Prefigurative Community Building (Part 31)

Telling Our Own Stories: How to Build a Community Media Platform as a Power With Project

For generations, dominant media has told our stories for us, or not at all. Communities have been flattened, stereotyped, or erased entirely by profit-driven newsrooms and attention-hijacking algorithms. That’s why building our own community media platforms, whether through neighborhood zines, local podcasts, creative resistance art, or digital newsletters, isn’t just about free speech. It’s about collective self-representation.

When done right, community media can become a node of Power With coordination: a pattern that decentralizes authorship, shares responsibility, avoids gatekeeping, and uplifts many voices at once. Unlike corporate or top-down “community engagement,” this is not about extracting stories or branding solidarity, it’s about creating space for mutual narration, cultural restoration, and creative resistance.

This guide outlines how to launch your own community media or zine collective using Power With coordination principles, avoiding all forms of Power Over (like editorial domination, cultural appropriation, or performative inclusion). It also includes two examples of projects already doing this, and doing it beautifully.

Step-by-Step: Starting a Power With Community Media Platform

Step 1: Begin With Listening and Mapping

Start by talking to folks in your neighborhood or mutual aid network. What stories aren’t being told? What histories are missing from the archive? What issues are being ignored by local outlets? Use a participatory mapping exercise to identify whose voices are most often left out.

Rather than assuming what the platform should be, zine, newsletter, podcast, or mural, ask your community what mediums feel most joyful, safe, and accessible.

Resources:

• Storytelling and Organizing Toolkit – Center for Story-Based Strategy

• Participatory Media Guide by InsightShare

Step 2: Form a Horizontal Collective

Avoid hierarchical editorial structures. Instead, form a working circle of co-editors, facilitators, artists, and story-holders. Rotate roles regularly. Decisions should be made by consensus or consent-based processes, not majority vote or editorial decree.

Focus early on group agreements. How will feedback be shared? Who gets to represent the group publicly? How will you handle conflict?

Resources:

• The Solidarity Not Charity Toolkit (sections on horizontal organizing)

• Patterns for Decentralized Organizing – Scuttlebutt Cooperative

Step 3: Choose Your Medium, But Stay Flexible

Maybe it’s a quarterly zine printed at the local library. Maybe it’s an audio storytelling series recorded on phones. Maybe it’s a collaborative Instagram where people post anonymously. Your medium should reflect local resources, energy, and accessibility, not prestige or trend.

Build slow. Begin with one issue or pilot project. Let it grow through feedback and iteration, not scale.

Resources:

• Queer Zine Archive Project

• DIY Zine-Making Resources from Barnard Zine Library

• Transom.org – Tools for Community Radio and Audio Storytelling

Step 4: Share Skills, Don’t Centralize Expertise

Offer open skill-shares for layout, collage, audio editing, screen printing, or writing. Make workshops low-pressure, fun, and non-professionalized. Don’t hoard design software or equipment, make access collective.

The goal isn’t to “train journalists”, it’s to unleash storytellers.

Resources:

• Adobe Express for free, simple design

• Zine Template Library on Canva

• Audacity – Free audio editing software

Step 5: Print, Publish, or Post—Then Recenter

Once you’ve released your first issue, podcast episode, or zine bundle, pause. Celebrate, but don’t shift into production mode. Ask: Who engaged? Who felt left out? Whose voices were centered too much or not enough?

Reground in the collective. Reiterate your purpose: Are we storytelling for healing? For organizing? For joy? Are we still doing this with Power With?

Resources:

• AORTA’s Guide to Anti-Oppressive Facilitation

• Consentful Tech Zine

Step 6: Replicate, Remix, Release

Don’t scale up, seed outward. Help other neighborhoods or affinity groups start their own zines or media cells. Share your templates, meeting notes, and mistakes. Form a constellation, not a pyramid.

You don’t need to become the definitive voice of your community. You need to make it easier for many voices to emerge.

Resources:

• Mutual Aid Zine Library by Big Door Brigade

• Zine Coop (Hong Kong) – global zine replication network

Examples of Power With Community Media Projects

1. Youth Speaks (USA)

Youth Speaks creates platforms for youth, especially BIPOC, queer, and disabled youth, to speak truth to power through poetry, performance, and storytelling. Though it's grown over the years, the model remains decentralized, with young people driving content, style, and process.

https://youthspeaks.org

2. Lxs Grises (Argentina)

Lxs Grises is a trans and non-binary zine collective that publishes handmade, intersectional issues on autonomy, mutual care, and political resistance. Their zines are distributed for free at protests, libraries, and through online PDFs. Every issue is co-authored, de-centered, and collaborative.

https://lxsgrises.hotglue.me/

Conclusion: Local Voices, Viral Care

Community media isn’t about going viral. It’s about weaving voice back into place. It’s about building trust, not followers. The beauty of Power With projects like this is that they leave the center open, so that anyone can step in, speak, and be heard without needing permission.

The goal isn’t one perfect platform. It’s many, imperfect, interwoven story circles, each holding space for what dominant narratives erase. By focusing on replication instead of scale, we grow horizontally, not hierarchically.

So grab some scissors, some paper, or a phone mic. Invite your neighbors. Start telling the stories that need to be told, not for clicks or clout, but for memory, dignity, and joy.