we are conscious of the natural way.
Remedia is an immersive, community-based transformational environmental justice media program of East Michigan Environmental Action Council (
www.emeac.org). Remedia uses environmental justice education, multi-media production, media literacy, green technologies, popular culture, social networking, civic engagement and social consciousness as a means to trigger systemic change on individual and social levels. Remedia empowers youth with technological tools, skill development, and resources so they can craft their own solutions to larger, systemic environmental justice issues and problems.
Toxic Soil Busters Co-op is a youth-led worker co-operative that organizes for eco-justice in Worcester, Mass (
www.worcesterroots.org/tsb). The team of 10 youth creates safe yards and gardens, performance art and documentary film. Current media projects include 1) a youth-produced chapter of Beyond Green, following the story of Toxic Soil Busters founder, Janice Serrano; and 2) a "Video Training Series" demonstrating the nuts and bolts of running a youth-led worker co-op.
Outta Your Backpack Media (OYBMedia) empowers Indigenous youth through free movie making workshops and resource distribution (
oybm.org). OYBMedia is an Indigenous youth response to the need for media justice in our communities. We seek to create community ownership of media through youth empowerment. We challenge corporate dominated media by telling our own stories and by establishing our own networks and opportunities for media distribution. We emphasize resource access for youth with a focus on media literacy. We do this by holding free workshops, providing mentorship projects, coordinating community film screenings and festivals, by distributing fully equipped decentralized media centers in backpacks, and by maintaining our youth media arts center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Cover art, design, and layout by Yasmin Hernandez (
www.yasminhernandez.com) and Vagabond Beaumont (
www.machetero-movie.com).
Produced with support from Allied Media Projects (
alliedmediaconference.org/about/amp) and Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation Project, Incorporated (
www.stamp-cny.org).
released April 22, 2010