Documenting the Uprising: A Panel Discussion on Archiving and Activism
As Black Lives Matter protestors took to the streets this summer, a proliferation of information-sharing followed, from videos and photographs, to social media posts and encrypted messages about organizing, resources, and beyond. Join us for a roundtable discussion about documenting the actions, activism, mutual aid efforts, and police violence surrounding the uprising and movements leading up to it. Whose photographs and words go viral or get censored, and why? What are the risks of sharing protest footage out of context? What do protestors on the ground capture that mainstream media doesn’t? And what are the best ways to center Black activists and community organizers’ experiences and work before they can be reappropriated by others as “content”?
This event is presented in conjunction with the Center for Brooklyn History. The conversation will be livestreamed on this page and on the BPL YouTube channel. There will be a Q&A via YouTube chat.
Speakers will include:
Sola Olosunde is a historian, known for sharing stories of Black New Yorkers on social media. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he graduated from Queens College with a degree in History and Political Science. He currently interns for NYCHA, and is a recent Hunter College graduate, with a degree in Urban Planning.
David Campbell is a writer, translator, funeral director, activist, and former antifascist political prisoner. He served twelve months on Rikers Island after being convicted of participating in a brawl with alt-right Trump supporters that broke out at a protest in 2018. David is currently engaged in prisoner support work, and hopes to begin a Master’s in translation in September 2021. You can reach him at freedavidcampbell.com.
Jackie Zammuto leads the United States program at WITNESS, an international human rights organization. Her work focuses on the use of video and technology for advocacy and evidentiary purposes in the thematic areas of police accountability, decarceration, immigrant rights, and indigenous rights. She has nearly a decade of experience conducting workshops, developing training resources and collaborating with grassroots activists, legal experts, educators and organizers. She has also worked on several feature length documentary projects and holds a B.S. in Broadcast Production Journalism and Women’s Studies from the University of Colorado.
Bob Gore has enjoyed long careers in activism, broadcasting and photography. His activism began when he served as a community organizer with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It continues today through board service and membership in a number of progressive organizations. His broadcasting experience ranged from production roles to executive positions in Buffalo and Boston, and in New York where he was station manager of WNYC-TV. There he instituted the first daily primetime schedule of Black programming on a local TV station. He has been photographer for scores of well-known organizations, including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Pathways to College, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the New York NAACP.
More to be announced shortly.
