Join us this Sat. April 27, 2013 – CAAR General Membership Meeting

We’re having another opportunity for those interested in being involved with Community Action Against Racism to come together. Join us for our upcoming general membership meeting this Sat!

Date: Sat, April 27
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Location: Hamline University (1536 Hewitt Ave, St Paul, MN 55104).We’ll be in the Anderson Center building in the southwest corner of campus and in Room 320.
Parking: Lot F & Lot I are closest to the Anderson Center
Campus map http://www.hamline.edu/uploadedFiles/Hamline_WWW/SECTIONS/_Original_Section%281%29/Documents/campus_map.pdfOn April 15, CAAR recognized our 2-year anniversary of the KDWB rally and at our last general membership meeting, we decided that we wanted to plan a meeting around this event. We’ll take time during this meeting to go over our plans and talk about future work. We’ll also make sure to have time to continue to build relationships with each other.

Please RSVP via our Facebook event page or via email (caar.tc@gmail.com).

*Snacks will be available

We look forward to seeing you!
-CAAR

Join us March 30, 2013 – CAAR General Membership Meeting

Interested in being more involved with CAAR this year and learning more about our recent work? Come to our upcoming general membership meeting this Sat!

Date: Sat, March 30
Time: 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Location: St Paul Library – Hamline Midway (1558 W Minnehaha Ave St Paul 55104). The room we’ll be using is the Auditorium. The best way to get to the library auditorium is entering from the side door on the Snelling side of the library.

We’ll be putting our heads together debrief our Dec 8 Gathering, review the Pledge document and discuss how we want to continue the media justice work we’ve been doing. We will also do an overview of CAAR’s organizational health and lastly open up a discussion on what CAAR members want to do this year. There will also be time to get to know each other and continue to build relationships.

Agenda
12:30 – 12:45 Intros & Welcome
12:45 – 1:00 Housekeeping (review finances/budget, org structure, fiscal sponsorship updates, etc)
1:00 – 1:15 Quick debrief of latest work (Dec 8 event, The Pledge document)
1:15 – 1:45 Looking ahead
1:45 – 2:00 Wrap-up, determine consistent mtg date

Please RSVP by Fri, March 29 via our Facebook event page or via email (caar.tc[at]gmail.com).

We welcome new and past community members to this meeting!

Join CAAR at Racial Justice Day at the Capitol

CAAR is signing on in support of Organizing Apprenticeship Project (OAP)’s 2013 Racial Equity Agenda. To be made public shortly.

Lead organizers of CAAR will be at the capitol today with other racial justice activists, supporters, movers and shakers, for Racial Justice Day at the Capitol. Join us today (Jan 30) at 10:15 am! Here’s a Facebook link with more details. Brother Ali, Chilli Lor, Tracine Asberry, Jamie Edwards, Sen. Jeff Hayden and others will be there as well!

 

A Pledge for Racial and Cultural Equity in Minnesota Media

For our Dec 8 Gathering for Media Justice event, CAAR and Main Street Project drafted “A Pledge for Racial and Cultural Equity in Minnesota Media” as well as the handout “Best Practices & Action Steps for Media.”

You can view the original drafts of the Pledge & Best Practices below.

PledgeForRacialandCulturalEquityinMinnMedia

MediaBestPracticesActionSteps

For those that were not able to provide feedback at our Gathering, we welcome any comments you may have. The following questions are what we asked participants at the Gathering to discuss in small groups:

1. What parts of the Pledge or Best Practices are the most powerful and stand out to you?
2. What felt wrong or was missing from the Pledge or Best Practices?
3. How would the Pledge improve your work or life? Support you at your organization or in your community?
4. The Pledge is a living document for now – what type of process do you think would be most effective in editing this pledge/changing this document?
5. In order to create racial and cultural equity in Minnesota media, it requires resources, training, expertise, education and financial resources. What ideas do you have on making training and education possible in a time of limited financial resources? No excuses – the time is now.
6. In five years the Minnesota Media landscape will have changed in what ways because of the Pledge for Racial and Cultural Equity in Minnesota Media and Best Practices?

CAAR’s next steps include how to incorporate the great suggestions we’ve already received and the feedback from others in the future. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Recap of Dec 8 Gathering for Media Justice

Participants at the Gathering for Media Justice in St Paul, MN

St. Paul, MN – A huge thank you to all who participated in our recent “Gathering for Media Justice.” We had 70 people participate throughout the day.

