ABSTRACT
Linda Lumsden's study examines US activist print media in the period 1900–1920, during the enormous industrial labour migration wave from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1880 to 1920. Most often the media technology deployed was print, though political song, satirical jokes, street-plays, graffiti, poems, puppets, cartoons, paintings, dance and dress also played their roles. The principal headache for media activists in the past, even in liberal capitalist regimes, was distribution. The excitingly instantaneous quality of internet and phone connection risks foolishly overestimating them for activist media purposes. The Black press was far and away the oldest, with a long and energetic history dating back to the Freedom's Journal in the 1820s. Continuities include the ongoing plethora of movement media formats, from street theatre and demonstrations, and art and blogs to video and popular song. Community radio, for example, continues to flourish in many parts of the world, as witness the Community Radio entries in the Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media.
