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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In politics, framing is sometimes reduced to a question of language…Instead of attempting to change the meaning of terms favored by our opponents, research teaches us that we need to reframe the underlying concepts… [that’s why] messaging should always be part of a broader strategy for change that includes careful consideration of goals, spokespersons, audience, and context…In order to deconstruct the framing of an issue, you have to dig beneath the surface. —Makani Themba, Fair Game, 2010 Problem: Shaping meaning beyond sound bites In a campaign to save public housing, organizers struggled against the “common sense” created by corporate owned media, right wing think tanks, and mainstream culture that welcomes
gentrification and displacement of people of color as solutions to poverty. Movement Communications Approach: Shifting the frame, leading with communications Organizers built a large and powerful community-based coalition that caught the eye of an investigative reporter. Rather than seeking coverage for their campaign, organizers pointed the reporter to the larger story of greed and corruption that would allow public housing to be valued as a part of a brighter vision for the city. Impact: Eyes on the prize A Pulitzer-prize winning series in the Miami Herald transformed the policy debate in Miami and opened the door for the demands coming from communities of color.
Echoing Justice
From Stereotypes to Swindlers: Going Beyond Sound Bites to Re-Frame Public Housing Debate in Miami
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In 2006, low-income housing organizers in Miami scored a game-changing boost from the Miami Herald newspaper. The Herald ran a seven-part series called “House of Lies”3 that dramatically reshaped the public conversation about housing and land use in Miami. The series was a direct result of the smart communications strategy in the Miami Workers Center’s campaign to win replacement housing for residents displaced by redevelopment.
As Gihan Perrera, director of Miami Workers Center, explains, organizers must contend with the “‘common sense’ created by corporate owned mainstream media, right wing think tanks, and mainstream culture… Within this ‘common sense’ framework gentrification and displacement are welcomed as a natural solution to poverty.”
“House of Lies” avoided the easy trap of individual, episodic stories and instead exposed an extraordinary pattern of systemic greed and corruption within city housing agencies. It revealed out of control developers and city leaders hijacking the future of the city. It challenged powerful racial stereotypes, offering stories that highlighted the voices of Black and Latino public housing residents and that exposed a hidden transcript of hope and hard work. Through a smart communications strategy that peeled back the layers of history and context on the issue of public housing, the usually dominant, pro-corporate narrative of redevelopment as a common good was transformed. How organizers did it is a lesson in going beyond sound bites to tell this bigger story. 3. “House of Lies” by Debbie Cenziper, a seven part series published in the Miami Herald beginning on July 23, 2006.
Saving Homes The “House of Lies” series was truly the result of years of effective organizing to save and replace public housing. For more than five years before the “House of Lies” series hit print, Miami Worker’s Center (MWC) and their partner Low Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT) worked together to engage in an intense campaign to save the public housing of many of its members. The campaign was aptly called “home.” In 2001, housing organizers had used powerful direct action tactics to save one major public housing complex. LIFFT members traveled by bus to Washington, D.C., shutting down the office of Housing and Urban Development and winning a promise from the undersecretary of HUD to not tear the complex down. Two years later, when another complex, the Scott-Carver Homes, was torn down, residents once again joined together through LIFFT, demanding one-to-one replacement housing for the 1,100 people who had been displaced. For years LIFFT fought hard, knowing that the housing battle was an issue of survival for the families being displaced, and a broader issue of intentional policies, such as HUD’s HOPE VI, that turn public responsibilities over to profit-driven ventures.
Contending with “Common Sense” Despite the campaign’s successes, its momentum began to stall. Beyond those close to the campaign, most Miami residents saw public housing as blight and viewed any alternative as an improvement. As Gihan Perrera, then director of MWC, explains, organizers must contend with the “‘common sense’ created by corporate owned mainstream media, right wing think tanks, and mainstream culture…Within this ‘common sense’ framework gentrification and displacement are welcomed as a natural solution to poverty.”4 4. Displacing the Dream: A Report on Bay Area News Coverage of Development and Gentrification. Youth Media Council, undated.
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“We recognized that we were painting ourselves into a corner, while the opposition was painting themselves as the future and progress,” explains Gihan Perera. Guided by what they had learned in an assessment of their communications, “We started a real process of trying to figure out our communications strategy on our own, which transformed our view of our organizing. We understood that we were organizing within a particular political context, but also within a geography, ethnicity, and so forth, and that our frame had to be bigger.”
