Media Justice Leadership Institute Part One

The day started off with a quick breakfast meeting to go over final logistics for the arrival of the Media Action Grassroots Action Network members (MAG-Net). It was quickly followed by a basic yoga class followed by an 80 minutes deep tissue massage. This is how I started the first day of the Media Justice Leadership Institute.

For the last three months, since starting at CMJ, I have been working with Malkia to put together the first national institute focused on the building, expanding, and deepening grassroots media justice leadership.

The list of attendees are probably people of whom you have never but are people to whom you owe a great deal. These are the people who fight every day against the negative images and portrayals of young people, queer folks, people of color, and women on your local tv station, on the radio, and in the papers. These are folks who understand that without a media that tells OUR stories, we will never achieve racial and economic justice.

The Media Justice movement is in its infancy, but MAG-Net and the people that make up MAG-Net are doing the work in our own communities to foment a direct challenge to corporate controlled media and corporate retelling of our lives and our stories.