NCLR ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 2009, CHICAGO

MAYBE YOU REMEMBER, Dear Reader, the last time I was in Chi-Town, which was for the Netroots Nation Convention (Ykos ’07) as one of the “Chicago 17,” and quite the adventure that was! (I have yet to finish putting together the little documentary film on it I will release later this year, but hold tight, amigos and have faith, for I shall deliver.)

July 25 – 29, your pal Nez is heading back to the lovely ciudad de Chi-ca-go for the NCLR Annual Conference to speak on a panel about New Media strategy and application as I have experienced it. Technically, de verdad, by now I am “expert” on this situation (I squirm away from that word in general) and have been flown out to speak on it before now, even before I worked for MTV’s Street Team which was founded and arranged around exploring of this “New Media” thing as well. But mostly, I’ve gained my knowledge of New Media simply by using it as it came along, to further other ends I had. It’s been a very organic process, and I feel good about that.

I guess this is why I sometimes laugh at the fact that it’s become so formalized with panels and sessions and papers and articles…but I want to make it clear that it’s not about belittling that fact, and not in a way where I don’t get it, I do. The laugh i…for life, and how (as John said) “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” And okay, I admit there is just something funny-odd about watching it become so academic. But I definitely don’t knock the attention to New Media, cuz New Media as such is…not just ways of staying in touch with amigos or broadcasting a message, or creating a route along which you can guide others to awareness or movement, or telling a story. It’s also the new Library; the new Book, the new Phone, the new Newspaper. (Nuance Reminder: I am not saying to be the “New” one, that the old one need COLLAPSE in thirty minutes….)

So, sure, I’ve had time to think about all this and I will definitely organize my thoughts succinctly for the people at the conference and do my best to earn my schwag by blogging while there (and, yes, Tweeting, too. Probably getting some i-Fone video to ya via Qik, and will be auditioning the new Mental-Skype WiFi Alpha software.

Joining me on the panel will be some srsbznss activists/entrepreneurial spirit. Firstly, XP of XicanoPwr.com (who I’ve known so long out here that I made the banner for his first site, as well as his second), amiga Kety Esquivel, New Media maven over at NCLR (also pictured here, on my left and not in a fedora), Raven Brooks, executive director for Netroots Nation, and Jill Garvey, of Center for New Community. I should also note that Kety and XP are co-founding editors of The Sanctuary along with myself.

I thank NCLR for this opportunity, and am glad to share what I can with who attends and knock elbows with some blogmigos. This is some hardcore talent reppin’, and I’m honored to be among them. I will list their bios below. And if you live in Chi-Town and wanna meet up for a cerveza and a terrorist fist jab or something, drop me a line!

[PS: Here's hoping I can hit this museum this time around]

Get the Buzz on Exciting New Media Techniques

Online technology offers community-based organizations timely, cost-effective opportunities to reach activists, journalists, volunteers, donors, and others.  Not just a trend of the future, online communications are thriving right now through search engines, blogs, social networking sites, action alert services, video and information-sharing websites, and other innovative technologies.  Come learn about how your organization can use this interactive, participatory new media—including blogs, Craigslist, Facebook, action alerts, YouTube, and podcasts—to build fresh communications strategies and strengthen constituent support.  No technical experience is necessary!  Participants will:

·      Learn about online communications tools available at minimal or no cost
·      Gain insight into which online techniques will best meet your goals
·      Receive materials and recommendations for further resources

Jill Victoria Garvey joined the Center for New Community in 2007 and manages the Center’s communications and operations activities. She also serves as the managing editor for the CNC-affiliated blog, Imagine 2050. A journalism student from Columbia College Chicago, Jill studied business management at Harold Washington College and Northwestern University. Jill has worked extensively with non-profit organizations both professionally and as a volunteer. Committed to addressing economic and social discrimination barriers in childhood and youth development, she has worked in the public school system, coordinating elementary early childhood programs. After living in Brooklyn, NY, Jill returned to her native Chicago two years ago. She has enjoyed the opportunity to travel extensively, most recently studying Spanish in Peru and Argentina.

