The Movement / Media Research and Action Project (MRAP), founded in 1986 and operating out of Boston College, provides training and technical assistance to community and grassroots organizations. In collaboration with community and grassroots organizations, they address the problems of negative interaction between community and mass media and the lack of resources community organizations and groups experience when they attempt to change negative stereotypical images of their communities portrayed in the mass media.
William Gamson, former president of the American Sociological Association and professor of sociology at Boston College, and graduate student colleagues at Boston College founded MRAP in 1986. MRAP develops networks of community non-profit, labor, and advocacy organizations with whom MRAP conducts collaborative action research on media related topics. MRAP began funded projects of direct action with community organizations in 1997 after several months of collaborative planning with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute's Empowerment and Change Project (MLRI).
MRAP's primary focus of its work is with non-profit organizations in New England. However, MRAP also collaborates with two national organizations offering technical assistance, training, and support for the development of public policy to community organizations and groups around the country. These organizations, the Preamble Center and Grassroots Policy Project of New York City and Washington D.C. share MRAP's vision of providing strategic development training to community organizations. MRAP's vision includes the development of a national media resource network (the Community Media and Internet Resource Network) which includes internet and organizational links to other media research centers around the country.
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“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“In looking back over the college careers of those who for various reasons have been prominent in undergraduate life ... one cannot help noticing that these men have nearly always shown from the start an interest in the lives of their fellow students. A large acquaintance means that many persons are dependent on a man and conversely that he himself is dependent on many. Success necessarily means larger responsibilities, and responsibilities mean many friends.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
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—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
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—Bettina Arndt (20th century)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If we should swap a good library for a second-rate stump speech and not ask for boot, it would be thoroughly in tune with our hearts. For deep within each of us lies politics. It is our football, baseball, and tennis rolled into one. We enjoy it; we will hitch up and drive for miles in order to hear and applaud the vitriolic phrases of a candidate we have already reckoned we’ll vote against.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)