If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now

This weekend I went to the first day of an eleven-week workshop held by Community News Production Institute - a non-profit that trains low wage and immigrant workers as radio journalists to tell the stories of their communities. The workshop was facilitated by a very impressive journalist, Mitch Jeserich (whom you might know from Wake-Up Call on WBAI).

I had heard of CNPI before, but it wasn't until I heard Mitch introduce the training workshops to a room filled with vendors that I started to understand the significance of their work. He is very good at what he does, both in radio journalism and community outreach. So good, in fact, that he was crowded by vendors afterward who were eager to share their stories with him.

Responsible journalism has been on my mind a lot lately. We talked about the media at this workshop and came to a unanimous conclusion that almost all our news sources in this country are unreliable, and that they consistently misrepresent the stories of U.S. immigrants. I've always just assumed this to be true, because the news misrepresents everyone's stories, but I've never thought about it in detail.

The hard-working, law-abiding men and women who make up the majority of the immigrant population, and who greatly contribute to our economy, are represented in the news by images of immigrants in handcuffs for criminal behavior or in detention centers for terrorist activity. These rare exceptions, as portrayed in the media, are influencing too much of our public and too many of our policies.

The participants in this workshop, who were for the most part not vendors, incidentally, all agreed that they came to this country to seek better opportunities for themselves and their families. The United States advertises these opportunities; we've practically made a brand out of hope. So why do we entice people here if we have no intention of hearing their stories? Is it just so we have more people to buy our excessive consumable goods and work our low-wage jobs? Does this seem like false advertising? Maybe I've answered my own questions.

Anyway, I'm excited for this workshop for many reasons: to get to know the participants and to hear their stories; to become familiar with radio journalism; to learn more about immigration issues through firsthand experiences; and to find ways to be a responsible documentarian as I embark upon this street vendor art project.

I am the only non-immigrant in the group, and I'm not part of the population that CNPI intends to serve with this program, so I'm grateful that they are allowing me to sit in on the classes. I can't wait to share more as the weeks progress. In the meantime, check out www.peoplesproductionhouse.org and www.wbai.org to learn more about good people doing good things.