Raven Brooks is the executive director for Netroots Nation. Brooks got his start in politics by co-founding and leading BuyBlue.org, a revolutionary website that encouraged consumers to “vote with their wallets.” Brooks has a strong background in software development and design, management, business consulting, and project management. Fortune 100 companies and small start-ups have sought out his expertise. Brooks has been featured in countless media outlets as a visionary entrepreneur. He lives in San Francisco, CA, with his wife and two cats and is an avid cyclist, hiker, and outdoor enthusiast.

Amaury Nora a social worker and editor and publisher of the blog XicanoPwr.com, under the pen name, where he tackles issues on immigration, Latino politics, social justice, international affairs, public policy, and humanitarianism issues. During the two years he has been blogging, he was awarded the 2007 Texas Progressive Alliance’s Silver Star and is considered as “one of the state’s most prominent Latino bloggers” by the Texas Progressive Alliance, an alliance of bloggers, blogs and progressive Netroots activists working together to further the progressive cause. He also was awarded the 2008 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders by New Leaders Council. Amaury has over eight years experience in community development, program evaluation and outcome measurement.

Kety Esquivel has over ten years of experience in the non-profit, private and political sectors.  She directed Latino outreach for the Clark Presidential Campaign.  Her work has taken her to China; and Ethiopia with UNECA.  She spent three years coaching executives on human capital and diversity in the US, Canada and Latin America.  Esquivel graduated from Cornell University where she served on the Board of Trustees.  She is a published author and the founder of www.CrossLeft.org.  She is a co-founder of the Institute of Progressive Christianity and the Sanctuary,www.promigrant.org.  Esquivel has served on several boards, including that of the Backbone Campaign and the New Leaders Council.  She has been a speaker at Netroots Nation, SXSW and the Center for New Words.  Her commentary has been featured and quoted in stories for the Wall St. Journal Online, HITN, PBS, XM radio, CNN, Televisa and Univision.  She is currently the New Media Manager for NCLR (the National Council of La Raza).

HOME. 

Wow. I began playing some of the footage I have from the rally/concert/march/police action in St. Paul, Minnesota. It feels pretty intense. It’s some of the worst camerawork I’ve probably done…I’ll have to cut out some of the Blair Witch motion. But that’s because I was making sure to get media on my Edirol (audio) as well as on the still camera and the video camera and intermittently uploading iPhone fotos AND trying not to get stomped on by horses, pepper-sprayed by freaking cops, decapitated by swinging handheld TV cameras, or trampled by sudden movements of the excitable and increasingly agitated crowd. Not every moment was dangerous, but most of the time it felt like any moment, such a moment would erupt.

The shotgun serenade of excited voices, of anti-war, anti-imperialism-themed live music, cops screaming as if they are a sticky tangle of ten evil daddies with the fury of fifty and extending pepper spray can cocked, holding long slim batons; upset spanish language anchorwoman, empassioned chanting…I had to shut it off. I don’t think I can wait days to edit at least something together, so I’ll. begin tomorrow early. Yeah. And talk about the thin line between entertainment and war, half of the crowd was media of some type (myself included) from what I could tell. It was obscene. The fear, the media, the police…the environment was one destined to bring trouble.

“Change is coming.”
—John McCain

You know I used to be on MTV’s Street Team 08. Ended up opting out, but met some good peeps there. Turns out unexpectedly, one of them was there, Charlie from Wisconsin. He spotted me just when I was rolling up on the capitol hill where the crowd was just beginning to grow in anticipation of the music and march. (There was a permit until 5pm for the gathering/concert, none for a march.) I didn’t see Charlie, I heard him behind me.

“Nez. Nez!”

and I turned around. I was dressed in my black shorts, Nike Cortez, and black rainjacket with the hood up. Canon DSLR around my neck, Panasonic DVX100B in my right hand, monopod on my hip hung from a beltloop, as did my Edirol digital audio recorder and my iPhone, which I used to snap some pictures (like the first one in this post) and was uploading regularly directly to Flickr. My left ringfinger was gashed and bleeding from where only a minute before, i had turned the wrong way and brought my video camera swinging into my finger, which was wrapped around my still camera. I was a one-man media capture unit.

I turned around.

“Hey, Charlie! What’s up, bro?” 

We talked a little as we walked toward the sound. I grabbed a few words from a man in his 60s or so. He was happy but a little anxious about his home in Florida. There was a hurricane on. 

