/* fivel rothberg */

so the deal is that i’m in my second year of an mfa program at hunter college. i have approx. one full year to go. the goal is to finish school and then get a job at a social issue nonprofit dealing w/ innovative use of media. in the meantime though, i am working four job essentially. two paid and two unpaid. the first paid gig is at school – a ‘tech’ fellowship where i work in the film and media dept’s technical manager’s office. basically helping out teachers and students w/ tech problems – anything from final cut pro to accessing their accounts or handing out headphones. it’s not exciting but i think it’ll be good on my resume, and it’s paid. it’ll end up going to living expenses as the tuition is all coming out of loans at this point.

the second paid gig is a far more interesting an intellectually involved endeavor. it’s just getting going at this point, but i’ll be working part-time with the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP). i’ll be working with Juntos, a social service organization in South Philly that caters to the growing latino (primarily of mexican) immigrant population. The idea is that we will train a group of approx 10 people on video and web skills so that they can share local news that they produce and then utilize the broadcasting and collaborative features of the internet. with this in mind, MMP will follow this training with others like it – with groups like the Taxi Workers Alliance and UNITE HERE.

A Chilean filmmaker named Gabriel Berrios is heading off the Juntos video trainings. I’ll both work with him in the training sessions and evaluate them for ‘best practices’ to see how these trainings can then be carried over to the other groups. In theory we will be utilizing his training manual, which is in spanish, and translating it – all 50 pages – into english for the other groups, and possibly for publication.
right now MMP is under the auspices of the philly indymedia center, which i helped to get off the ground and run in 2000 – 2002. MMP has a number of projects going on that are fairly unique, yet based on practical experience, an underlying commitment to grassroots leadership. it is also influenced by the work of the Zapatistas in Chiapas who, years ago, made a call for ‘First World’ people to take up the cause of producing media that is independent of the commercial/ corporate system that both censors and distorts the voices of the oppressed.