Racial stereotypes also fueled this “common sense” agenda. As Perera observes, the mid1990s “attacks on welfare were explicitly racial and structural—explicitly racialized against black women in particular and explicitly structural and multi-issued in the sense that they were against Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—but the impact was on every public institution that there was.”5 When MWC began its public housing work in the late 1990s, says Perera, “We were in the direct aftermath and continued impact of attacks on poor black people that came out of welfare reform.” Powerful racial stereotypes of public housing tenants as deadbeats and criminals numbed observers to the human tragedy of working poor families facing displacement. With this cushion of racism working in their favor, developers and government agencies pushing displacement and gentrification were able to position themselves as forward-thinking leaders, casting the defense of public housing as just that: defensive. In a complex campaign with the red tape of housing contracts, land acquisition, construction, and more, even those inside the effort struggled to maintain a larger vision. “We had become mired in bureaucratic process,” recalls Joseph Phelan, former communications director for MWC.
5. Interview with Gihan Perera, Critical Issues Forum, Vol. 3, Marking Progress: Movement Toward Racial Justice, July 2010 Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
The story caught the eye of an investigative reporter from the Miami Herald who was impressed with the depth and breadth of the coalition. After several conversations with Miami Workers Center, the reporter came to MWC and asked, “What should I cover?”
“What Should I Cover?” In the midst of the campaign, Hurricane Wilma hit on October 25, 2005, causing more than $10 billion in damages to south Florida and devastating low-income neighborhoods already suffering substandard housing and infrastructure. MWC responded immediately, providing residents with emergency support in the storm’s aftermath, as well as calling on their many allies to create an emergency relief fund. The coalition stirred up responses from the mayor and the county, while the size of the coalition, its bold demands, and its connection to powerful organizing and direct action, helped it gain useful media coverage. That’s when the break came. The story caught the eye of an investigative reporter from the Miami Herald who was impressed with the depth and breadth of the coalition. After several conversations with MWC, the reporter came to MWC and asked, “What should I cover?”
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MWC’s answer was not the relief fund or even the LIFFT campaign. Their answer was “Scott Carver,” the public housing complex they were fighting to preserve. “We wanted her to tell a different story of public housing,” recalls Phelan, “to tell the story of the greed and corruption around it.” After months of painstaking investigation and research, the reporter told that story. The resulting series, “House of Lies,” presented heaps of damning evidence on the Miami-Dade Housing Agency, which had committed to put more than $87 million toward 72 developments for the poor, including apartments, houses and complexes for the elderly. “House of Lies” concluded that “for over 5 years the Miami-Dade Housing Agency squandered millions of dollars on failed projects, pet programs and insider deals even as thousands of families languished in rotting and unsafe homes. Aided by the agency’s longtime director, a cadre of developers raked in millions of dollars for homes that were never built.” Just as important, “House of Lies” lifted up and amplified the stories of LIFFT members. The series told story after story of public housing residents like Ozie Porter, an African American woman who had saved $5,000 earning $10.44 an hour as a cafeteria cook and was searching, unsuccessfully, for a home she could purchase with her savings. Each story brought the campaign closer to victory, while building the power of the organization. Thinking strategically about the relationship between communications and organizing, Communications Organizer Joseph Phelan says, “It was the combined impact of our ground strategy and our media strategy that put our issues front and center in the mainstream debate over the future of Miami.” Detailing patterns of outrageous profits at the expense of both poor Miamians and the entire Miami region, “House of Lies” reached a huge audience and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Victory in Communications and Organizing In 2007, with public attention elevated by “House of Lies,” LIFFT and the Miami Workers Center launched the Find Our People campaign. Organizers took over the last standing building in the Scott-Carver complex and erected a huge board where Scott-Carver residents “lost” by HUD could sign in and reconnect to the struggle. That year, after a decade of fighting, LIFFT finally celebrated victory, winning an agreement from the city to make public housing available for all the displaced residents. 177 would move back on site, and others were able go into subsidized housing being built in the neighborhood. This remarkable victory came at a time when the national battle to preserve public housing had been all but lost. MWC waged a long campaign grounded in communications tactics that confronted stereotypes of black and brown public housing residents, exposed patterns of institutional racism and profit-mongering, and transformed episodic stories of individual displacement into a public debate on housing, rich with history and context. In the process they pivoted the debate from displacement as a public good to displacement as a public problem driven by institutional greed and corruption. Those shifts built long-term power for housing residents and organizers alike, and are the metrics by which the Miami Workers Center and LIFFT gauge their success, as opposed to more traditional standards like organizational hits in coverage. “In the whole series I think MWC is mentioned twice,” observes Phelan proudly, “Communications needs to understand where power resides and what you’re trying to do. A quote in the paper is not an accomplishment. Going beyond sound bites to win homes, expose lies, and tell a new public story, that’s the real victory.”