I laughed as I walked away, joking with Charlie. “See that? No release form. Mmmm. Man on the street.” 

“They are a pain in the ass,” he mumbled. We laughed knowingly. Then, we crossed the street. When we got to the foot of the hill, we said goodbye and good luck and all that. Parted ways.

That’s where the current took us both out to the sea of emotion and physicality that the day became. I ended up at the last minute finding a way to a bathroom which happened to be in a different area of town. That was after all the bullhorn speechifying, which I happened to love.

WE KNOW WHERE THE TERRORISTS ARE!!! Shouted the voice from the stage, addressing the crowd. Preparing us to march.THEY ARE IN THE EXCEL CENTER, GIVING SPEECHES ON TV! I guess it was like a lot of the rhetoric you’ll read on left wing blogs, actually…but this was people gathered shouting it with their voices amplified and their faces naked, rather than typing the words behind a screen. Which is why the State took it seriously.

The day was not as orderly as it may sound here. The static pictures don’t tell the whole story. Wait for the video. The energy comes through there very clearly. The sound terrain, the anxiety, passion, fear, fury. These were just moments I managed to hold everything together enough to steady myself and frame up. There’s a lot of shots that didn’t come out and footage that is just chaos.

Ended up in a different part of town after marching all the way down to the street and up to the bridge. That was after the cops were circling us with horses and four wheel vehicles, and after I read, via Twitter, that the cops were breaking out the gas masks and giving the order to disperse. (This was separate from the earlier very tense moment where I personally saw (and photographed) them put their gas masks on only feet from me, when the crowd pressed too close to them.) That was after the cops blockaded the path to the Excel center. It was also after they blocked the bridge with snowplows and dumptrucks, clustered in riot gear…choppers overhead, sirens in the air.

Sitting by myself away from the action, I really felt I was in some apocalyptic terrain. I felt like some strange kind of media soldier cut off from his unit, even though we were all basically moving around on our own. 

(Thats when I ended up realizing there were people of color in St. Paul because my path out of the knot of thickening tension and violent energy took me to a bus stop where all kinds of brown and black people were. Not saying there weren’t many in the spots where convention-goers were gathering…all the McCain T-shirt hawkers in the park where I shot a few recent videos were black and admitted they were voting for Obama, and only being paid to sell McCain’s shirts.)

It was so odd sitting there with all my gear waiting for the car to zero in on me. Choppers circling and hovering above. Liza and David searching for me, but not able to reach me because of so many blocked streets. We yelled over static on our cell phones, fighting to reconnect in an area of town locked down to a few routes. Cops wouldn’t even let me cut across the grass of the field where the concert was just held. They redirected me far around, just as the police detoured Liza, David and myself out of town itself the first night we showed up to drive past the Excel center. (We never got there.)

I had to get up and walk to a part of town where they could pick me up. We immediately went out for a few drinks. And then off to eat Ethiopian. And then I fell asleep.

I’ve been wondering since how all the footage came out…and I really didn’t think I’d end up on this computer so soon. I got into shorts so I could hit the park and get some sun and just …do nothing. But I popped the tape in because I had to know if I even captured it or did something stupid like forgot to hit “Record.” 

Oh, yeah, Charlie got arrested this time, not me. It was a choice. I knew at a certain point if I kept going, I’d be arrested. I have heard since that many people were let out in but a few hours…seems it was not like my stint in 2004, where days went by before we breathed outside air again. If I didn’t have mijita here and a plane to catch in the morning, I would have pressed all the way in. Jail or no. 

Many people in the area I heard from said “the protestors deserved it.” Completely overlooked the atmosphere created by the GOP with their paramilitary procession. Or refused to address the validity of outrage to such events that have become normalized in the last 8 years. Blamed gente reacting to so many wrongs with visceral and immediate outrage for that which was causing the outrage.

This is what spurred some of the anger in my last post. But it’s a prevailing message online, too. This gradual obsoleting and demeaning of genuine physical and emotional reaction, this sneering at protest.

This worries me. I can’t believe it doesn’t worry everyone. You do see what is happening, right?

I got no patience, now. So sick of complacence, now.

