Our collective of social justice-oriented media makers is launching Communities Beyond Elections—a project focused on people, not politicians.
This September, more than 67 million viewers watched the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees—Kamala Harris and now President-elect Donald Trump—take part in their first and only presidential debate. Both candidates discussed, however loosely, topics ranging from foreign policy and the economy to abortion and race. I was one of the millions who watched, and as I witnessed these politicians skirt around the questions asked, I was reminded of just how much political theater has become central to american politics. I am reminded of this once again following the results of this presidential election.
Every two to four years, politicians go on a months-long campaign performing this song and dance wherein they vow to care about varying communities that make up different voting blocs needed for them to win. Since the Obama era, where the manipulation of identity politics helped (re)shape the world of politics, politicians have made their supposed relationship to specific communities central to their campaign strategy. And every two to four years, media platforms work overtime to cover the politicians and their so-called political investments in these particular communities. However, the people who make up these "voting blocs" are often ignored, dismissed, and largely disregarded.
It's this fact that led to the creation of Communities Beyond Elections. Communities Beyond Elections is a collaboration between media outlets that make up the Movement Media Alliance—a collective of grassroots and social justice-oriented media makers. The organizations and individuals that form the Movement Media Alliance understand that legacy media has been perhaps one of the most consequential components of the making of western empire; we understand that corporate media has been used to maintain western dominance over the communities that are often pandered to during these elections. This election cycle is no different.
Legacy and mainstream media have largely dedicated their focus to the politicians who exploit and mislead, but Communities Beyond Elections will shift focus to the exploited and overlooked communities. With this ongoing series, we challenge readers to consider what it would look like for politicians to be the ones relegated to the footnotes. What if instead, election coverage shined a light on the stories of and from the communities politicians use for votes? This shift in focus from media is especially necessary as genocide, climate disaster, and other forms of gratuitous state-sanctioned violence define and shape modern life in ways that are perhaps more clear than they have ever been. We have the ability to clarify the stakes of living under the boot of western dominance and the necessary revolutionary response to disrupt that violence. We have the responsibility to illuminate the primary needs of the people—needs that no election can or will ever adequately meet.
Instead of the dominant discourse focusing on politicians and political theater, it could be clarifying the fact that the White House—and the office of the presidency, more specifically—is designed with the intent to enact imperialist, white supremacist violence throughout the world, no matter who sits in the office, and what must be done to upend this structure.
Take the Stop Cop City movement, for example. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), a company that proudly boasts its affiliation with Cox Media, has spent several months publishing stories that directly counter the call from Atlanta citizens and organizers demanding that plans to erect the so-called Cop City come to an end. At Scalawag, I was able to develop and help execute a project titled "Week of Writing: Stop Cop City" which was intended to cut through the noise of mainstream media and uplift the narrative of the people who would be and have already been experiencing the brutish and dangerous nature of a militarized police force in our city. Several independent media outlets, from Mainline to the Atlanta Community Press Collective, have focused their reporting on this same premise. Narrative strategy is important precisely because narrative control is an evolved tactic in war—one that the state has successfully employed throughout history with the help of legacy media companies like the AJC (and Cox more largely).
With Communities Beyond Elections, as an ongoing project with a commitment to community narrativizing, our media platforms will center and amplify people directly impacted by immigration laws and the xenophobic culture that informs them; abortion rights and the antiblack, cissexist and misogynistic cultures that disrupt them; genocides and the imperialist, carceral logics that shape them. By reporting from the communities directly and deeply impacted by policy politicians campaign on, our stories and the stories of marginalized people around the globe will no longer be hidden behind the cloak-and-dagger of elections and electoral politics. Our efforts will shift the focus from rightist claims about Haitian immigrants "eating dogs and cats"—and the neoliberal jokes that have since followed—to the ongoing western dominance of Haiti. At Scalawag, in particular, we will disrupt gleeful hopes for climate disaster to plague the South with thoughtful analyses of how black and other Southerners of color are already being tormented by climate change. We will clarify, we will amplify, we will demand, and we will remain steadfast.
At the heart of movement media making is the shared belief that people under the boot of white supremacist, imperialist violence should have the room and opportunity to share their stories. It is these communities, who are central to our reporting, that have been most clear about the stakes of such violence and what must be done to combat it. Whether it is Hamas and the armed Palestinian struggle against israeli apartheid, Haitians and Puerto Ricans and the ongoing fight against american imperialism, or the long history of black and Indigenous struggles for freedom in the imperial core, we are clear that these battles serve as blueprints for shared struggle and we must report on them without cease.
The current social and political economy is rife with corruption, despair, and a refusal to acknowledge that america has held true to the values that are fundamental to its existence: white supremacy and whiteness will discipline and punish anyone it has Othered. It must govern the actions, lives (and deaths) of every body in and outside its direct path. As such, we must commit to telling the stories of the communities pushed to the margins in every way—beyond every election.