Youth Media Council builds communications power and defends the communication rights of youth, communities of color, and organizing groups working for racial and economic justice.

Launched in 2001 to counter racial stereotypes and anti-youth bias in the news, YMC is a media strategy and action center dedicated to building a strategic and collaborative movement for justice by strengthening media strategy, capacity and action in California and beyond.

Youth Media Council (YMC) was founded in 2001 as a two-year pilot project at We Interrupt This Message (Interrupt). A media strategy center for the racial justice movement since the early 90s, Interrupt founded the YMC to increase the media strategy and capacity of the youth organizing sector. YMC built upon Interrupt's racial justice communications framework and strong partnerships with racial and economic justice groups. Under the leadership of veteran media strategists Hunter Cutting and Kim Deterline, Interrupt pioneered methods for media capacity building, strategic communications and media watchdog projects uniquely tailored to disenfranchised communities.

The YMC model was designed in partnership with eight local youth organizing groups to establish a Council of organizations where members could not only build media capacity, but also participate in coordinated communications and accountability efforts. YMC's original members represented some of the most vibrant youth organizations in the country -- all of which were reeling from a decade of racist, anti-youth, anti-immigrant legislation in California. It became increasing clear to organizers and advocates alike that media outlets -- and the agendas of their corporate owners -- played an important role in "priming" the public for punitive policy initiatives, such as Propositions 21 and 184 (three-strikes), as well as others that eroded important social safety-net programs for youth of color and their families (California Propositions 209, 227 and 187).

Beginning with the "war on crime" in the 80s and "war on drugs" in the 90s, young people of color were increasingly framed as criminals in the mass media, casualties of the domestic rhetoric of "war as social policy." Media images of teenage "superpredators" led the public to believe that juvenile crime was on the rise, despite the fact that youth crime was at an all-time low. Public fear grew and policymakers were mandated to take a tough-on-crime stance. The result: youth and communities of color were caught in the crossfire of age and race-based bias, and faced life-threatening conditions as a direct result of public -- and media -- scorn.

In a 2003 study by the Applied Research Center, Youth Rising, youth organizing groups identified media stereotypes and lack of media access and strategy as core barriers to successful organizing. During our first three years, YMC experimented with projects and methods to transform some of these barriers. To more effectively counter racist media bias and shift anti-youth public policy, YMC later expanded its scope to include racial justice organizing groups, artists and media activists as participants in our services and members of our action network.

Though our programmatic structure and tactics changed as we incorporated new practices to strengthen our model, YMC started with an interdisciplinary approach to media work that continues to this day. Engaging three core strategies, YMC provides: 1) media capacity and strategy for the grassroots youth and racial justice movement, 2) strategic communications services for critical campaigns, and 3) regional organizing for media accountability that helps to build a national movement for media justice.

To this end, YMC has increased media capacity and strategy in dozens of campaigns for immigrant rights, educational justice, juvenile justice, fair policing and economic justice; provided training to hundreds of grassroots organizers nationwide; brokered relationships between youth and journalists; launched the one-of-its-kind S� Se Puede Fellowship to develop the leadership of emerging youth organizers of color as media activists and strategists; provided tools, resources and an essential Online Media Resource Center and Press Database for organizers; and increased media accountability through community-led content studies and local media policy campaigns.

Homepage

YMC

Address

611 Telegraph Avenue
Suite 510
Oakland, CA 94612

Telephone

(510) 444-0640