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Communicate Justice Leadership Institute
Outcomes and Next Steps ----------------------->
The Center for Media Justice
1611 Telegraph Avenue Suite 510 Oakland, CA 94612
 
www.centerformediajustice.org
 
Overview
 This year’s Communicate Justice Leadership Institute (CJLI) - CMJ’s unique issue based residential communicationsstrategy retreat - convened over 25 advocates and organizers working on race and criminal justice issues to strengthenskills and to increase media collaboration and strategic effectiveness across the sector. Staff and member groups fromthe Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY), the Haywood Burns Institute (BI), the National Network for Immigrantand Refugee Rights (NNIRR), Detention Watch Network (DWN), Critical Resistance (CR) and more joined Center for Me-dia Justice to tackle some of the big communications challenges facing their important and visionary work. By mappingthe power and communications landscape and building hard hitting skills, participants from across the country facingsimilar challenges came together to develop organizational and network communications plans and a collaborativecommunications strategy to begin to reframe race and the so-called criminal justice system.
Collaborative Communications
“Truth is essential, but it is, of itself, insufficient. Becausedisorganized truth can be overcome by an organized lie.”
Collaborative communications is most effective when it operates from and builds on previously established networks,alliances and coalitions. The need for a collaborative approach to social justice and change communications work to holdan out of control criminal justice system accountable has never been more critical. Conditions of confinement, policingand criminalization, unequal sentencing and an unjust court system continue to harm and target working class, poor andcommunities of color. Faced with classic race frames, a culture of fear and sensational and biased media coverage,groups working to expose racial disparities and change the system require a coordinated effort to reframe the publicconversation on race and crime. At this year’s CJLI, participants were broken up into three main issue groups throughout the strategy session. They were:
Sentencing and Courts, Conditions of Confinement and Policing and Criminalization.
 This allowed for some richplanning within and between these groups about how to build a collaborative communications framework that helpselevate a racial justice frame for our work.Specifically, participants identified the common thread moving across these three issue groups:
the question of citizenship.
 
 As we moved through three days of strategizing, participants became more focused on building someshared ideas about how to work together to change the conversation about citizenship and justice; And, mostimportantly, how to provide for an alternative frame for packaging our issues-- one that is rooted in our shared values.Center for Media JusticeCommunicate Justice Leadership Institute 2009
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Dominant Coverage of Race and Criminal JusticeDebate
-More people of color in jail because they are committing more crimes-Sensationalizing and demonizing crimes committed by people of color but devaluing black victims of crime-People in jail deserved to be locked up-Impossible to change-Brown and black people are supposed to be locked up; it’s normal-The system is what it is; there aren’t any human decision makers. There is no bias.-Culture of FEAR!-Laws named after victims-Desire for vengeance, retribution
Dynamics
-Truth and facts are hidden-Hard to fight emotion with facts-Shifting from extremes
Communications Challenges and Barriers
Participants identified some challenges in setting up collaborative communications frameworks.• There are some contradictions in strategy: e.g. some groups want more flexibility for judges to get rid of mandatorysentencing while others want clearer guidelines to get rid of unequal sentencing.•Issues around detention, confinement, and policing often crisscross state agencies, county agencies, and independentagencies. It’s a fragmented system with different agencies and systems of confinement.•Constant challenge of a juvenile justice system versus an adult justice system. How do we not pit young peopleagainst adults?•New conversations need to be had between Latino and Black communities.•Frames deployed in immigrant rights movements have aided the criminalization of certain immigrant/non-immigrantcommunities. How to build alliances and elevate what works?
Framing for Racial Justice
Racism Exists
Racial disparities are caused by racism, and there is evidence if you look for it.
It’s Systemic
Poverty, racial disparities, and other social problems are not natural, but structural.
We All Deserve Good
 All human beings are connected and deserve the same things. Systems that have us spread “good” fairly createbetter, more productive societies.
Government Has a Role
Government and the public sector is an effective place to handle social issues.
We Are Part of the World
Our well-being, safety, and quality of life increasingly depends on how the US operates in the world.
Something Can Be Done
Public sector solutions abound, what is required is the will.Center for Media JusticeCommunicate Justice Leadership Institute 2009
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