Lissa Jones, host of the Urban Agenda talk show on KMOJ, provided a powerful keynote to start out the day. She was able to lift up the power media has had historically in perpetuating racism and how it continues to this day.  She encouraged us to keep fighting and doing what we can in creating our own alternative media. Lissa ends with the advice to “maintain resistance” and she leads by example by speaking her own truth and encourages us to do the same. You can listen to a recording of her keynote address on KFAI’s website.

After the keynote and Q&A session with Lissa, participants had time to get to know each other. An icebreaker got us moving and tested how “in sync” we could be and one-on-one check-ins on what brought people to the event and what was one thing they took from the keynote allowed for individual connections to be made. We then moved into our first small group discussion on how media sources are using racial justice strategies and what community members see as good examples. Here were the questions we discussed:

1. What are recent outstanding examples of racial justice coverage in local media outlets? Was there a particular story, writer, radio show or organization that you are really impressed with?
2. What could local media organizations do differently to improve coverage of communities of color? What is missing?
3. What could you do as a community member to help improve racial justice in local media?
4. What is an example of a racial justice strategy that you or your organization uses? Why is this important to you or your organization?
5. What are the challenges in covering American Indian and communities of color in your work? What could you do to help improve coverage?
6. What could community members and organizations do to help get their stories and issues covered accurately and more robustly?

After lunch we moved into our second small group discussion where we reviewed a draft of “A Pledge for Racial and Cultural Equity in Minnesota Media” and a handout on “Best Practices & Action Steps for Media” You can view the original drafts of both documents on our blog. We would like to acknowledge a number of media entities & social justice organizations that were in the room, including:

• The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
• Twin Cities Daily Planet
• AM950 New Minnesotans
• Free Poet’s Press
• Twin Cities Media Alliance
• The Uptake
• Organizing Apprenticeship Project
• Hmong Village, Inc.
• Hmong Pages
• City College News
• Hmong Broadcasting Company
• KFAI
• Main Street Project
• Pan-Asian Voices for Equity-Minnesota
• Our World Today TV
• Insight News
• Twin Cities Public Television
• Nygaard Notes

To end our day, we saw the whole room stand-up in an action of solidarity to agree to back the Pledge as a living document and we received a number of volunteers to help us refine it. Then Chilli Lor ended our event in song. Her message to the room was to keep working together.

There are many people CAAR would like to thank…

CAAR would like to thank Main Street Project and KFAI for their partnership on this event. We look forward to working together more in the future, along with the many other organizations that are now a part of a growing group committed to media justice.

We would also like to thank the local restaurants for their food donations. Please go and support the following restaurants:

• Desserts by Regina
• IPho by Saigon
• Mai Village
• Thai Cafe

CAAR would also like to thank Headwaters Foundation for Justice and the Asian Pacific Endowment for their recent grants to us. Without their support and belief in our work, it would have been a lot harder to do this Gathering.

Thank you to our amazing volunteers who helped organize this event – Fuabkuab Yang, Marsha Brady, Elizabeth Xoom, Rebecca Beibei Song, Maivncais Her, Jeanne Burns, Danielle Mkali, John Kostishack, Margie Andreason, Mischa Kegan, John Slade, & Sandy’Ci Moua!

Lastly, again thank you to all those that came out to our Gathering and also to those that couldn’t  make it but have and continue to support the work of CAAR. Let’s continue the momentum moving forward! To quote the great Grace Lee Boggs, “We are the leaders we are looking for.”

—-

by Margie Andreason

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Dec 8 Gathering for Media Justice – We’re looking forward to seeing you!

We are so excited for our event “A Gathering for Media Justice” tomorrow (Sat Dec 8) and we’re glad so many of you will be able to join us!
This is a reminder that our event is from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm.

Dec 8 Gathering Event Location & Parking

Location of event: Key Fredericks Room (3rd Floor) of the Klas Center building (Hamline University – 1537 W. Taylor Ave. St Paul, MN 55104). The Klas Center building has a big glass front and is directly south of the Klas Stadium.
Parking: Parking Lot B which is at the Taylor Ave/Simpson St or Hewitt Ave/Simpson St intersection

Coffee and a light breakfast will be all ready to go at 10:00 am sharp. Our keynote address by Lissa Jones will be at 10:15 am.

The snow has made it slippery out there so please drive safely.

Looking forward!

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