Echoing Justice Communications Strategies for Community Organizing in the 21st Century Stories Of Success And Innovation Echoing Justice is an action research project of the Echo Justice Communications Collaborative—a multi-year initiative to incubate, innovate, and implement movement building communications strategies that strengthen racial justice alliances and their impact. The Echoing Justice report team includes staff of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ), the Praxis Project, smartMeme, the Movement Strategy Center (MSC), Community Media Workshop, and UNITY Alliance. Lead writer: Julie Quiroz, Movement Strategy Center Lead researcher: Jen Soriano, Lionswrite Consulting Report editing and production: Karlos Schmieder, Center for Media Justice Design: Micah Bazant, micahbazant.com Resources for this report were provided by the Surdna Foundation, the Akonadi Foundation and the Frances Fund.
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Big [beltway] organizations started coming in, getting their communications machine going. We had struggles with their message which was, ‘There’s fear everywhere and we need help’…We wanted to portray resistance on the ground. —Carlos Garcia, Puente Problem: We interrupt this message Facing searing anti-Latino stereotypes and armed with almost no communications capacity or resources, local organizers needed to address the “show me your papers” attack while maintaining strategic focus and momentum. Movement Communications Approach: Network driven strategies Building on the strength of their on-going
Echoing Justice
From Fear to Freedom: How Local Collaboration Changed the Story on Arizona’s SB1070 organizing, local organizers reached out through local-to-local networks to create a hub of organizing, communications, and cultural collaboration. Impact: Turning the tide Media coverage of SB 1070 shifted to focus on the demand for human rights, rather than fear in the community or policy reforms constrained by Washington politics. Communications reinforced powerful local organizing, galvanized large numbers of people, and helped defeat additional anti-immigrant bills. In January 2010, In the midst of a vitriolic and divisive national debate on comprehensive immigration reform, tens of thousands of people marched against the brutal and discriminatory
Photo by Diane Ovalle
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tactics of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Over the past decade, Arpaio has become known for his inhumane approaches and losing accreditation at his county jails multiple times. However in 2007 and 2008, new state laws and federal programs gave the Sheriff new powers that accelerated the harassment of Latinos in Maricopa County to new levels. At the heart of the organizing response was Puente, a small migrant rights organization that had partnered with the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) to launch a campaign to bring Arpaio to justice and challenge the laws that empowered him. Arpaio’s actions had fueled widespread outrage in Maricopa County’s Latino and indigenous communities. He had become a lightning rod, galvanizing a movement demanding human rights and an end to federal policies allowing police—like Arpaio—to enforce immigration laws, including the package of policies like 287(g) and its successor known as Secure Communities.
In the context of the searing antiLatino stereotypes that marked the national debate on immigration, local organizers were forced to pivot to somehow address this new attack without losing their larger strategic focus and momentum.
Just a month after the Arpaio marches, a sweeping new anti-immigrant law (SB 1070) was introduced in the Arizona legislature. Following the trend in both state and federal immigration enforcement policies, SB 1070 essentially legalized racial profiling, allowing police to stop anyone they think might “look” undocumented. It also made it a crime to be caught without immigration papers or to provide transportation to undocumented immigrants.
In the context of the searing anti-Latino stereotypes that marked the national debate on immigration, local organizers were forced to pivot to somehow address this new attack without losing their larger strategic focus and momentum. “A lot of SB 1070 had been attempted before,” explains Carlos Garcia, director of Puente, referring to a recent slew of anti-immigrant legislation including the 2002 English-Only law and the 2006 law barring undocumented immigrant students from qualifying for in-state tuition. “What was new about SB 1070 was not having a Democratic governor there to veto it,” says Garcia, “We didn’t have legislative experience. We were unprepared to fight in the legislature.” In fact, few believed the legislation would get very far. “We didn’t think it would be that big a deal,” recalls Garcia. But as SB 1070 began passing through committees, and as comprehensive immigration reform died out in Washington, the bill began to grab local attention and national headlines. With a potentially devastating impact on Arizona’s immigrant communities and the possibility of further anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and across the country, the bill demanded urgent attention. At the same time, organizers needed to find a way to respond, not just react. “We needed to respond to SB 1070 and also hold our focus on the fight against Arpaio and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ACCESS programs,” explains B. Loewe, Communications Director for the NDLON, which was deeply engaged in Arizona immigrant organizing.
Mixed Messages Organizers faced not only the challenge of fighting SB 1070, but also the challenge of shaping a narrative that would build community power and lead to larger change. “Some
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“This was a moment when our communications need was at its greatest but, here in Phoenix there was not one immigrant organization with a paid communications person.” — Carlos Garcia, Director of Puente
larger organizations talk about SB 1070 in terms of the constitution and due process,” says Karlos Guana Schmieder of Center for Media Justice, “It’s often a high-level wonky conversation that didn’t connect to real people and power building on the ground.” Garcia agrees. “Big organizations started coming in, getting their communications machine going. We had struggles with their message which was, ‘There’s fear everywhere and we need help.’” Though concerned that such messages would result in lost momentum and weakened demands, Puente and others recognized that with little communications capacity, local organizers would need help to achieve their goals. “This was a moment when our communications need was at its greatest,” asserts Garcia, “but, here in Phoenix there was not one immigrant organization with a paid communications person.”
A Call For Help Rather than rely on the usual suspects from the D.C. beltway or a national PR firm, as was the case in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform, Garcia and B. sent out an email through grassroots networks across the country, calling on friends in other local communities to roll up their sleeves and come to Arizona. Organizers all across the country got the email and passed it on, helping to spark a “summer of human rights” that included direct action, organizing, and an unprecedented communications justice collaboration. The effort came together quickly, thanks to years of efforts to build stronger
working relationships and communications through cross-sectoral efforts such as UNITY (formerly the Inter-Alliance Dialogue).
