A cool contest to name the economic era of these years 2000′s…
Hey smartMeme community! If anyone can do this, you can! We are collaborating with the Working Group on Extreme Inequality to educate and mobilize around the extreme concentration of wealth and power that is strangling opportunity in our country. The top one percent of households received 22.9 percent of all pre-tax income in 2006, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. Meanwhile, 36.5 million people were below the official poverty line in 2006. This is the greatest concentration of income since the Gilded Age of 1928, when 23.9 percent of all income went to the richest one percent.

What is happening in our country right now needs a name! What should we be calling this era of extreme inequality we’re all living through? The Second Gilded Age? The Age of Excess? The SubPrime Period? Or do you have have a better idea? Enter our new Name Our Epoch contest by July 31 — and Barbara Ehrenreich, Walter Moseley, and Howard Zinn will chose the winner!

Naming the moment is a key narrative strategy to answering the question everyone is asking - What is going on in this country right now? Gas prices through the roof, Bear-Stearns execs on the run, home foreclosures on an exponential rise…and a waiting list for custom mega yachts? In order to achieve social justice, we must both fight poverty at the bottom of the ladder, and challenge the extreme wealth and power that control the tippy top.

Enter the contest and join the conversation

New from smartMeme : Story-based Strategies for Direct Action Design
SmartMeme is pleased to join Team Colors Collective and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press in announcing the launch of the one-off online publication “In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements”:

www.inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info

Whirlwinds provides detailed analysis, thoughtful criticism, and substantive writing on current organizing through an inquiry into movement in the United States. Through that process, Whirlwinds assembles a strategic analysis of current political composition as a tool for building political power.

SmartMeme was asked to offer some analysis on how to integrate narrative strategy into the realm of street protest, with an eye towards demonstrations at this summer’s political conventions. We responded with a brief but detailed explanation of story-based strategy elements, and ideas for “direct action at the point of assumption.”

In addition to our own submission, some of our favorite snippets of this anthology include:

Harmony Goldberg on The Right to The City Alliance:

This expansive approach to anti-gentrification organizing reflects the Right the City Alliance’s movement-building orientation. The alliance is not interested in a narrow definition of the issue; instead they want to foster a resistance that is as complex and wide-ranging as the process of gentrification itself.

Marina Karides on the US Social Forum:

The establishment of the USSF process relied on repeated transaction or tasks accomplished by various members of the National Planning Committee that started the process of establishing trust. And this trust developed beyond traditional activist sectors, extending networks outside of their “quarters” or issues. The future of building a program of collaborative social justice in the US will rely on groups and organizations extending beyond their usual body politics and into building alliances with other sectors and political leanings.

and our very own Jen Angel on Media & Activism:

All types of media contribute to discussions around social movements in their own unique and valuable ways.

What I’ve come to believe can be summarized in several points:

• Media is central to how power operates

• Media is integral to advancing the work of social justice movements

• Media is a tool to be used strategically by activists

• Activists need to prioritize and fund media

• Activists need to directly connect our activism and media to struggles and communities

• We need to meet the needs and appeal to the desires of individuals and communities

This collection begins and end with the question:

Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind??

Visit the Whirlwinds Site

Download the PDF - Story-Based Strategies for Direct Action Design

New from smartMeme: Changing the Story for Media Justice!

smartMeme was invited to collaborate with the SPIN Project on their newly released toolkit Whose Media? Our Media! - Strategic Communications Tools to Reform, Reclaim, and Revolutionize the Media

In communities across the country, inspiring campaigns of resistance and transformation are standing up to powerful corporations and bought-and-paid-for-politicians. The Battle of the Story is being waged daily to determine whether our collective mediascape will be a sterile corporate monoculture or a vibrant ecosystem of diverse voices and perspectives….
~ From Patrick Reinsborough’s contribution, It’s Time to Change the Story!

The Whose Media? Tool Kit is an impressive, comprehensive, change agent How-To Guide. Packed with tips, analyses and best practices, Whose Media? Our Media! walks you through the tools of strategic communications – planning, framing, messaging, creative campaign tactics — and offers special spotlights on digital media/Web 2.0, Ethnic Press and Funding the Work.

Whether you are a seasoned activist, or someone new to the movement trying to get your story out, this tool kit is an invaluable ally in the battle of the story.

smartMeme Says:

Don’t Leave Home / Take on Corporate Media

Without It!

You Can Download the Toolkit Here: [Download PDF (1.8 MB)]

Or order hard copy from SPIN.
*If you are a member of an organization that works for media reform or media justice, you are eligible to receive a free copy of this kit! If you would like a copy of this kit but do not fit the above criteria, you may order the kit for $15.00 (includes shipping and handling).

ENJOY!