Series 1. New School campus activism video and photograph archive, 1997, 2008-2018
Scope and Contents
This series consists primarily of video recordings and photographs of events related to activism on The New School's New York City campus, as well as a number of events in the surrounding area at Union Square and Washington Square Park, as well as in Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, the center of the Occupy Wall Street activity. The most well-documenteded activist moments in this series include the Occupy Wall Street movement and subsequent Occupy Wall Street at The New School action in 2011, as well as an Occupy-inspired event in May 2018 organized in support of unionized graduate student workers at The New School, who were negotiating the terms of their labor contract with the university administration as well as supporting New School cafeteria workers. Text-based material related to events in this series will be found in Series 2. Chris Crews filmed almost all of the video included in the series, often under the title of his production company, rv media (media for social change) or a variant of this title. On the company's archived website, Crews describes its founding and mission:
I founded rv media in the fall of 1995 as a vehicle for my radical social change activism, with a focus on using media as a tool for social change. Over the years I have done a number of media projects under the name rv media, as well as a few side project focused on specific themes: HOME (environmental politics and spirituality) and GUM (revolutionary social movements) being two other early experiments in DIY zines.
I’ve always been interested in media, ever since I was a little kid. Over the years I have refined and expanded my skill set and technical knowledge, as well as my sense of what makes for a good story and how to tell it in a compelling way. rv media is my attempt, however small, to use my knowledge and skills to contribute to radical social change and a more just world.
I continue to shoot video here and there whenever I can, as well as offering my video skills for community and activists events big and small. Hopefully one day I will have the time to get back into making documentary films and shorts like the old days.
Only time will tell.
Chris Crews, "About," rv media, https://web.archive.org/web/20180831230445/http://rvmedia.org/about/ archived August 31, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
Dates
- 1997
- 2008-2018