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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“I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, “Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.””
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I tell you, you’re ruining that boy. You’re ruining him. Why can’t you do as much for me?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, a wisecrack made as Huxley College president to Connie, the college widow (Thelma Todd)
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.”
—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)