To All Who Participated in AARM's Racism and the Media Community Discussion: Thank You!

I am writing as a member of Activists Against Racism Movement's Leadership Team. Our organization spear-headed the event. Our goals were to begin a dialogue concerning ways in which mainstream, mass-media currently reinforces and perpetuates racism, as well as their role and responsibility in helping to address individual and institutionalized racism. The community conversation was a great success on all fronts. I could write pages about the event, but, for now, I just want to say one huge thank you to all the people that made it a success.

Thank you to all the people who shared their frustration with the current state of mass media —- the woman who told the panelists how she called their organizations over and over to cover the news she was seeing in her neighborhood and got no response; the man who talked about how it feels to be criminalized and how deeply media images of black men being dangerous have penetrated into society; the woman who shared her outrage at seeing the Rochester mother who sent her kids to a Greece school be demonized and sensationalized in the press.

Thank you to everyone who provided critical thinking and analyses; the many people who said that it's not good enough for media outlets to say that people in the inner city won't talk to them, we need to ask why it is and how to fix it — and then went further and gave a couple reasons and ways to start; the student who pointed out when you have schools with virtually no people of color, how critical it is that media give an honest portrayal of them. And, of course, thank you to all the people who pointed out media outlets are for-profit corporations and how that affects their operations.

Thank you to the people who gave scathing critiques, as well as the folks who encouraged the panelists to change for the better, and were hopeful that they would.

I wish I could have thanked everyone using their names. I could have for some, but not others, so I decided not to name anyone . I hope to know them all in the near future, because AARM plans to keep working with the community on this and other issues —- until we collectively produce solutions

This meeting was successful, but it's just the first step. To all the people who came out: AARM looks forward to continuing to struggle with you to fight for a justice within mass-media, as well as other institutions.

Sincerely,
Ben Dean-Kawamura
Technical Committee Chairperson
Activists Against Racism Movement