You're not going to be here.

You're going to You're in. Hello beloved survivors. What you are about to hear is a plenary conversation that Adrian and I hosted at the

2020 Allied Media Conference, which is a career highlight for me, but might not make sense for you if you've

never heard of the Allied Media Conference. So a bit of background. The Allied

Media Conference, or AMC, emerges out of 20 years of relationship

building across issues, identities, organizing practices, and creative mediums.

It started in 1999 as the Midwest Zine Conference in Bowling Green

and was really compelled by the concept of do-it-yourself or DIY media.

Eventually it became the Allied Media Conference in 2002, that's when it was re branded as the ANC.

And then in 2007, it moved its home base to Detroit.

That move has enabled the conference

to draw on the lineage of visionary black organizing models and the legacy of Detroit as a black power and labor movement city.

The core of the AMC is the theory and practice of media-based organizing,

or any collaborative process that uses art, media, and technology to address the roots of systemic problems and advance holistic solutions toward

a more just and creative world.

The 2018 AMC was a pivotal moment for the conference itself and after that year

conference went into Chrysalis took a year off, conference went into Chrysalis,

took a year off, so there was no AMC in 2019.

We were all so looking forward

to coming together again in Detroit for AMC 2020 and then the

pandemic happened and the AMC had to transform again with the move to a virtual conference for the first time.

Adrian and I were so honored to be asked to help open the virtual 2020 Allied Media Conference because

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