19th annual Allied Media Conference

The Detroit Film Theater is located inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. Enter through the John R entrance. There will be shuttles from all hotels and from the Wayne State campus to the theater.

“If there was ever a time to activate our organizer super powers, this is it” wrote Alicia Garza, one week after the 2017 inauguration, in a Mic article titled “Our cynicism will not build a movement. Collaboration will.” As we gather in Detroit for the 19th annual Allied Media Conference, we are recharging our trusted super powers and synthesizing new ones. We are drawing power from movement histories and ancestral technologies. We are laying mesh networks between movements, issues, and identities. We are learning our way into emergent strategies, trusting uncertainty and seeing the large-scale implications of our smallest-scale relationships.

The AMC2017 Opening Ceremony will reflect all of this. Alicia Garza of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter will give a keynote, sharing her perspectives on the power of media, art, and technology in our movements today. Scott Kurashige, author of The Fifty Year Rebellion, will ground the work of AMC in the context of Detroit as an international model for survival, resistance, and solidarity. Mona Haydar, Syrian-American Flint native, will perform her viral hit “Hijabi” live for the first time alongside Al Taw’am, the twin sisters and choreographers featured in the “Hijabi” video. The opening ceremony will also feature Kristy la rAt (co-founder of DJ collectives Maracuyeah and Anthology of Booty), and will be co-hosted by adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements.

Presenters include: Alicia Garza, Kristy la rAt, Sacramento Knoxx, Scott Kurashige, adrienne maree brown, Mona Haydar, Al Ta’wam, Jenny Lee and Morgan Willis.