People's Production House

PPH is a journalism training and production institute focused on producing stories that bring unheard voices to the fore. We teach students, immigrants, and working families how to create ground-breaking news critical to a vibrant democracy.

[hivebuzz]

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Follow on Twitter: @PPHmedia | @HiveLearningNYC | #hivebuzz 

First Amendment Hack Jam!

Saturday May 12, 2012 (1-5pm)

at the West Side YMCA 

5 West 63rd Street

www.explorecreateshare.org

[hivebuzz]

[think-progress]

— Women of color directed 1% of TV episodes

— And make $23,325 less than male writers

— Women make up 15 percent of writers

— Women comprise 11 percent of directors

ThinkProgress’ Alyssa has some other fascinating stats. 

[newshour]

A shoe left behind in the desert, 5 miles from the Mexico border in Arizona. (Photo by Beth Summers)

Tune in to tonight’s NewsHour for an update on #SB1070 and more. And check our Facebook for more behind-the-scenes photos of immigration in Arizona. 

[schomburgcenter-blog]

Rodney King and the Violence Card

“Here’s how it works. When confronted with an instance of racially charged violence against a black person, a commentator draws attention to the fact that there is much more black-on-black violence than white-on-black violence. To play the violence card — as many criminal-justice advocates have done since the Rodney King police brutality case of the early 1990s — is to suggest that black people should worry more about the harm they do to themselves and less about how victimized they are by others.”—Khalil Gibran Muhammad, NY Times Op-Ed, “Playing The Violence Card”

Join Dr. Muhammad with Rodney King at the Schomburg Center on April 24, 2012. For free tickets, register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3370971667

[pphmedia-blog]

\BOOK & PLAYING CARDS\ Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition Edited and designed by PPH's Marisa Jahn, with a contribution from Anjum Asharia Co-commissioned by REV-, Northern Lights.mn and Walker Arts Center for the symposium "Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street"

What’s the state of public debate in an era of media conglomeration and shrinking press diversity? Instead of genuine dialogue, we find talking heads, straw men, and contrived consensus. How, then, can we create a world that embraces difference, rather than shouting over it? Agonism, a term unfamiliar to many, describes an approach that values diversity, difference, and even disagreement as an important part of democracy.

Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition is a book and set of playing cards that explore the productive possibilities of 'agonism.’ Designed in black and blue - the colors of a good bruise - Pro+agonist brings together writings by interdisciplinary artists, scientists, CEO's, crackpots, war strategists, psychotherapists, and philosophers who raise questions about the importance of political dissent, the function of discord in discourse, the rules of escalating conflict, the roles of parasites within systems, the ins and outs of concord and congress, and more. The book's introduction, written as a disagreement between a cast of fictional characters, is (arguably) more stimulating than if it were written from a single, unified perspective. Readers will emerge with a greater appreciation for duking it out and taking it to the streets.

p.s. - There's a half-inch hole running through the center of both the book and the playing cards so that you can peek through, frame the Other, and keep them with you as you read along.

Download it here.

[yzplz]

THE GREAT FAIR - Saturday Evening Post, May 23, 1964

[pphmedia-blog]

PPH Contributes to NYC's Participatory Budgeting

PPH helped document an important experiment in direct democracy taking place in several local NYC council districts. Participatory Budgeting, a process where residents decide how one million dollars will be spent in their communities, was piloted in four city council districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. On March 14th, PPH videotaped and interviewed residents of Brad Lander's district at a science-fair style expo at the Park Slope Armory where the 20 different projects were on display. Proposals ranged from repaving streets and subways, repairing school bathrooms and auditoriums to creating more public space by extending library community room hours and building a community garden to celebrate cultural diversity. Brad Lander praised our work, noting that the videos, “do a lot to humanize the projects.” And that several of his constituents have mentioned that “it really made a difference to them in understanding the projects & the process, and in thinking about what to vote for.” Residents are able to vote from March 27th through March 29 and from March 31st through April 1st. To learn more and see the videos, click here.

[pphmedia-blog]

Reporting for WNYC's Feet in Two Worlds, PPH's Abdulai Bah explores the West African media diaspora and today's generation of radio talk shows.

You might get the impression that the headphones glued to his head are used to talk with their dispatchers, but in fact this cabbie is plugged into today’s generation of immigrant talk radio. While radio used to be broadcast over the airwaves, today's immigrants are using Skype and other free conference call telephone services to broadcast breaking news to hundreds and thousands of immigrants across the United States.