I just attended the Grassroots Media Justice Tour in Denton, Texas, the last stop on this nationwide tour. This exciting event showcased the following speakers:

Hadassah Hill is a Brooklyn-based queer femme writer, creative, and activist who performs under the name Axon D’Luxe. She has worked in independent print, web, theater and audio media production for 10 years, and is currently the Art Director of the award-winning $pread Magazine and is producing her second album and a graphic novel. She is committed to empowering individuals to speak for themselves using new technologies, and to creating representations of the diverse communities she embodies using self-taught multimedia techniques. She uses her experience learning technologies to promote and create her own projects to fund her expertise, and teaches a two-hour D.I.Y. New Media workshop on audio and web production and internet promotion.

Jordan Flaherty is a writer and community organizer based in New Orleans. He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to national attention. His post-Katrina writing in ColorLines Magazine shared a journalism award from New America Media for best Katrina-related coverage in the Ethnic press.

Jordan is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and has written for a range of publications, from the Village Voice to Clarin in Argentina and Germany’s Die Zeit. He has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Race, Katrina and the State of the Nation, and the upcoming AK Press book Red State Rebels. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, News and Notes on NPR, and many other outlets. He has also produced news segments for Al Jazeera and TeleSur. On the tour, he will be using new video, photos and first-hand accounts to share the grassroots struggle around the Jena Six and New Orleans post-Katrina organizing.

Jesse Muhammad: Energetic, inspiring and effective are just some of the words audiences have used to describe the writings and messages delivered by writer, news reporter, artist, publicist and photojournalist Jesse Muhammad. Brother Jesse, a native of Houston, Texas, started contributing to the Final Call Newspaper in 2004 and was appointed as its Southwest Regional Correspondent. In 2005, after receiving rave reviews for his reporting on stories that mainstream media tends to over look, he was appointed as an official Staff Writer for the FCN, which is the only national Black-owned newspaper. Since that time, he has gained worldwide recognition for his consistent coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the continuing struggle of its survivors.

In 2007, he was credited with bringing national and international attention to the case of the “Jena Six”, and helped to mobilize the 50,000 plus attendees to the historic “Jena Six” rally in September of that year. He has been a featured commentator on various television and radio shows in Houston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and as far as Ghana. His writings are now read in many print and online newspapers and magazines throughout the world.
In 2007, he became the co-founder and editor of For Youth Teens and Young Adults (FYTYA.com), which is a Houston based newspaper that highlights the accomplishments of high school and college students. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he has served in the youth and information departments. He is also the representative of the Ministry of Information for the Houston Millions More Movement Local Organizing Committee.

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The intent of this tour was to promote social justice and emphasize the importance of independent media in a capitalistic society. The speakers discussed a variety of issues including racism, gender equality, workers’ rights, the exploitation of New Orleans as a tourist attraction, and the “Jena Six” case. One speaker in particular, Jesse Muhammad, told an inspiring story about his interaction with members of the Jena, Louisiana community prior to the famed “Jena Six” rally. Muhammad spoke candidly about his experiences as an independent journalist and discussed the importance of speaking out against social injustices. All in all this was an amazing event and I thoroughly enjoyed everything the speakers had to say.