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ARTS & MEDIA

Frontline Filmmakers
Rick Rowley, 27, and Jacquie Soohen, 27
New York, New York
Inspired by seeing thousands of Mayan peasants demonstrating for human rights and economic justice in Mexico City, Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen maxed out their credit cards, bought some video equipment, and started shooting, eventually producing the documentary Zapatista (1998). In addition to helping start the Seattle Independent Media Center in (www.indymedia.org)1999 and launching their own production company, Big Noise Films (www.bignoisefilms.com), the underground filmmakers have now made seven documentaries, including Showdown in Seattle (1999), a look at the WTO protests, and Black and Gold (1999), which follows the transformation of New York's Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation from a group of gangbangers to activists trying to stamp out police brutality. Currently, the duo is at work on a short film about Palestine and another called The Fourth World War, which makes a connection between local conflicts in spots as scattered as Argentina, South Africa, and South Korea.

'We are not filmmakers looking for issues to cover,' Soohen says. 'We are Zapatistas using media as part of our struggle.'
-Anjula Razdan

Third World Digital Storyteller
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, 25
Berkeley, California
Growing up in an Indian family of the Dalit ('untouchable') caste, Thenmozhi Soundararajan was allowed to sit in as the men in her family talked politics. As she quietly observed these discussions, she absorbed their intense yearning for change-a passion she carried with her when she came to the United States to study at the University of California in Berkeley. As part of a collective of women of color and their allies, she helped found the media training and resource center Third World Majority, which aims to 'challenge the notion that a media organization cannot also do grassroots organizing.' She believes in the power of storytelling to unify people against the abuses of global corporations. Through video workshops, Soundararajan teaches people how the give-and-take between storyteller and listener allows them to arrive at a 'shared political view of the world.' And through this sharing of stories, Soundararajan says, we can arrive at 'a wider understanding of what we all think the world can be.'
-Julie Madsen

Revolutionary Poet
Sarah Jones, 28
New York, New York
Sarah Jones wrote her first poem-a scathing indictment of Ronald Reagan-at age 6. But she didn't take writing seriously until one night on the dance floor more than a decade later. Moving to the hip-hop music she loves, she heard women around her singing along with lyrics that degraded them. 'That moment crystallized a lot of what I had been feeling as a woman and a person of color,' she says. 'Our marginalization was seen as passé, too P.C., and out of step with the time. I found myself rebelling against that idea.'

Jones picked up poetry again and began attending amateur open-mike competitions, eventually winning the 1997 Grand Slam Championship at the Nuyorican Poet's Café. Now she performs her own one-woman plays nationwide, using theater as a political tool to stimulate dialogue. Her latest, Waking the American Dream, depicts 10 immigrants performing at a poetry festival, from the Pakistani master of ceremonies to a 14-year-old Dominican girl. Jones was in the midst of writing the play-and grappling with questions of identity, immigration rights, and global freedom and justice-when those issues took center stage last September. (See www.sarahjonesonline.com for a performance schedule.)

At the same time, Jones is being censored for indecency. Three years ago, a small, listener-supported radio station in Portland, Oregon, was fined $7,000 after playing her poem 'Your Revolution.' A biting parody of the widespread misogyny and commercialism in hip-hop lyrics (hear it at www.your revolutionisbanned.com), the poem, set to music by DJ Vadim, was deemed 'sexually indecent.' 'At no point has the Federal Communications Commission told me what's indecent about the poem,' says Jones, who fought back by suing last year. While the FCC is trying to silence her voice, Jones continues to present a vision of revolution inclusive of all.
-Karen Olson

Avenging Artist
Bryonn Bain, 27
Brooklyn, New York
When police arrested Bryonn Bain for throwing a bottle through a window, they nabbed the wrong black man-and not just because Bain wasn't guilty. Then a Harvard Law School student, he turned the ordeal into a Village Voice article on racial profiling that garnered an unprecedented 90,000 reader responses.

Bain had clearly hit a nerve. 'Given the increased policing of communities of color, I believe folks found it timely that someone responded critically to the systemic way we are being incarcerated,' says the son of Trinidadian immigrants. Walking While Black: The Bill of Rights for Black Men, his book based on the article, is forthcoming from HarperCollins.

But Bain doesn't only critique the status quo, he works to change it . Winner of the 2000 Grand Slam Championship at the Nuyorican Poet's Café, he uses his artistic talent to advance political causes in prisons and schools through Blackout Arts Collective (www.blackoutartscollective.com), an activist and educational organization that he helped found. Last year, he became New York University's youngest adjunct professor, teaching classes on spoken word. 'We have the ability to call our reality into existence,' he says. 'The word becomes flesh.'
-Jacqueline White

Underground Publishers
Jen Angel, 27, and Jason Kucsma, 28
Bowling Green, Ohio
'We are at an exciting time when participatory media projects have the potential to contend with the corporate media giants,' declares Jason Kucsma, who, along with Jen Angel, founded Clamor-a magazine that celebrates do-it-yourself journalism for a growing audience of politically and socially aware youth. Now in its third year, Clamor (www.clamormagazine.org) covers everything from anarchist libraries and art cars to prison culture, polyamory, and personal economics.

Since 1999, Angel and Kucsma have also jointly organized the Underground Publishing Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio, bringing together zine editors, radical librarians, do-it-yourself video makers, and other activists who want to create 'more media sources that amplify the voices of the people.'
-Chris Dodge

Hip-Hop Soldiers
dead prez: M-1, 28, and Stic.man, 26
New York, New York
It's a rare hip-hop act these days that doesn't buy into the bling-bling of commercial rap decadence, but refusal to glorify consumer culture is at the very heart of dead prez's art. Forgoing paeans to luxury cars and easy women, the duo of M-1 and Stic.man rap about improving yourself in songs like 'Be Healthy' ('lentil soup is mental fruit') and 'Discipline' ('organize your life'; 'health is wealth'). They also show that they aren't afraid to get controversial and indict the white patriarchy. In songs like 'We Want Freedom,' they echo Black Power luminaries such as Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X, rapping that 'We all want peace / But the problem is / Crackers want a bigger piece / Got it where the niggas can't get a piece.' Although the group is politically radical, it follows in the footsteps of rap revolutionaries Public Enemy, maintaining a street-level accessibility that many successful artists leave behind.
-Erin Anderson

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