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Mar 29 2009, 1:59 PM EDT (current) Hwaisbren 6 words added
Mar 25 2009, 8:15 PM EDT Hwaisbren 32 words added, 209 words deleted

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Martin Luther King argued in his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." He called for us to collectively "raise our voices" while matching "actions with words" in order to break the silence that makes what he referred to as the "malady of the American spirit" possible. His warnings of the damaging nature of our "profit oriented society" in contrast to one that is "person oriented" hold frightening parallels to today, and there could not possibly be a more important time to look to King's words for guidance in this transitionary period for the progressive movement.

Grassroots activists must heed King's advice and recognize the inherent connection between actions and words. Student activists in particular must become much more adept at amplifying our silenced speech, and we must reform our activism to reflect the new tools available today that allow us to add resonance to our words and actions alike.

If you are new to this wiki and/or the Break Silence effort, you might want to check out our Getting Started page and/or our Video Uploading FAQ page to begin! Furthermore, if you have any questions/ideas/concerns, feel free to contact Harry (hwaisbren on the wiki or hwaisbren@gmail.com) to go over whatever you may wish.

With your help, we will use this wiki to help coordinate our efforts to connect actions and words amidst the thrall of new media innovations. Below, you will find a listing of our ongoing campaigns, yet this is only a launch point for what we hope will be an exceedingly larger action hub:
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  • The WISPIRG Video Coordinators program is our most recent effort to help amplify student voices, and we hope that our work can act as a model for others as to how we can utilize new media (and web-video in particular) to do our part to Break The Silence!
  • The Power Shift Video Hub will be a great resource as we collect the videos we took and coordinate the production and distribution of music video mashups using this and historical footage
  • The Mad Progress TV program is a public access TV/web-video show airing on WYOU (both broadcast and streaming online) that is now co-produced between Madison's chapter of Campus Progress and WISPIRG. This show is supplemented by a video blog at Madprogress.com, and both cover progressive issues of the day as well as the issues most important to grassroots activists with a focus on Iraq veterans and Martin Luther King's anti-war activism.
  • Our Spring Break is a student and youth initiated and led alternative spring break. They are focusing some of their non-violent direct action towards exposing the complicity of our mainstream media outlets with the ongoing silencing of the issues most important to America and Americans, and we look forward to helping them in any way we can!