In a couple of weeks our 6 month anniversary is coming up. People still seem to be thinking Occupy is not doing anything. Why is this? Because we do not control the corporate media. We depend on citizen journalists for news. This works great for those of us in the know, well for the most part, but it does nothing for the rest of the audience we are trying to reach. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about how to reach more people. We need to use their tactics against them. One of the issues is we just cannot compete on the monetary scale that big business does. Taking out commercial ads during prime time TV is extremely expensive, as are full page ads in widely distributed publications. So how do we overcome this?

It can be done, and I have been widely distributing media for years. One of the most important things to remember is ingenuity! There are tons of ways to distribute digital and physical media that we just simply have not been utilizing. I see people share videos on facebook, which helps, but we also should be sending them into mainstream news outlets that let you do ireports, depending on how comfortable you feel with releasing footage, and that the content of the footage is not something that cannot be construed against us. We can create blogs on the websites of some of the very publications that defame us, and write counter perspectives. We can write letters to the editor of newspapers and magazines, as well as clairifying information on online articles. 

With our own physical media, I personally like to hand newspapers, and pamphlets to people. I have been known to leave flyers on every car in a parking lot. I find friendly retailers, and small businesses who will put up our flyers, let us leave newspapers, stickers, pamphlets. Sometimes I just leave them. There are a million ideas like this to think about, as literature can be pretty transportable. With another organization I have done activism with we actually have a dvd burning tower that can burn 12 DVDs at once. We have highly compressed videos we load them up with and hand them out to the public for FREE, and it isn't very costly to do so, and the videos can be on a variety of topics, or even propaganda targeted directly toward the community we are outreaching to, situation by situation. 

We can't do this alone! We have M1GS coming up (May 1st General Strike) and the propaganda street team is going to need a ton of help with distribution, community outreach (in OUR neighborhoods), and just plain getting the word out. Its up to all of us to use every tool out there to let everyone know that we are still here, that we are not leaving and we are only growing stronger. We have a lot of accomplishments behind us and many more in store. 

We also need journalists willing to work on "news stories" based on our actions, including but not limited to: On camera personalities, Video editors, sound people, camera persons, writers, ect. People with no experience but willing to learn are also welcome. The one thing we ask is commitment is key, and have the tech equipment you need, because we cannot supply it! If anyone is interested in working with me on a "news report" working group email me at lizsavage.occupyla@gmail.com 

Remember everyone, its up to US to get the information across. We can't afford to buy a network, but hey a lot of us already have our own personal networks, and communities we can begin to utilize to get our message across!