Join smartMeme and 1,000+ other social justice organizations in Detroit for the US Social Forum June 22-26th…

The biggest, badest, boldest convergence of 2010!

SmartMeme’s Featured USSF Events both are slated for

THURSDAY JUNE 24:

smartMeme Workshop - Thurs. 6/24 10 am - 12 pm

Story-based Strategy: How Grassroots Organizers Can Win the Battle of the Story
Cobo Hall, room DO-03D

Book Release Party - Thurs. 6/24 6-8 pm

Free food & cash bar!

Celebrate smartMeme’s Re:Imagining Change @ the Majestic Cafe

4120 Woodward Ave between Mack & Warren, Detroit 48201

RSVP on Facebook

SmartMeme is also a collaborator on the Echo-Justice Project and the Narrative Peoples Movement Assembly!

** Join us by taking a quick framing strategies survey and participating in the peoples’ movement assembly:

Narrative Peoples Movement Assembly

Friday June 25 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Media Justice Dreamz/Echo Justice: Building Movement through Building Meaning

Cobo Hall: D2-08

With: Center for Media Justice, smartMeme, Praxis Project & Progressive Communicators Network

This PMA is about elevating framing and story-based strategies a key methods to advance media justice and build social justice movements!

More Great USSF Stuff From smartMeme’s Friends and Fam:

WEDNESDAY JUNE 23

Movement Generation - Eco-Justice 101: Ecological Crises, Impacts on Communities of Color, and Strategies for the Future

10 AM - 12 PM
AFL-CIO Canopy
Communities of color stand to be first and worst impacted by the multiple ecological crises that are developing today. These crises: of water scarcity and pollution, climate change, waste and toxic pollution, food and agriculture, and the loss of biological and cultural diversity, are a result of the same systems that have driven exploitation and oppression in our communities. They demand the urgent attention of our leaders and organizers as we build our resistance and fight for a better tomorrow. This workshop, which will feature audiovisual presentation, small group discussion, and interactive exercises, will explore: 1. What are these developing crises? 2. How will they impact low-income communities of color in the US and globally? 3. What are examples of community resistance that we can learn from? and 4. How can understanding these struggles create opportunities to advance our work on other issues like housing, jobs, immigration, community development, education, etc?

Eco-Justicia 101: Crisis Ecologica, Efectos sobre las Comunidades de Color y Estrategias para el Futuro

This workshop is also offered in Spanish 1-3 PM

Cobo Hall: DO-02A
LIMITED TO 50 PEOPLE

DS4Si: Social Interventions: An Approach to Creating Social Change
1 PM - 3 PM
Woodward Academy: 1436
with the Design Studio 4 Social Intervention
Social interventions are creative and often public ways to create social change. In this interactive workshop we will engage participants in designing powerful, fun and creative social interventions through: reviewing five diverse social interventions, looking for themes, addressing the S’s of intervention design (scale, structure, systems, symbols, and sensation), discussing the importance of increasing interventionist approaches to change, and inviting participants to be a part of a larger conversation and practice of designing social interventions.

THURSDAY JUNE 24

Movement Generation - Eco-Justice 101: Ecological Crises, Impacts on Communities of Color, and Strategies for the Future
10 AM - 12 PM
WSU Cohn: 224
Communities of color stand to be first and worst impacted by the multiple ecological crises that are developing today. These crises: of water scarcity and pollution, climate change, waste and toxic pollution, food and agriculture, and the loss of biological and cultural diversity, are a result of the same systems that have driven exploitation and oppression in our communities…

Global Justice Ecology Project - Climate Connections: Building the Movement for Social Change

10 AM -12 PM
Woodward Academy: 1436

Co-hosted with: Movement Generation, Indigenous Environmental Network, Women of Color United and others. Climate Change is at once a social and environmental justice issue, an ecological issue, and an issue of economic and political domination. As such, it must be addressed through broad and visionary alliances. To successfully address the climate crisis, we must also identify and address the deep root causes that link it to the myriad other crises we face…

Ruckus Society & Training 4 Change - No More Rallies, No More Marches: Direct Action Strategies for Climate Justice & Community Resiliency
1 PM - 530 PM
Cobo Hall: DO-03B
Tired of seeing the same old mass demonstrations? So are we! This workshop will explore creative innovative action design, to help push past marches and rallies into direct actions that are strategic, effective, and fun!

FRIDAY JUNE 25

Peoples Movement Assembly - Ecological Justice
Co-Convened by: Movement Generation, Ruckus Society, Southwest Workers Union, EJCC, Just Transition Alliance, and many others…
1:00pm - 5:00pm
Cobo Hall: D3-28
This is a BIG PMA that bringing folks together to advance proposals from the grassroots for shared work on climate and ecological justice rooted in an understanding of the need to transform the global systems that determine the ways each of us gets to live, work, and play.

