What would it look like to put the tools of media production into the hands of people at the margins of society? Community media activists -- with help from organizations like Scribe Video Center -- have been engaged in this work for decades. In this episode, Louis Massiah discusses how his film projects harness the power of time-based visual media to help ordinary Philadelphians craft their own narratives about their lives and their neighborhoods in relation to American history and politics. 
Louis Massiah is a MacArthur prize-winning documentary filmmaker and activist. He is the founder and executive director of Scribe Video Center in West Philadelphia, an organization that provides video and audio production training to established and emerging media artists alike. Notable films include The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1986), W.E.B. DuBois -- A Biography in Four Voices (1996), and A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown (2002). In 2011, Massiah created a permanent video installation for the historic Independence Hall Complex, President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation. His innovative approach to community media has also earned recognition from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Tribeca Film Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation. 
Chrislyn Laurie Laurore is a William Fontaine Fellow studying the public memory and history of slavery, particularly its curation in museums, monuments, memorials, and archaeological sites. She is interested in the biopolitical economy of African diaspora heritage tourism and its effects on contemporary Black identities and nationalisms. 
​Gil Scott-Heron famously proclaimed "the revolution will not be televised" in his 1971 hit song of the same name. The jazz-poetry legend might not have foreseen the outsized role media would play in shaping contemporary electoral politics and social movements across the globe. Or perhaps he was attuned to the dangers of news-as-commodity long before our current reckoning with social media/tech giants and the spread of misinformation online. Louis Massiah's work encourages us to think differently about how we can use media to reflect on our own experiences, shape politics, and advance social justice. Music has similar affective power. Here's a short selection of songs that were rattling around my brain as I worked on the episode. Enjoy!