Beloved community,

Happy new year! Or, should we say, new years: As of this writing, we’re a few weeks into the Western standard solar new year; and a few days into the lunar new year.

To ground ourselves in the meaning of our work here at Allied Media Projects, we kicked off 2020 with an organization-wide retreat that included a panel discussion exploring “media for liberation,” the center of our revised mission. 

We invited three long-time AMP co-conspirators who have profoundly shaped what media for liberation means to us, here in Detroit: poet, activist, and educator Dr. Gloria House (Aneb Kgositsile); activist, writer, and co-founder of Detroit Summer Shea Howell; and musician and visual artist Sterling Toles.

Together, we talked about how liberatory communication should tell truths and build relationships, connecting our individual selves to the bigger stories of our time and planet. And how we can focus on this kind of communing at a time like this — especially a time like this — when catastrophe looms large. We’re sharing further lessons from the panel, here.

We hope to keep exploring these ideas with you at AMC2020, now just five short months away. A gentle reminder that our call for session proposals is open now til February 4th. We can’t wait to see all of your brilliant ideas.

Additionally, we hope to be sharing more with you throughout the year on how we’re expanding upon our mission and vision to care for ourselves inside this organization, too. We’ve been slowly but steadily weaving in co-leadership structures at AMP — a shift back in the direction of the organization's roots. For more on where we’re going next (and how we got here), check out our ED’s interview unpacking how co-leadership can be liberatory.

In community, 

AMP