SIMON SEDILLO: THE POLITICS OF DISPLACEMENT AND COMMUNITY SELF DETERMINATION

Simón Sedillo is a community rights defense organizer and film maker. He has spent the last 7 years documenting, producing and teaching community based video documentation in Mexico and the US. Through multimedia presentations Sedillo helps show some effects of neoliberalism on indigenous communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color in the US and Mexico. Through collaborative media projects, Sedillo’s work has contributed to a growing network of community based media production whose primary objective is to share, teach, and learn from one another, about community based media production and the collective construction of horizontal networks of community rights defense.

Fall 2009 Tour


Workshop The Politics of Displacement and Community Self Determination


This workshop identifies several specific institutions, which threaten the lives of average everyday people everywhere. From banks and corporations to non-profits and universities, what role do these institutions have in making the poor stay poor, while making the rich get richer? This workshop also shows how the political devaluation of traditional forms of self governance and self determination, has lead to the degradation of entire sectors of society. Finally this workshop shares some indigenous strategies for community based self determination in guiding struggles for urban community liberation.


Short Film: La Familia Raices

Short documentary on the family and Son Jarocho band ¨Los Raices¨ from Oaxaca. The Raices Family play traditional Son Jaracho music in support of the Oaxacan people's social movement. This traditional Afro-indigenous music originates in the state of Veracruz and is also traditionally played in some parts of the state of Oaxaca. This musical tradition is based upon popular education, collective organizing, and long term self determination for its musicians and instrument makers. The Raices family breaks through the difficulties faced by any family, with music, resistance, and determination.