Hidden immigration detention centers, isolated prisons, prisoner renting, human rights violations, families separated, and a mainstream media that fuels the burgeoning Prison Industrial Complex. This track will strategize around community media response to incarceration. This track is a product of a cross-cultural organizing project in the central Appalachian coalfields called “Thousand Kites” that started with prisoners writing to community radio DJs about human rights abuses and grew into a decade long project.

This track will bring together urban and rural community media organizations to explore the power of narrative campaigns that combine hands on media-making (flip video, radio, web, phone, and viral communication) to organize both inside and outside the prison walls.  Participants will develop grassroots communication strategies by recording their own stories, interviewing others, and develop communication models that bring voices from inside prisons and immigration detention centers to the public.  Radio, theater, web, poetry, and visual arts will all be explored in this track.  We will develop a communication model and platform to continue the work of this track throughout the year.