Tele-Strategy Call Explores 'The State of Grassroots Communications: Shifting the Landscape Toward Justice'

Solidago, Quixote, Ford Foundations, Media Democracy Fund & Progressive Communicators Network Host Conversation between Funders and Social Justice Communicators

05.11.2010 – Solidago Foundation, Quixote Foundation, Media Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation and Progressive Communicators Network invite you to "The State of Grassroots Communications: Shifting the Landscape Toward Justice."

The Conversation and Our Presenters

This tele-strategy session brings together grassroots communications practitioners with a commitment to justice issues and funders who support justice and social movement efforts in a rare opportunity to think together about opportunities and imperatives to strengthen communications as a tool for change that will substantively impact U.S. culture, consciousness, and political policies.

This is a time of unprecedented change for grassroots communications practitioners. Factors such as the current economic crisis, rampant media consolidation, emerging new media technology and shift in administration bring unique and urgent challenges and opportunities. Faced with this changing communications landscape, grassroots justice organizations must make smart decisions about how to effectively communicate to advance their program and political work, often with fewer resources and confronted with changes in how media is made and news is communicated.

These times demand whole new approaches to change making and communication. It’s no longer enough to win individual victories, we must fundamentally shift our social, cultural and political ecology.

The Center for Media Justice, for example, has put out a call for a comprehensive and transformative approach to justice communications: Truly effective and sustainable movements for racial and economic justice must have the capacity, strategy, and leadership to advance a shared worldview and agenda, watchdog power, elevate strategic stories to a wider audience, increase engaged popular governance, and influence policy to change social conditions.They outline a powerful strategy that tackles race head on, brings the voices of the disenfranchised to the center, transforms public narratives, increases media access, and ultimately changes public consciousness and policy.

Join us to hear about these cutting edge strategies and more communications realities from across the country. We invite you to be part of creating the strategy and infrastructure that will boldly work to transform communications, change work, and the political realities of the 21st century.

May 12th-Wednesday 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern:

Moderator: Helen Brunner, Quixote Foundation and Media Democracy Fund

Panel: Karlos Guana Schmieder from Center for Media Justice, Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme Training and Strategy Collective, Damekia Morgan for Community Media Organizing Project and Friends and Families of Louisana’s Incarcerated Children