Art is Change: Art & Creative Practice for Cultural and Political Transformation

1 - 3 PM

New World from Below Book Party
7-9pm
Spirit of Hope Church - 1519 Martin Luther King Dr, Detroit 48208

Celebrate recent radical publishing with AK Press, PM Press, Autonomedia, Institute of Anarchist Studies, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Microcosm Publishing, Team Colors Collective, and others!

SATURDAY JUNE 26

MASS STREET ACTION for Clean Air, Good Jobs and Justice!

Rally at 9 am in front of Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward

Join the People of Detroit on Saturday, June 26 for a Rally, March & Mass Demonstration to End the World’s Biggest Waste Incinerator!

See You In DETROIT!!!!

Enjoy some scenes from the 2009 REVerb Summer Camp with the Progressive Technology Project, somewhere in Minnesota!

This 4 day training was 2 days on framing/story-based strategy w/ smartMeme, and 2 days of fun w/ the Flip Cams and Tweet-decks making mock campaign videos and online campaigns, with Jen Caltrider.

Groups at the camp included SCOPE from Los Angeles, Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) from Albuquerque, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Data Center, POWER from the San Francisco Bay Area, NY City AIDS Housing Network, and TN Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition from Nashville.

I took the opportunity to learn more about using final cut pro, an made this video blog about the summer camp!

I had a wonderful time working with all these beautiful, incredible, bold and brilliant organizers - and innovating the story-based strategy curriculum to mesh with viral video production and online campaigning. It was tons of fun, and I learned a ton too.

THANKS to PTP and all who made this amazing training possible!

See also — Pics from the week via Flickr…

I was so pleased to attend the 2009 national gathering of the Progressive Communicators Network (PCN), held in Chicago at the end of May. The conversations were rich, the connections were deep, and the insights were exquisite. What an amazing network!

Along with the great discussions (and party!), one of the highlights for me was the workshop on the story-based strategy model. We hadn’t done anything quite like this before. Patrick and I, with support from Anasa Troutman of the Movement Strategy Center, designed this session for this special group of skilled practitioners. It was such a wonderful challenge, and I felt myself growing into the moment. I was so humbled and honored to be in the space and share some of our “edge thinking.” And now you we can share it with you too!

Thanks to Nell Greenberg from Rainforest Action Network (who I recruited on-the-fly to shoot this low-fi video on our Flip Cam), the world can watch the workshop on smartmeme.blip.tv! Its about 45 minutes, and we go into some detail about the strategy model presented in RE:Imagining Change with examples to show each stage in the process….enjoy!

*You can download the slideshow from this presentation (its higher res than this video) at slideshare.net/smartmeme

* You can download the Story-based Strategy Campagin Model “Chart” handout HERE.

Pics from the workshop….

What PCN is all about:

PCN exists to strengthen and amplify the power, voices, and vision of grassroots movements that are working for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Network members use communication strategy, framing and messaging, and media tools to: 1) enhance the influence of social change movements on public policy and opinion; and 2) realize a world without poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. The Network is a project of Spirit in Action, a movement-building support organization located in western Massachusetts.

A thousand THANK YOUs to the Progressive Communicators Network for bringing this amazing group together!

MAKE A DONATION TO PCN TODAY!

On January 27th smartMeme offers a tele-training for members the Business Ethics Network (BEN). BEN’s mission is to:

“help transform the role of corporations in society by building the capacity of our members in their corporate campaign work, by providing education, facilitating collaboration, and increasing recognition of their campaign successes with the funding community and the public.”

BEN MEMBERS: Please Download Re:Imagining Change here, the new strategy manual from smartMeme.

*Here is the slideshow for the tele-training:

Join me and smartMeme board member Shana McDavis-Conway on March 27th for a special pre-conference intensive - RE:Framing Feminism: Narrative, Strategy, and Social Change - at the Women, Action & Media (WAM!) conference in Cambridge, Mass.

Welfare Queen. Baby Mama. Red Neck Woman. Soccer Mom. Having It All. This workshop will engage you in a process of “Narrative Power Analysis” to surface and analyze the stories and stereotypes about gender that we confront in our lives and work, and the sexist assumptions that often underpin them. The intersecting narratives of gender, race, and class create a complex mine-field of messages in the dominant culture that all of our work must struggle to re-frame and transform. The session will use images, media, theater techniques, and small group work to envision feminist interventions in the contemporary media environment…

Register now to join us for this Friday Intensive! Stick around and see Jen Angel’s sessions on Covering Climate Change and Publicity on a Shoestring: Promoting Your Own Book or Project on a Tight Budget…

The full list of WAM! 2009 workshops is here. With co-sponsors like Alternet, Bitch Magazine, Femministing, and the Women & Gender Studies Program @ MIT we are bound to be in good company!

