Sponsored by Left Turn Magazine, ColorLines Magazine, Bitch Magazine,Spread Magazine, Free Speech Radio News, and other radical and independent media projects from around the US, the Grassroots Media Justice Tour is an exciting movement-building opportunity. Beginning in Fall of 2008, the tour will bring performances, workshops, and inspiration to frequently underserved and underfunded areas of the country, beginning in the South and Midwest.

Skillshare Austin in collaboration with Monkeywrench Books and KPWR People Will Radio, will be hosting two FREE events of workshops and presentation for the Austin tour stop:

Sunday, October 19th, 1-8pm, at Space 12 (3121 E 12th, just west of Airport Blvd) A day of media workshops including Hadassah Hill teaching us about creating a web presence and digital music recording, along with a whole bunch of local media activists sharing skills such as DJing, video editing, poetry writing, and web content management. Free childcare (sign up in advance) and vegan gumbo dinner included. Details here .

Monday, October 20th, 7pm,at Monkeywrench Books (110 E. North Loop) Jordan Flaherty, Jesse Muhammad, and Hadassah Hill will be presenting and discussing their work with us. Details here.

FEATURED SPEAKERS on the Austin stop of the tour:

Jordan Flaherty is a writer and community organizer based in New Orleans. He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to national attention. His post-Katrina writing in ColorLines Magazine shared a journalism award from New America Media for best Katrina-related coverage in the Ethnic press.

Jordan is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and has written for a range of publications, from the Village Voice to Clarin in Argentina and Germany’s Die Zeit. He has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Race, Katrina and the State of the Nation, and the upcoming AK Press book Red State Rebels. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, News and Notes on NPR, and many other outlets. He has also produced news segments for Al Jazeera and TeleSur. On the tour, he will be using new video, photos and first-hand accounts to share the grassroots struggle around the Jena Six and New Orleans post-Katrina organizing.

Jesse Muhammad: Energetic, inspiring and effective are just some of the words audiences have used to describe the writings and messages delivered by writer, news reporter, artist, publicist and photojournalist Jesse Muhammad. Brother Jesse, a native of Houston, Texas, started contributing to the Final Call Newspaper in 2004 and was appointed as its Southwest Regional Correspondent. In 2005, after receiving rave reviews for his reporting on stories that mainstream media tends to over look, he was appointed as an official Staff Writer for the FCN, which is the only national Black-owned newspaper. Since that time, he has gained worldwide recognition for his consistent coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the continuing struggle of its survivors. In 2007, he was credited with bringing national and international attention to the case of the “Jena Six”, and helped to mobilize the 50,000 plus attendees to the historic “Jena Six” rally in September of that year. He has been a featured commentator on various television and radio shows in Houston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and as far as Ghana. His writings are now read in many print and online newspapers and magazines throughout the world.

In 2007, he became the co-founder and editor of For Youth Teens and Young Adults (FYTYA.com), which is a Houston based newspaper that highlights the accomplishments of high school and college students. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he has served in the youth and information departments. He is also the representative of the Ministry of Information for the Houston Millions More Movement Local Organizing Committee.

Hadassah Hill is a Brooklyn-based queer femme writer, creative, and activist who performs under the name Axon D’Luxe. She has worked in independent print, web, theater and audio media production for 10 years, and is currently the Art Director of the award-winning $pread Magazine and is producing her second album and a graphic novel. She is committed to empowering individuals to speak for themselves using new technologies, and to creating representations of the diverse communities she embodies using self-taught multimedia techniques. She uses her experience learning technologies to promote and create her own projects to fund her expertise, and teaches a two-hour D.I.Y. New Media workshop on audio and web production and internet promotion.

Her workshops teach individuals and activist collectives how to use freeware and shareware technologies [ie, no-cost software] to:
1) record and edit audio for online distribution
2) name, create [yup, how-to code!], and publicize a web page
3) utilize technologies and networking to promote their projects.
She provides learners with a handout and a webpage full of links and tutorials, as well as inspiration and skills!