—Rage Against the Machine

Obviously we’re way past the “no standing armies” thing. But this is not normal nor acceptable. Did I mention the National Guard was also guarding the Excel building? The National Guard??? Protecting a political convention??

I mean what is going on here. Did we not begin with revolution? And refusal to be subjects? Sure, that was one end of the continuum, but…wow. Somehow, we are now to the point where one day we basically go on with life without much of a hitch, most of us, even knowing our government has blatantly lied us into murdering over a million people (or oKAY it was OOOONLY SIXHUNDREDTHOUSAND whatev), mainstreamed torture, used the entire DOJ as their war room, gutted Iraq for corporate and military interests/profit, admit they spy on all our communications and store up that private information…and ON AND ON AND ON—and we curse and snarl at protestors? 

Ay Dios Mio.

The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.

Chale. I am not sorry that I refuse to cheer for that army. I refuse to belittle those with enough heart to throw themselves at the symbols of encroaching police state and behind them, those who are responsible for all this hell and horror that our nation has entangled itself in and has unleashed upon other nations and thus, is becoming, morally and actually.

If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I just don’t think this is going to go away. I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.

Like I said, I hope I’m wrong. But I was there in both Denver and in St. Paul. And as most of you know, I was also arrested in 2004 for protesting the GOP. It’s been four years and now this behavior surrounds both major parties’ conventions (though far worse at the GOP’s, granted) and as far as I can see, is only increasing in intensity.

AND FINALLY, after 12 days or so, I am just about done with the conventions and with flying and with huge political extravaganzas and with taxing my credit card and with blogging for Kenneth Cole Productions and with mixing my brain up with wildly fluctuating sleep schedules. Honestly, I have stretched my perception and comfort levels and environment to such a degree and for such a stretch of days that I nearly feel completely displaced from my own persona and identity. Nothing has remained reliable or constant: not time, not place, not people, not things, not activities. This has not been strange or disturbing as I am not so tightly wed to my “self” that I don’t know how to let these things go, should a moment present that might require it. I’ve done so before many times and I know how to roll, to shift, to adjust, to change, or just to unlock and let the gears turn until they find purchase again. If anything, though, it has been tiring. I will be glad to rest a little bit. As well as to use a full size keyboard. I am typing this entry, as I did the last one, on my iPhone.

I only regret that I couldn’t meet up with more people who extended invitations but when you both have schedules to get around and you don’t have a vehicle and are not staying downtown, these things are hard to arrange.

The two conventions had distinctly different flavors and themes (regarding my personal experience) but I won’t go into that too much here because I think I may expand on that for my last Kenneth Cole Blog (awearnessblog.com). I will say, though, that St. Paul basically felt like a land that was foreign to my experience. Not that I haven’t seen police get nasty, ugly, or violent before. It wasn’t that, it was the sheer numbers, the gas masks, the full body armor, the bikes, horses, strange military vehicles, huge formations, blockaded streets and National Guard units and camo uniforms. It must have come with an astronomical price tag and I don’t see what the point was, nor how citizens today so eagerly justify military and paramilitary presence in their streets. All of it gives me a very unsettling feeling in my gut. It seems most of the population is docile, wanting to be controlled, too comfortable, and alien to my understanding. Pathetic is another word I’d use. This subservience and rationalization that people are so happy to adopt is on the same continuum as the upper middle class bourgouise bloggers who now eschew protest, radical action, or assembling physically in large numbers to confront the system and it’s agents directly–and yet pat each other on the modem and agree they are crashing gates, shaking things up, or more laughably, “revolutionary.”

Reminds me of my last “citizen journalism” gig, for VIACOM/MTV. We were operating under the guise and brand of Citizen Journalism and yet we needed to secure more release forms than actual news units, were given constantly fluctuating rules, and last I heard (I resigned from the gig a while ago but am very much in touch with the friends and coworkers I made there) the supervisors were giving explicit and specific instructions on where to go and what to shoot, down to the shot, the content of the shot, the lighting of the shot, and told “the idea is to create a feeling that people are watching these [convention] speeches all around the country.” Levered on top of this was the very real threat that if the specific shots were not delivered, the “citizen journalist” is not to be paid a cent. Yeah. So much for citizen journalism (the essence of same) and up with Citizen Journalism(TM) the symbol.

