That’s Edward Snowden, in WIRED, praising our founder and executive director as one of the 25 visionaries who will shape the next 25 years in this country. In his essay, the NSA whistle-blower also celebrates the Center for Media Justice and the Media Action Grassroots Network—specifically for our fight to ensure the digital security of poor people of color!

This is an extraordinary honor that reaffirms our commitment to racial and economic equity in a digital age. But in the face of rising authoritarianism, we need your help to keep up the fight.

Can you chip in $25 today to help us sustain Malkia’s vision?

Snowden goes on to write of our fearless leader: “Malkia’s radical lesson is about the nature of rights: The best way to protect somebody is to protect everybody—especially the most vulnerable among us.” Which is why we’re focused on everything from challenging the surveillance of Black activists online to preserving our right to digital dissent through net neutrality. The battles are expansive, but we can win. Because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Share the news with your networks today and help us sustain this work to defend our movements. Together, we are creating change that will impact the next 25 years—and beyond!

“Meanwhile, newspapers are disappearing; meanwhile journalists are disappearing, and journalists of color are being fired right and left,” Cyril said. “Here I am, feeling like I’m treading water trying to get these voices heard in an environment where there’s no mechanism to be heard, and I realized I wanted to work on the mechanisms not the narratives. I wanted to deal with the machine.”

That’s how the Youth Media Council was born in 2001. A project out of the media activism group We Interrupt This Message, the Youth Media Council was made up of youth volunteers who’d scour newspapers from across the Bay Area for representations of other youth of color. They’d choose a period that was especially significant with regard to youth policy—like during the debate around California Proposition 21, a measure that increased penalties for youths who committed crimes—determine how the press’s rhetoric influenced policy-making, and try to meet with journalists themselves.

Sarah Holder, CityLab

Read the full piece here.

Ultimately, abolition is a practical program of change rooted in how people sustain and improve their lives, cobbling together insights and strategies from disparate, connected struggles. We know we won’t bulldoze prisons and jails tomorrow, but as long as they continue to be advanced as the solution, all of the inequalities displaced to crime and punishment will persist. We’re in a long game.
Authors of reforms claim expertise about what “the public” will accept, as if it were a single entity that’s already made its mind about everything. But people frequently broaden their commitments because they learn about, and link to, previously unfamiliar struggles. These are not the public experts invoke but a public resolved to pursue policies and plans to realize their goals.

RUTH WILSON GILMORE AND JAMES KILGORE

Read the full essay here.

“All of these are steps in the right direction and they required a tremendous amount of leadership from the civil rights community,” said Malkia Devich-Cyril, executive director of the racial justice group Media Justice. But, she added, the company will need to invest in longterm structural changes to make sure civil rights remains a priority at Facebook. “While these short term investments are critical, without longterm investments, these changes go to waste.”

Mother Jones

Read the full piece at Mother Jones

In the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, the police spied on Black Lives Matter protesters with face recognition technology. Given this pattern, the term ‘electronic monitoring’ may soon refer not just to a specific piece of equipment but to an all-encompassing strategy.”

New York Times/ProPublica

Read the full piece at New York Times.

“The legislation could also make Illinois a leader in understanding the role that race, gender and past criminal histories play in decisions on ankle bracelets, said James Kilgore.”

The Marshall Project

Read the full piece at The Marshall Project.

“What they’ve said is that they’re going to keep his tweets up and they will exempt him from their standards because of ‘public interest’,” said Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of MediaJustice, an Oakland-based media and civil rights advocacy group, in an interview Monday. “But public interest also includes holding officials accountable. There’s nothing holding the president accountable.”

Mercury News

Read the full piece at Mercury News.

“These apps are not the definitive guides to crime in a neighborhood — it is merely a reflection of people’s own bias, which criminalizes people of color, the unhoused, and other marginalized communities.”

Steven Renderos, MediaJustice

Read the full article here.