Illustration by Ximena Rendon
About BAAP
Since 1982, BAAP has built a private membership association of volunteer printers, designers, artists, writers and others in the publication field who have joined together to assist organizations seeking change in the interest of low-income workers and poor minority communities. Operating independently from any government funding or policy controls or other funding with strings attached, BAAP provides these organizations with a means to publicize their efforts.
OUR HISTORY
1982
HOW WE BEGAN
BAAP started in 1982 out of the organizing efforts of low-income service workers and in-home caregivers at Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) in West Oakland, filling the need for an independent press that told the real story of efforts to change poverty conditions. BAAP began at WSWA with a donated Multilith 1250 press, teaching printing and design skills to volunteers. BAAP united labor organizers, printers, designers, writers, artists, and others who saw the need for an alternative publication resource to be developed in light of growing labor struggles.
The need for BAAP’s benefit program grew as more organizations and individuals requested assistance, leading to the need to expand and obtain a permanent office. A year later in 1983, BAAP obtained donated space at ACC Printers in Berkeley from ACC owner Dick Schure, who had been teaching BAAP printing classes each week.
BAAP’s membership has now grown to thousands including independent community organizations of lawyers, medical professionals, artists, service, domestic and farm workers, community theaters, schools, and low-income individuals.
Dick Shure, founding member of BAAP and original owner of ACC Printers.
Are you ready to volunteer?
Start an organizer training program and build independent media!
OUR MISSION
Today more people in the United States don’t believe what they read in the press or hear from the establishment media than any time in our country’s history. 90% of the media is controlled by 6 corporations and 55 of the nation’s largest newspapers are owned by private equity firms, who use the media for their own purposes, regardless if that means omitting or distorting information about our communities, or lying outright. Since 2000, the printing industry has seen employment decrease by 37%, leaving our communities without basic resources toward printing, publicizing and distributing information.
To change these conditions, BAAP organizes media workers interested in fighting for the ethics of their profession, using their skills to aid the efforts of our communities rather than contributing to the misinformation and disinformation of the established media. These professionals work with organizations whose low-income membership or constituencies need their skills to be able to design and print their own publication materials.
BAAP believes that access to truthful and reliable information is a human right and the only way to secure this right is through organization. BAAP supports independent media reporting on labor conditions and political struggles and victories from the working class perspective, both within the U.S. and abroad.
90%
of the media is controlled by 6 corporations.
37%
decrease in printing industry employment has occurred since 2000.
55%
of the largest U.S. newspapers are owned by private equity firms.
The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
― Malcolm X
“
”