Reminds me of The Huffington Post meeting with Pelosi, and Arianna Huffington polling her readers on what question we most wanted asked of Ms. Pelosi. Resoundingly, the consensus was IMPEACHMENT. (My administrative assistant tallied about 15 pages of comments and I have the data if Stoller or Bowers or any other geekboys want a pie chart.) Arianna substituted a different question, tried to gloss over it until readers began trippin out, at which point she offered a line about her own preferences and reasoning…which really made the idea of polling about as sensible as citizen journalism being directed and controlled by a massive corporation. I commented that HuffPost had abdicated its duties as a blog, was now in league with the MSM (which blogs supposedly exist to replace and counter) and corrupt warmongering politicians, and all that was left for The People (in the sense of trustworthy dialogue and information dissemination) were the smaller blogs–and true to form, my comment was deleted.

Corporate goodies, comfort, and personal glory and power are too tempting for most of us. I’ve seen friends I never would have guessed fall into this. I dont judge them too harshly or very long because I often need to feel my way también. Perhaps they will taste ash in their mouth and spit out the fake steak. I hold out hope. We need as many as we can gather en la lucha. Too many forces conspire to trick us, to drain us, to weaken us, to deceive us, to use us.

It is good to turn this way and that. It is fine to be unsure for a time. Or often. It is good to come home. It is better to realize you carried it with you all the while.

I AM IN ” AIRPLANE MODE” which means no signals are being sent out, but I can write a draft of this post and post it when we hit the ground. It is 9:43 am. I am not on the intended flight, but have been moved to a different series of flights, given one extra layover and one extra plane. Part of wanted to get frustrated and annoyed but I just didn’t have the energy. So I went with the flow.

Amazingly enough I am getting used to all the flying around. I have actually been flying since I was un niño pero over the years I somehow grew less comfortable with the whole ordeal. But I have been flying a lot more since UMX gained more notice and gente have been flying yours truly to various functions and events, sometimes when I’ve won something such as MTV’s Choose or Losey attempt to co-opt “Citizen Journalism” and I was chosen to rep Oregon for 2008, or when I was given a grant to attend Ykos07/Netroots Nation in 2007, or flown to NYC Immigration Strategy Meeting as one of the top Latino bloggers in the cosmos. I’ve become a regular pinche jetsetter. This last time I didn’t even unpack. I just sort of “reshuffled.”

The Mac Store was closed so I need to check out a place in St. Paul. I can’t do video without my laptop and Coño!–I now say to myself with a smile, as I realize I forgot to bring my FCP install discs. Ay. Well, guess even if I get the laptop fired up, I will be using a very fundamental setup. Quicktime Pro or something.

It’s so bright outside, here thousands of feet up in the air. Hard to remember that a violent storm is ripping into the coast as I type this. Hard to believe I am purposely going to surround myself with all the gaiety of a Republican celebration. Glad a couple UMX readers have offered airport rides and other hospitalities. I am sure that these will come in handy so mil gracias, gente.

Meanwhile I am feeling tired so I think I will siesta. Paz y Justícia, amig@s.

–

UPDATE: I’ve landed and it’s now el segundo de septiembre. Last night I had some drinks with a 50-something year old Republican who, at the end of the night picked up my tab “because I can.” She lives in Arizona and we discussed the Spanish language. I talked about the Treaty of Hidalgo Guadelupe and Polk, Slidell and some other junk which sort of blew her mind that (I guess) I knew some history. She said “most people can’t back up their arguments” with history. It never crossed my mind to point her to my blog. She made a joke about my tattoos. She liked my long hair. She had the most contrived laugh I’ve ever heard and everytime she made it I felt sad.

SINCE I KNOW THAT THE TALK SHOWS WILL BE ALIGHT with speculation, let me set the record straight right away. I have resigned from the MTV Street Team, for which I worked, representing the state of Oregon as the statewide Citizen Journalist Street Team member.

And I’ve written this post a few times, trying to get it right.

