Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter, also known as BLM or with a preceding hashtag, is a global network of liberators who aim to localize Black power and intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities. In a world where Black lives are systemically and deliberately targeted, Black Lives Matter provides an empowering rallying cry and a decentralized political support system. Catalyzed by the murders of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and Mike Brown in 2014, freedom fighters Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi founded BLM and its adaptive set of guiding principles. Since the movement’s founding, Cullors, Graza, and Tometi have received numerous recognitions and are acknowledged as influential voices in the media. #BlackLivesMatter especially recognizes disparities between straight, cisgender Black men and Black women, queer and trans folk, disabled folk, undocumented folk, and folk with records, and seeks to protect and affirm all Black lives. The platform continues to drive important conversations regarding state-sanctioned violence towards Black America, as experienced by Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, and Sandra Bland, to name a few.

Deep Dish TV Deep Dish TV, the first grassroots satellite network, hosts a laboratory for producing and distributing video. With a mission to democratize media, Deep Dish provides a national platform for thousands of community-based organizations, independent visual artists, programmers, and social activists. Defined by the humor, passion, creativity, and low-budget resourcefulness of its creators, the network has created over 300 hours of content since 1986. Deep Dish media advocates for socio-political awareness and challenges the distortion of logic which befalls most corporate media. Documentary series include explorations of the U.S. invasions of Iraq (Iraqi Women Speak Out, The World Tribunal on Iraq, Fallujah, Shocking and Awful, and The Gulf War Television Project), U.S. criminal justice and healthcare systems (America Behind Bars and Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired), and racism in U.S. media (Spigots for Bigots or Channels for Change). For 23 years, Deep Dish has aired on public access television stations, and, more recently, public interest channels on satellite networks, such as Free Speech TV on Dish Network and Link TV on DirecTv.

Independent Media Center Also known as Indymedia or IMC, the Independent Media Center runs a collective of media outlets dedicated to radical, accurate, and passionate news coverage. Originating in Australia, IMC slowly developed during the global justice protest Carnival Against Capital, and later came to wider prominence during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. There, IMC provided online grassroots coverage of the protests, acting as a clearinghouse of reports, photos, audio, and video footage for journalists. From the collection, the Seattle IMC produced a series of five documentaries, distributed daily to public access stations through satellite uplink. Because of Indymedia’s democratic open-publishing system, media activists on every continent created their own localized replicas, and IMC grew to 175 active centers by 2010. By 2014, however, the network declined significantly. Speculation on the reason for this decline includes informal hierarchy, security issues, lack of regional engagement, increase in social media use, and website underdevelopment. Movement for Black Lives As a response to continuous state violence against Black communities globally, more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people formed a coalition in 2014 called the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). The movement began with the purpose of establishing a political platform, and in 2015, convened at Cleveland State University. This conference reaffirmed the movement’s resistance and rebellion against state violence in all forms, including systemic underinvestment in Black communities, the caging of Black people, targeting of Black neighborhoods, schools that criminalize rather than educate Black children. After the conference, M4BL initiated a year-long process of assembling local and national groups in the name of liberating Black communities in a United Front. Today the movement’s members include the Black Lives Matter Network, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Alliance for Educational Justice, and Mothers Against Police Brutality. Endorsers of the movement include Color of Change, Race Forward, Brooklyn Movement Center, PolicyLink, Million Women March Cleveland, and ONE DC.

Occupy Movement Formed in opposition to global inequality, the Occupy Movement served to advance social and economic justice and propel new forms of “real” democracy. A source called the movement, “leaderless, horizontal, multiple, and vast.” Due to numerous and different local groups, the movement had many goals, but it largely focused on the corruption of large corporations which disproportionately benefited the notorious “1%.” Occupy Wall Street of 2011 was the movement’s first protest to receive widespread attention. What began as a protest in New York City in September spread to over 950 cities across 82 countries by October that year. Occupy took inspiration from the anarchist principles and structures of the Arab Spring, the Iranian Green Movement, and the Spanish Indignados Movement. In October 2011, Los Angeles City Council became one of the first governmental bodies in the U.S. to adopt a resolution indirectly stating their support of the movement. Occupy commonly uses the slogan “We are the 99%” and #Occupy.

Testing The Limits Collective Formed in 1987 by a collective of queer folk, Testing The Limits aimed to empower people with AIDS through documentary work. When the U.S. government displayed no signs of taking action towards the AIDS epidemic, activism for change emerged globally, and Testing The Limits formed to document it. In 1986, David Meieran and Gregg Bordowitz developed a video project to spread awareness of the AIDS resurgence in New York City. A year later, Sandra Elgear, Robyn Hutt, and Hilary Joy Kipnis joined them to produce Testing The Limits’ first documentary about AIDS activism, with intentions of airing it on PBS. The collective was known for its “down and dirty” footage, shot by whomever had the camera at the time of a demonstration, public meeting, or activist interview. Meieran called this “alternative media,” visuals motivated by a commitment to the social issue rather than the production itself. With such unconventional form and content, the documentary never did air on PBS. Since this defeat, the group has shifted from “alternative” to “independent” media work, in a continued attempt to professionalize and receive air-time. They’re currently producing Rights and Reactions, a four- part documentary series on the history of the gay liberation movement.

Visual Communications Based in Los Angeles, Visual Communications (VC) is the first community-based, non-profit media arts organization created by and for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Inspired by the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, indie filmmakers Robert Nakamura, Alan Ohashi, Eddie Wong, and Duane Kubo formed VC in 1970, setting out to truthfully document and portray Asian Pacific American experiences. The group believed art to be a necessary vehicle in organizing and empowering communities, building connections between generations, and challenging perspectives. Visual Communications thus photographed community events, recorded oral histories, and collected historical images, displaying their work through films, publications, and photography exhibits. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the group produced over fifty films, premiering the first Asian American film, Hito Hatta: Raise the Banner, in 1980. By the ‘90s, Visual Communications had transitioned into a media arts center, evolving to meet the needs of a diverse Asian Pacific community. VC now hosts one of the largest photographic and moving image archives on Asian Pacific life in America. Their programming includes the annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, fellowships for emerging artists, and C3: Conference for Creative Content.