Together We Rise

This afternoon I had a wonderful opportunity to participate in the first Zoom webinar in a series offered by the Media Education Lab, “Together We Rise: The First 100 Days, Co-Creating Connections and Possibilities in a Time of Transition.” This is not simply a support group for media literacy educators and academics in our present moment of political and cultural change: It also represents a very concrete and helpful way we can BUILD COMMUNITY together, share resources and develop our capacities to remain resilient and strong.

Conversations in our main Zoom room as well as breakout rooms are confidential, and I would not / will not violate that pledge. A number of outstanding public resources were shared during our call today, however, and I do want to share those because they may bring hope, light, or simple utility to someone else.

Two books which were mentioned in breakout room conversations were “Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities” by Rebecca Solnit and “Learning to Depolarize: Helping Students and Teachers Reach Across Lines of Disagreement” by Kent Lenci. Both look excellent, and I also added them to the Wakelet for resources related to the “Heal Our Culture” project.

On the topic of news and news filtering, both these websites were recommended:

1. The 1440 Project (“Our mission is to share fact-focused information with the worldl Our standards ensure we deliver facts without motives, we commit to these guiding principles every day.” Read their “about us page” for background.)
2. Tangle

Tangle describes itself this way:

Tired of one-sided political news? Get a 360-degree view of the biggest stories. Political news is broken. We’re fixing it. We’re a non-partisan politics newsletter that gives you a 360-degree view on the news. No spin. No clickbait. Opinions from the left, right, and center so you can decide. Join over 250,000 independent thinkers in 55+ countries. Unbiased news for busy people.

Robert Reich’s January 27, 2025 post, “Praise the Broken Promise of America,” which features poetry by Alison Luterman, was also recommended. Also the PBS Frontline documentary, “Trump’s Comeback.”

I encourage you to check out and consider joining the “Together We Rise” webinar series. Today’s initial session (which was free) was wonderful, and even though my teaching schedule may not permit me to join every week, I’m going to be there every week I can.

Together we can and will “heal our culture.” To do this work, we need to continue building community together, acting as “media filters” for each other, and sharing messages of both hope and encouragement.

This is the work.

Let’s do it together!