A House Full of Organizers and Communicators Staying at a house near the Puente office, communications organizers came from Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Jobs with Justice, Miami Workers Center, and Right to the City to help organize a broad-based action on May 29th. Cultural workers also came, answering a call from artist Ernesto Yerena via the AltoArizona.com website that collected 200+ poster contributions. “We had a coalition meeting each week,” says Garcia, “where we would figure out strategy and messages. Then we’d meet with the grassroots communications people who had come in from other places.” Together they created core frames and messages, gathered press lists, pitched stories to mainstream press, and developed social media infrastructure. Yerena and others galvanized cultural workers in Arizona and across the country to deeply penetrate public consciousness with powerful images and messages. The National Domestic Workers Alliance worked with local groups to sponsor a Mothers’ Day march to underscore the problems facing immigrant women workers. Progressive Communicators Network played a key role in coordinating a national telebriefing of reporters and forming bilingual public relations teams that worked in all the major regions of country.
Networked Communication Works Without help from a national PR firm, the collaboration achieved remarkable results. For the May 29 march, the communications team helped shift media coverage from an insider’s policy debate to a street-level story about human rights. In the words of Jen Soriano, who at the time was working with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, “Changing the view of the marchers was key, transforming ‘those people’ to one big ‘us.’”
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more than 70 Spanish-language outlets. Radio coverage alone reached more than 700,000 listeners in Arizona—results that many believed were impossible without the intervention of a national public relations firm.
Photo by Diane Ovalle
Held just one month after the signing of SB1070, the May 29 protest was a crucial opportunity to galvanize a new debate about immigration in Arizona, a feat Puente could not have achieved alone. In just four weeks, outrage and organizing against the bill and copycat bills in several states had spread far and wide. A whopping 100,000 people showed up to the march, receiving not only widespread media coverage, but a very different kind of coverage. “We built on the messages that were coming out spontaneously on the ground,” recalls Soriano, “We looked at what people were writing on signs and posters and put them into a larger story of who made up the march.” With the help of the communications team, messages like “Legalize Arizona” jumped from the street to national consciousness, helping more and more people to empathize with the human rights and racial justice struggle represented by SB 1070. Cultural workers put images and slogans on t-shirts and posters, then sat at folding tables and put them on websites, making sure to get people’s contact information—and commitment to action—in exchange for the art.
Breaking the Media Glass Ceiling The combination of community organizing and communications broke what Soriano calls “the media glass ceiling;” generating stories in the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and, more than 450 mainstream radio stations nationwide, as well as ethnic media including
“There were more than 250 media outlets at the march representing Spanish, English, and local to international news,” says Soriano, “Our tracking of post-march coverage showed that the march generated almost 3,000 stories on the internet alone, and that the majority of stories included at least one quote from organizers and immigrants suffering the impacts of SB 1070. This was a significant turnaround from the coverage before the march, when the media talked about SB 1070 almost exclusively as a policy story.” The organizing and communications also spawned a massive economic boycott of the state. “We defended human rights and racial justice and made those the interests of business,” observes B. Loewe. The boycott brought businesses into the fight, including 60 CEOs who wrote a letter to the state senate in opposition to further anti-immigrant bills that were in the works the following year.
We Achieved Our Communications Goals “We succeeded in our communications goals,” asserts B. Loewe. Through a network driven communications strategy, Puente and its allies expanded the local base for immigrant rights by the thousands, gained hundreds of local and national news stories, and elevated the voices of those most impacted by SB 1070. The long-standing campaign against Sheriff Arpaio and Secure Communities also celebrated victory in December 2011 when the Department of Justice’s investigation found that the sheriff’s department “engages in racial profiling of Latinos; unlawfully stops, detains, and arrests Latinos.” The DOJ report also implicated policies like Secure Communities that create the conditions for a sheriff Arpaio, noting “a
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chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations” in a department that views immigrants and Latinos as criminals. As the struggles continue in Arizona, the combination of network-driven organizing and communications has helped increase the power of the immigrant voice and shifted the debate from policy reform to human rights. Most of SB 1070s provisions have been enjoined in federal court, the author of the bill lost his seat in a recall, and widespread public outcry helped defeat a second wave of anti-immigrant bills in the Arizona legislature. National observers who once viewed Arizona as an impenetrable conservative stronghold, now consider it a swing state, citing the newly energized opposition to SB 1070.
“The value of communications has become more clear,” Garcia concludes, pointing to the irony that despite their success there is still no on the ground communications capacity in the local immigrant rights organizations.
Lessons for the Future Looking back, Garcia believes there are many lessons to be learned. “We need to understand how our work connects with other movements,” advises Garcia, pointing to early immigrant rights flyers that read, We are not criminals. “When we connected with people working against prisons we realized that messages of our campaign may have cut against the interests of others.” Garcia says he’s also learned the importance of social media both externally and for Puente’s own base of supporters. “Art also played a huge role,” he maintains, “empowering people, giving them a fighting attitude, and getting them to come out.”
“The value of communications has become more clear,” he concludes, pointing to the irony that despite their success there is still no on the ground communications capacity in the local immigrant rights organizations. Other than one grant for a six-month communications position, Puente did not receive any support for their communications work. Most importantly, asserts Garcia, “We need to do better at digging down and presenting our core issues better. The fact is that any ICE/ police access or collaboration leads to racial profiling and mistreatment of our community. It was good that we let the rest of the country know how racist Arizona is,” continues Garcia, “but people didn’t understand that this was happening in their city, and that federal enforcement policies are going to make us all Arizona.” While lessons abound, one of the greatest lessons was that local communities can effectively empower the connective tissue of local-to-local networks to amplify the public voice of those facing even the most brutal political attack— and win.