34th Annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture and Awards
United Church of Christ
October 13, 2016
8 am
http://www.uccmediajustice.org/
The United Church of Christ’s media justice ministry will honor Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and rural advocate Dee Davis. And the Rev. Traci Blackmon, acting executive minister of the UCC’s Justice and Witness Ministries, will deliver this year’s lecture.
Commissioner Clyburn will receive the Newton Minow Award in recognition of her work at the commission to reform predatory prison telephone rates and to modernize the Lifeline program that supports telecommunications services to low-income households. This marks only the second time that the UCC’s Office of Communication Inc. (OC Inc.) has conferred the Minow Award, given in recognition of exemplary government service. Clyburn has been a member of the FCC since 2009, and served as its acting chair from May to November 2013.
Dee Davis, president and founder of the Center for Rural Strategies, will receive the Everett C. Parker Award, in recognition of more than 40 years of work to bring telecommunications services to rural America, particularly the people of Appalachia. The Parker Award is given annually in recognition of an individual whose work embodies the principles and values of the public interest in telecommunications and the media as demonstrated by the late Rev. Dr. Parker, OC Inc.’s founder.
Starting as a trainee in 1973 at Appalshop, the prominent Appalachia-based media, arts, and education center, Davis became its first president and spearheaded a number of initiatives that used media as a strategic tool for organizing and rural development. In 2000, he founded the Center for Rural Strategies to improve economic and social conditions for rural communities, both at home and around the world, through the innovative use of media and communications. Since then, he and the center have been instrumental in building and managing the National Rural Assembly, a coalition of more than 1,000 organizations and individuals seeking to promote the concerns of rural America.
Rev. Blackmon, this year’s Parker Lecturer, came to national attention in the fall of 2014 as part of the pastoral presence working to quell months of civil unrest in Ferguson, MO, following the fatal police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown. She assumed her current UCC post last January, and has since been appointed by President Barack Obama to his 15-member Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.