I’ve found that many people get into media because they want to make the world a better place. And the media does have that power. We can create change, and do on a daily basis. Yet creating change and making the world a better place can be two completely different things. Yes, you have the power to change things for the worse. And it’s happened. I think I can safely say that media around the world has encouraged – both implicitly and explicitly – racial and gender injustice, for instance. Yet in those same areas, there has been a lot of positive change brought about by media.

An example: Today I met with a woman who I first met July 2007, at a conference in California where we showed “Fuerza”. Ben (the director) and I had a Q&A session afterwards. This woman asked what she could do about immigration. We gave some generic answers, as well as an idea to work with the Mexican economy to decrease the “push” factor of immigration.

Fast forward a year: this woman has led a discussion group on immigration at her church, traveled to the border to explore sustainable economics with Mexicans, visits undocumented immigrants at the local detention center weekly, meets with an immigrant rights group weekly, and more. And she still isn’t satisfied.

Okay, at this point, I think I must change my mind on an earlier point. The media has little to no power to make actual change. It does, however, have the power to encourage others to work for change. “Fuerza” will not change policy, comfort a mother torn from her family, or create a sustainable local economy. But its viewers can.

Now, media has a strange relationship with poverty, one unlike other genres of social injustice. Making media takes money. In general, creating media is getting cheaper, but it’s still expensive to make a movie, publish a newsletter, or even a blog.

Now, it is wrong to jump in and say, “Oh! I have a voice! I will speak for the poor!” The impoverished have a voice. They know how to speak. They simply don’t have access to the same equipment, connections, etc., that we have due to our privileges. They’re not being heard.

So you’re not a “voice for the voiceless.” Your job as a socially aware media creator is to allow the people who aren’t being heard or are being silenced to speak to those who weren’t listening. These people may be inspired by the new voice to make change.

When dealing with poverty, or any other issue of injustice, you must take into consideration the imbalance. You must realize that perhaps your video has only men, because you only interviewed politicians and other people in positions of power. Recognize the systems at work, and always look on the low side of the power totem pole for your best stories, the other side, and potential to make the world a better place.

This is the highest yearly award that the Telly’s give, and past winners in the documentary category include Current TV, Broadway Video (founded by Lorne Michaels of SNL fame), Discovery Health, National Geographic, ESPN, The Weather Channel, and more.

For more information, check these links:

• Article in South Bend Tribune
• Goshen College Press Release
• Telly Awards Website

“It went on too long,” Pat said. I explained that we cut out over half of the scene as it was. Pat
thought it was showing the emotional side too much. “Do we need to just
look at the issues, separate from emotions?” Pat asked me.

Socially Aware Media means that the whole story is told. Emotions are
an enormous part of immigration, and to separate the personal aspect
from the rest would really be detrimental to the story, to the people
involved, and to the understanding of all.

As I was leaving, Pat told me that the scene made him uncomfortable. Is
this really a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’ll be honest, I HATE being
uncomfortable (I have to leave at certain points in Zoolander and The
Office). But when used properly, it can really spur deeper thinking.

This is the scene from Fuerza that I’ve gotten the most comments on, and many
of them are about how we handled the situation. Some people have told
me that it was perfect, and others have seen it as manipulative and too
drawn out. I, however, and content with how it is, and think we handled
it respectfully and honestly.

Related links-
My Kid Could Film That
Why church is loud

But it went fine. As much as I am not a fan of public speaking, I have really grown to love and embrace speaking about Fuerza. It’s something I love, and had a blast doing. So maybe I still stumble occasionally, and what not, but it’s still fun.

The class was Migration: Documented, and part of the university’s
Institute for Latino Studies. Each week, the class (and any public)
will watch a film on migration. Sounds like an awesome class to me.
By the way, if you’re in the South Bend area, check out the other films in the series. It looks decent.

I am also doing layout for the Goshen College Record and working as Managing Editor for GC Journal, the on campus/online TV show. I also have a weekly radio show on 91.1 The Globe, Wednesdays from 12-2. You can listen in online at GlobeRadio.org.

Tonight, I’ll be at Notre Dame, presenting Fuerza in a class there. Stop by if you’re in the area.

The review starts around 11 minutes into the streaming feed, and runs about 12 minutes. Here’s a direct link to the feed.

My favorite line:
“Fuerza: a documentary that shows the link between two cities you’ve probably never heard of.”

First, I’ll be showing Fuerza. I’ll also be presenting two seminar on the film I helped out on, on how churches are acting as agents of change in post-apartheid South Africa.

I’ll also be writing daily for mPress, the daily convention newspaper. Check it out occasionally to see what I’m writing about there, and what’s going on…

In Granta magazine, Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, describes satirically “How to Write about Africa.” “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. (…) Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.”

This demonstrates pretty clearly a case of what happens when developed world eyes look at underdeveloped places, in what some are calling “development pornography.” In many cases, it is exploitation to gain money (supposedly for a good cause). AlertNet, a service of Reuters, put out this article, Aid workers lament rise of ‘development pornography’, explaining how a picture of an emaciated famine victim often only serves to “perpetuate a colonial idea of incapable Africans waiting passively for help from their white saviours.”

I, as a middle class white male from the U.S., see a situation differently than the Honduran teenager with AIDS, living in a two room house, that I interviewed last week. How can I tell her story, instead of my interpretation of her story?

A couple things I have done have worked towards alleviating this.

First, as with Convite, I lived with one of the families featured in the video. This helped me become part of their story, so that I could understand it better. Granted, I was still an outsider, but I attempted to see from their point of view.

Second, I have tried to have people talking for themselves as much as possible. Any government official or scholar may be able to give some overall statistics, but they can not tell the true story of a person who immigrates to feed their family, as in Fuerza.

Third, I have learned to have someone from close to the same situation actually be the one to interview. This arose mainly as a problem of language barriers, but I’ve learned this extends to class barriers as well. It helps people to give a more real interview of their life. I’ve had a middle class interviewer laugh at a lower class interviewee during the interview because of their less refined language. I can’t use anything from this interview.

Fourth, in the DR, I worked with a student who was interested in making documentaries. I had experience from making other documentaries, and could share that. He had the cultural insight I lacked. He now can make other documentaries, without my help.

Will I ever be able to show the world through someone else’s eyes? No. But I do think I can do my best to reduce my developed eyes in my work

That’s a long time ago. Here’s the problem with that. Most immigrants, in my experience, immigrate out of necessity. Necessity does not wait 12 years. A starving or sick child, or overdue rent, does not wait 12 years.

So at least the INS is doing something about it. They’re raising fees. From AzStarNet.com, “The agency expects the increased fees to lead to a 20 percent reduction
in average application processing times by the end of fiscal year 2009.” That means in 2 years, they’ll be processing applications from 2000. Yes, an improvement. But still lacking.

Even more bizarre is the plan to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens. Sounds good, right? But first they have to pay a huge fine (they could bring a family member up mojado for the same price), and then they have to return to their country of origen, where they will apply for citizenship, and then wait.

The flawed thinking here is that there is an American Dream. This is not really the case. People almost never make it big. Also, most immigrants do not want to stay. Their family, their home, their heart, is where they came from.

So what should be done? My basic ground rule for any immigration reform is this: people need to be treated humanely. Second, the US government needs to realize that the reason many people immigrate is a direct result of the US’s international policy. NAFTA’s impact on immigration is one that I can see very clearly. Also, wars also have a significant impact. We need to deal with the roots, and not just complain about people coming.