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19 homepage.
"Roles of listener-sponsors in the Pacifica radio network." Videoconference-webcast symposium. Thursday April 19, 3-5pm est.
This year, some Penn Folklore graduate students have been facilitating a videoconference series. These are ISDN-line videoconferences, but with a twist: here at Penn, we simultaneously do a live webcast of the combined audio-video of the videoconferencing partners (using a split-screen format). In this way, people at up to 65 computers can observe the conversation and participate via e-mail. ___
The U.S. progressive movement has a long and honorable history. Some date its origins to the founding Parents, people like George and Martha Washington, and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings (his slave mistress). Much progressive history has followed, including: the movement to abolish slavery, the first wave of feminist organizing which expanded the right to vote to women, the social and union movements of the 30's, the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60's, the feminist, disabled, low-cost housing, gay and lesbian, welfare rights movements, and so much more. Progressive activists today have a tradition. Songs, phrases, folk heroes and heroines, issues that continue through the generations, theories which are expanded and adjusted. Some activists marry each other or live in common-law relationships which produce children, and some of those children follow the tradition. Activits support institutions like The Nation Magazine, Goddard College, the New College of California, the NYC American Indian Center, etc. Many of their activities are visible on the national and international landscapes -- Green Peace, unions such as the Farm Workers, Common Cause, independent living centers, battered women's houses, etc. They have developed numerous grass-roots, power-from-the-bottom-up procedures and ways of being which have and may continue to seep into the mainstream culture. These include practices such as consensus processing for meetings, affirmative action, participative activity at every level, the use of large puppets for street theatre, and recently, e-mail message boards for theorizing and mobilization. One issue our videoconference- webcast Symposium will address is: How do these activities mirror, and how do they differ from, the activities of the mainstream culture? The U.S. progressive movement is a sub-culture that studies itself, publishes books, magazine and newspapers. From the 30s onward, it has also received a good deal of attention from members of the academic community. Folklorists, for example, have traditionally been very interested in its expressive forms, especially its songs. In this symposium, students in Folklore and other Humanities disciplines will have an opportunity to observe a nationwide movement at a crucial juncture in its history. The Free Pacifica movement has a ten-year-plus history, having grown from local and sporadic associations to a national movement. It now involves a multi-pronged strategic approach which includes legal challenges, a grass-roots listener movement, and a national corporate campaign. In the past 4 months, with the bannings, firings and purges at WBAI in NYC, the movement has grown exponentially. Currently long-term activists are struggling to integrate the new people and organizations. At the same time, the legal suits are moving toward settlement. If you would like to attend at, and speak from, either the Philadelphia
or San Francisco site, please contact --
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