Jesse Drew

Jesse Drew is Professor of Technocultural Studies at UC Davis, where his research and practice centers on alternative and community media technologies and their impact on democratic societies, with a particular emphasis on the global working class. A teenage runaway at age 15, Drew lived in remote wilderness communes as well as inner-city urban communes in New England and California, participating in collective and cooperative projects involving food distribution, community media, sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies and grassroots political organizing. Drew became a staff boycott organizer under Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union, and later became active in labor organizing on factory assembly lines and warehouses in the once-industrialized Bay Area. He then worked in Silicon Valley electronics plants and startups and became active in guerilla television, video art, independent film and interactive digital media. His video, film, photographic and art work has been exhibited at festivals and in galleries internationally. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, journals and anthologies, including Resisting the Virtual Life (City Lights Press), At a Distance (MIT Press), Collectivism After Modernism (University of Minnesota), Ten Years that Shook the City (City Lights), West of Eden (PM Press). His current book is “A Social History of Contemporary Democratic Media (Routledge). At UC Davis, he teaches media archaeology, radio production, documentary studies, electronics for artists, and community media.