I’m not here now or later to slam my supervisors. The vice president of MTV News was my editorial guy, the person who checked my pieces and would tell me if copyright issues were a problem, and who ostensibly would have input on stories if that were required. (Only once did he tell me a piece was a bit long, to which I replied that I was trying to give MTV their money’s worth, and we laughed. At least I did.) And my feelings on him are not the issue, anyway. Though he was probably my favorite person there. That was James Fraenkel, who has actually just left MTV News himself, but after 15 years of employment.

The two people “under” him, who were in charge of the project and over the Street Team—I am quite sure they did the best they could with what they’ve been given. 

Yesterday I spent a while writing this post and outlining my trail of disappointment. I have many thoughts and even documentation on just how and when and where the ideal of this gig soured into something far less exciting and far more limited than originally proposed and imagined.

I have just deleted that version of this post. Not from my server, just from this page. It is not that I am afraid of the legal threats they love to wave at us. I am not afraid in the slightest of Viacom and their army of lawyers. Shit, kid. I got the blogosphere on my side. This posse rolls millions deep, cabrón!

But after writing and reading the post as written, I had to weigh what my purpose was in outlining all of it. Was it to justify leaving? To clear myself? Was it just to take personal retribution for suffering frustration? Of course, none of these would be sufficient cause for me to take any risk or start anything. And I don’t want to appear vengeful or as if I am satisfying personal pettiness or biting a hand that has fed me for half a year. The truth is that for much of the time (especially the winning and the three day orientation and gala welcoming/meeting event in manhattan!) it was a lot of fun, and I remain, overall, very grateful for the experience. But it was important for me to understand how something I felt so good about originally (though I did have my qualms) could turn out to be something I wanted no part of.

That doesn’t mean I’ll hesitate to post it or lay down facts here and there as I see fit, should the need arise organically. Because while I do not currently see a need to unload all of that, neither do I think that I ought to obscure certain facts about the venture if revealing them will help serve as needed truth. As I can’t be completely sure where it all falls, I’ll err on the side of restraint.

Some of it is just a bad fit in the end. I find that this hectic pace of making stories once a week, doing everything yourself from investigating, calling, writing, shooting, editing, marketing…it demands your stories remain superficial to a point. I want to go deeper. 

I will not remark on the ratio of pay given to hours spent to make a piece except to say I couldn’t make it worth it and still create quality.

I will not remark on the attitudes and general management style of my supervisors except to say we had more than a few pleasant exchanges in all of it and I choose to focus on that.

Nota: No small part of my consideration to keep this post as spare as possible was also that friends are still working on this crew…and I wasn’t sure how good I felt about writing all I did knowing that. Nahmeen? Related, I also don’t want to unduly bias the mind of whomever the next person to rep Oregon happens to be, should they find my blog. (Unknown person, I remind you, your experience may vary widely from mine. Most of the original Street Team crew is still working for MTV, and from what I know seem to be happy to do so.)

But I will say this in general, as I prepare to detach myself finally and fully from the MTV Street Team and ship back my “free” laptop. camera, hard drive and peripherals:

1. What I love about “Teams” is that they work with each other and are for each other and talk to one another and do their best to win what it is for which they fight. Whether it’s a scrimmage game or a championship game, when they find unfairness or a lack of integrity on the field, they call it out.

If a “team” is discouraged from solidifying, working and talking together or calling out unfairness, well, it may be a “group” or  ”crowd” or a “bunch” or a “roster” but it is not a “Team.”

2. What I love about Citizen Journalism—the idea and the practice in its true (and only) form—is that it is truth finding its way to people unhampered by conventional filters and guards. Despite the best of intentions, a large corporate entity is built to work in direct contradiction to this idea. Bring them together and you can have a citizen journalism flavor. But you do not have what I love about or understand as “Citizen Journalism.”

and perhaps a bit less on the philosophical side,

3. When other factors are less than perfect and regardless—never. Fuck. With. My. Paycheck. In doing so, You have messed up a rent payment, a credit card payment, other payments and my entire feeling of security in one blow. You have rendered my cabinet scarce (and there is a child here).* You have greatly inconvenienced and embarrassed me in a few situations at once and have kept my nervous system nailed to the sound of the Postal delivery person’s footsteps. 

Done. 

And, as always, we move on.

*I am replacing the roughly 30 hours a week that job tried to take from me with other work, so don’t worry about my daughter’s food or my security, peeps!