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About Us


Welcome to the Center for Media Justice (CMJ)!  We're the same bold and visionary organization you knew as the Youth Media Council—but we've grown into our shoes as a unique national media strategy and action center with a sharpened approach to movement building for racial justice and youth rights.

A Unique Movement Center  

At CMJ, we're continuing to work closely with the Bay Area youth movement while expanding our work to an intergenerational constituency of disenfranchised communities and grassroots organizers nation-wide.  Driven by the communities we serve- the Center for Media Justice is working with youth and communities of color across age, sector, and regional boundaries to transform the public debate on race and poverty- and build a powerful movement for media justice.

CMJ is more than a training group or policy shop- we're a movement center that makes strategic communications and media activism creative, accessible, and relevant to organizers, journalists, artists, and the everyday majority whose voices are pushed to the margins.

What We Do

As organizers, journalists, and artists- we are talking back.  At CMJ, we believe in community organizing and alliance building as primary strategies for change and are committed to innovating media work that builds grassroots media power in three key ways:

1. We work regionally and deeply with key sectors of the movement for racial justice and youth rights to create and implement the communications strategies they need to reach their organizing and movement building goals.
 
2. We develop the media skills and leadership of grassroots organizers and members to speak and strategize for themselves and on behalf of the communities they represent.
 
3. We organize historically disenfranchised communities for representative media rules and rights in the Bay Area, while supporting the growth of media and cultural activist alliances in other regions and working with them to build a nationally coordinated movement for media justice.

Our History and Vision

With the support of We Interrupt This Message and 8 Bay Area youth organizing groups- Malkia A. Cyril, Jen Soriano, and Amy Sonnie launched the Youth Media Council in 2002 to respond to media bias against youth and people of color in the news media.  Inspired by the communications strategies of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the resistance movements of the Phillipines, South Africa, Palestine and throughout the world- the Youth Media Council took on the hard work of growing to meet the movement where it's at and became the Center for Media Justice in 2007.

Grounded in the idea that the purpose of progressive communications and cultural work is to amplify hope and pave the way for change-- the Center for Media Justice is a member-driven media strategy and action center dedicated to creating a collaborative movement for racial justice and youth rights.  Together with our participants, members, partners, and allies—the Center for Media Justice builds the power of grassroots movements and disenfranchised communities to transform public debate and win media accountability in the service of justice.