FORWARDEVER MEDIA CENTER
Writer Alex
Haley writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X with Brother Malcolm.
"The
media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make
the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Because they control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X
Mission
The Forwardever Media Center is 100% committed to providing unconventional writing workshops and media literacy training to "at-risk" Black youth, particularly males, ages 14 through 24. Working in partnership with The Mentoring Center in Oakland, CA., the Center's writing workshops, website internship, and film forums, help students develop critical thinking skills and discover their creative talents. We recruit youth for our programs from the California Youth Authority (the state's largest prison for youth) as well as from universities and high schools. This cross-pollination of young minds creates dynamic shared experiences.
Programs
Whatchusay Cinema–A monthly film forum hosted at schools or community centers in Northern California that explores issues such as race, class, gender, and society. Students are joined by a panel of activists, educators, athletes, entrepreneurs, etc. to rate the films and convene roundtable discussions about corresponding relevant issues in society. For info about film screenings and schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Writing Workshops–We offer intensive seminars in journalism, creative writing, cultural criticism, new media, film production, etc. These seminars are taught at the center, located at 1224 Preservation Park, Oakland, CA, 94612. They are also available on location, at schools, community and detention centers, churches, etc. For info about class schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Internships–Whatchusay.com offers competitive internships to young writers who have clearly demonstrated a passion for the craft of writing or media production. The 3-month internship covers news writing and reporting, feature writing, creative writing, media literacy and new media. Working in partnership with community based organizations, universities and international and national media outlets, we produce a pipeline of informed journalists of color who will go on to create their own independent media organizations or work for major media organizations.
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Infotainment: Media Miseducation
by Lasana O. Hotep
People make decisions from the information that is available to them. Where do you get most of your information? Better yet, what kind of information are you exposed to? Does this information help you solve problems in your community? These are valid questions to pose to college students on the verge of being our next generation of decision makers.
According to the US Census Bureau, 17% of African-Americans over age 25 have four-year college degrees. One would assume that this group would have a broader information base than the rest of Black America. In the instance of formal exposure to knowledge that may be the case, but academic institutions are not our only or primary source of information.
According to a Nielsen poll, "At the household level, Blacks have been found to watch up to 23 more hours of television per week than whites." If you combine that with the amount of music, movies and video games that we consume, it paints a picture of a people who are overexposed to entertainment. In short, a significant portion of our data is coming from sources of "entertainment" rather than "education."
Whether one views him/herself as apart of the African American community or not, there are still some very serious issues that affect us disproportionately as a group. Just a casual glance at the National Center for Health will reveal the alarming rates at which we are suffering from hypertension, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. We are consistently finding ourselves the victims of intra-racial murder and violence. Our college attendance, retention and graduation rates are below national trends. Where is the group of people that we are looking toward to address these issues? They are at universities across this country.
We hope that our future decision makers are not using episodes of UPN programs, video countdowns or Xbox games to address these issues and shape our world. But there is more that we can do than just hope. We can engage in the wonderful process of independent study and analysis. Understanding that we do acquire information outside of the classroom, it is necessary that we empower ourselves to research, study and analyze independently. I encourage you to either join or form study groups that are designed to address issues that face our community.
For more information on forming a study group and booklists visit http://aamasu.org/vision.php. We shape our environment based on the information we have available to us. Keep in mind Malcolm X's wise words "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today!"
Lasana Hotep is the founder and Lead Consultant of Hotep Consultants. He also serves as a Student Success Coordinator at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. For more information visit www.lasanahotep.com or www.aamasu.org.
Posted on July 9, 2007 10:22 AM
