Jay Baker
@mediaactivist

I’m a long-time guerrilla journalist and documentarian and I've used my website and social media to share anti-capitalist and anti-fascist media activist resources, ideas, and analysis for around twenty years.

I live by the principle of “do no harm, take no shit” — which was instilled in me at the age of eleven when I was pulled from an abusive school environment and educated at home by my anti-authority working class mother (who I credit for my intersectional feminism). On my very first demonstration as a teenager, she was marching right beside me.

I later applied that D.I.Y. punk ethic to working on indie zines, books, and guerrilla video — documenting demonstrations, marches, movements (and the policing against them) and interviewing the likes of Kate Wilson, Prem Sikka, Teresa Hayter, Peter Tatchell, Shami Chakrabarti, Richard Murphy, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, in addition to numerous campaigners, academics, and activists. I presented screenings of these anti-capitalist and anti-fascist D.I.Y. documentaries all over the world, earning a listing as a “public enemy” by fascist doxxing site Redwatch.

Nonetheless, I continued to help organise anti-racist events and launched and ran community projects and non-profits in both Britain and North America –- hosting, chairing, and speaking at festivals, conferences, and events from Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada) and Huddersfield University (UK) to the Non-Violence Festival (Canada) and the Festival of Debate (UK), while writing for various websites, zines, and newspapers, in addition to appearing numerous times for the BBC and writing for established commercial newspapers during an uneasy relationship with establishment media.

Today, I continue to write while working in digital media and technology for non-profits, living in social housing in Sheffield (UK) as a member of Acorn renters union, having recently helped revitalise a branch of the IWW in the city. It costs to host my websites and to increase the quality of my work with better hardware and software - and I'm registered self-employed, so taking time to do these things can be costly too! I'm also a carer for my partner, who has Long COVID, so it's tough to juggle everything while trying to bring in money.

Still trying to “do no harm, take no shit,” sticking to such principles has cost me many connections and opportunities for income over the years, so suffice to say I welcome any support, both large and small, regular or one-off!