As part of VIVO's "Safe Assembly" Vancouver Media Co-op's Dawn Paley speaks about the role of media during the Anti-Olympic convergence.
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Comments
on elitism...
At the risk of being a dink to Dawn, its easy to criticize unfurling a banner on the bridge for 20 minutes by dismissing it as a mere PR tactic but as I recall its been that particular organization that has been hard at work on the issue of homelessness for several years since the games were announced Dawn. Where were you Dawn? What do you really expect to achieve with a 7 minute sermon in which you propose adopting the same tactics as the right-wing media? Sis boom baa! raa raa raa!!!
I think I'm starting to get a whiff of some anti-democratic tendencies and I think all you de-facto leaders should be very vigilant and mindful of yourselves. Seems to be the same faces at the table every time and the same voices on the mega-phone every time. How fast will you people be willing to change the rules of the game once your charismatic positions are threatened?
I agree objectivity is a façade but let's see how good you media gurus are a passing the talking stick when others try to enter the circle.
PR Stunt
hey, i never said i was a leader, or a media guru. those are your words, dearest tony baloney... As you can hear, (which I know is tough due to the poor quality of the audio), I didn't undermine pivot's work, just questioned their tactics on this PR move... Same way others are questioning tactics of some of the anti-olympic protests.
your comments don't make sense as a reaction to Dawn's speech
In her speech, Dawn recommends that the VMC should be used as a horizontal means of communication, to bring different movements together by allowing them a space to share ideas and represent themselves (as opposed to constantly being worried about how their actions will look though a mainstream media lens). It doesn't seem elitist at all, nor did she propose the need for any leadership, let alone her own, to realise this vision. I don't know what you are reacting to (maybe defensiveness at the banner dropping example that she used?) but your comments seem misplaced.
Banner Droppings are great for pictures and are hard to mess up in terms of messaging, but I don't see how they bring new voices to the table as they don't take that many people to pull off. They are a PR tactic, a proven sucessful one, and I'm sure that the organization pulling it off wouldn't disagree. I don't that Dawn was saying that Banner Droppings are pointless. They just don't serve the movement in terms of illuminating perspectives (new voices, you might say) and communicating a deep understanding of the issues that we are all trying to grapple with. Rather, they fit nicely into a sound-bit, one-photo media climate that currently dominates the mainstream discourse. The VMC wants to get beyond that by providing a space for more substantive discussion and I don't think that there is anything wrong, and especially not elitist, about that.
Seeing the amount of homeless
Seeing the amount of homeless in this city, the increasing of the situation, I think we can agree that strategy to asked the officials politics to do something had failed miserabily. We need other strategies and tactics to resolve the problems. That I think what we are talking about.
glitch
We had much better sound for this whole panel, but when you started speaking, we lost sound. Mysterious.