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Radical Software - Volume 1, Issue 3

Radical Software, Volume I, Number 3 Untitled, Spring 1971 Despite the bizarre cover drawing by Andy Poyner, a California-based artist from Joplin, Missouri, this Radical Software 's main theme is grassroots television - using portable video as a tool for helping communities coalesce around issues important to them. This is more revolutionary than it sounds. Most early video people understood that change came from people gaining real understanding of their true situations and empowering themselves to express their desire for change in an effective way. Although the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements had the ability to gather broad groups of supporters, smaller communities with local issues and injustices lacked the means to formulate and publicize them. Video could help. The video activists of the early 70s tried to avoid arrogance. A large part of their organizational effort was teaching people how to use video, and letting them decide for themselves the best way to use it. As artist Jenny Holzer once wrote: "Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right." The Raindance people, and most of those practicing 'guerrilla television' in those days believed in starting from the ground up.

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