See you at WAM!

Join smartMeme December 3rd at Third Sector New England in Boston for the Be the Media! Mini-Conference, and our workshop, “Narrative & Power: Story-based Strategies for Social Change.”

From bethemediaevent.org :

The annual Be the Media! Mini-Conference helps participants understand the link between strategic communications and organizing strategies as well as learn essential communications tools and techniques.

The theme of the third annual Be the Media! Mini-Conference is: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of New Media for Grassroots Organizations.

Communications and media work are powerful tools for organizers and non-profits working on community and social issues, but they can also present challenges, particularly for under-resourced groups. In recent years, the development of new media tools such as social networking sites, blogs with multi-media content, YouTube, and cell phones as mass communication devices have both given groups more options and raised questions about where to focus already limited staff and volunteer time. At this year’s conference, we will explore not only how to implement these tools, but identify what are their best and most impactful uses for grassroots organizations.

The conference is designed to serve change makers at levels of communication experience including those who are doing communications work as part of their current positions, such as organizers, executive directors, or policy advocates.

Sponsored by: Progressive Communicators Network, Third Sector New England and Project Think Different
Co-sponsored by: Boston Women’s Fund, Resist, and Press Pass TV.

Are you hungry for justice? Do you love local, organic, delicious food?

Bring your passions together at the table, and join me and smartMeme board member Shana Mc-Davis Conway at the First Annual Gathering of the newly launched Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative (GFJI): September 18-21 at the Wisconsin State Fair Grounds in West Allis, Wisconsin.

Food connects culture, health, the land, and the people - but in this fast food nation (where food is getting more globalized, genetically-modified, high carbon, and expensive), we’ve got to step up and strengthen the movement to bring food back to an ecological, human scale. The inspiring trend is that farmers markets are re-emerging in many communities, and organic food is the fastest growing segment in the food industry - but the critical question is, who can (and can’t) afford it?

In the age of global warming, and in a time where 12.6 million children are going hungry in the United States, the future demands that we nourish the Earth and our bellies with a re-imagined food system built on the principles of ecology, and racial & economic justice.

This upcoming gathering is 3 days of doing just that. We are looking forward to delicious, local food — critical conversations about how racism shapes the food system — stories from community-based organizations who are doing something about it — and seeing YOU there!

The Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative (GFJI) is

a new network aimed at dismantling racism and empowering low-income and communities of color through sustainable and local agriculture. The network views dismantling racism as a core principle which brings together social change agents from diverse sectors working to bring about new, healthy and sustainable food systems and supporting and building multicultural leadership in impoverished communities throughout the world. The vision for this initiative is to establish a powerful network of individuals, organizations and community based entities all working toward a food secure and just world

A main course of workshops includes:

What It Means to Be White: Working towards full-awareness of white- privilege in community food security work: Judging by a quick scan of the demographics of people leading urban agriculture projects in low-income communities of color around the country, white women seem to be particularly drawn to this type of work. Within the good intentions of many white women (and men) often lie unexamined negative assumptions. This interactive workshop will explore cross-class and/or inter-racial partnerships…

Grassroots Leaders Fight for Justice in the Food System: The experience of racism in the food system can best be lifted by those who have lived it. We also are the ones on the ground finding solutions in an unjust system. Our multicultural panel will briefly describe our experience, work, barriers, achievements, and plans, with emphasis on successful work led by people of color in the food system….

and our smartMeme workshop -

Re-Framing Food, Changing the Story for Justice: People just buy junk with Food Stamps. Genetically modified crops will feed the poor. Community Gardens are for white hippies/Organics are for yuppies. America means justice for all. The intersecting narratives of poverty, race, and food create a complex mine-field of messages in the dominant culture that all of our work must struggle to re-frame and transform. We will use story as a method to approach framing our issues, and have an honest conversation about our successes, and what is holding back our efforts to create change…

Hungry for more?

A keynote from Winnona LaDuke (Founder White Earth Land Recovery Project and Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band. She has won numerous awards for her indigenous rights work, and written five books including Last Standing Woman and All Our Relations.)

and a potluck of great ideas from smartMeme community friends like:

Marc Rodrigues, organizer with Student/Farm worker Alliance; John Kinsman John E. Peck, from the Family Farm Defenders and Rafter T. Sass of the Liberation Ecology Project

The conference is filling up so register now! See you in Wisconsin!