AYPAL\'s Youth Media Team

BUILDING MEDIA POWER: AYPAL's Youth Movement Media Team

Overview
AYPAL (Asian and Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership) is a 300-member youth organizing group based in the Bay Area. In 2003, AYPAL organizers decided to confront immigrant deportation by challenging the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Since IIRIRA was passed in 1996, deportation levels had risen dramatically. Youth in AYPAL were experiencing the impact of IIRIRA firsthand as hundreds of families in their community were torn apart. In 2003, they launched the “One Love, One Nation, Stop Deportation” campaign to repeal the IIRIRA and bring local attention to unjust deportations.

In June 2003, Youth Media Council began a 16-month media capacity-building project with AYPAL incorporating three building blocks of media work: communications strategy, media capacity and creative action. Prior to this AYPAL had conducted media work only occasionally and outside of their campaign work, which had resulted in coverage in one local paper.   And in 2002, the YMC began media capacity-building work with one of the six AYPAL sites, which turned out to be difficult to sustain in addition to their base-building work. 

 Building on these lessons, the YMC worked with two full-time AYPAL staff to craft a sustainable plan for media strategy development, presswork training and creative media action design. To build lasting media infrastructure, YMC also assisted AYPAL to plan, implement and evaluate strategies that would support their media work beyond the One Love, One Nation campaign.

The 16-month project garnered AYPAL the support of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, one of their key campaign goals, built new media leadership amongst staff and members, earned significant media coverage, and established the first ongoing media team in a Bay Area youth organizing group.  

Steps to Success
Establish a Media Team to Lead the Work. YMC staff worked intensively with the eight AYPAL interns who formed the media team. This was the first time that AYPAL had a team dedicated to media work. One of the media interns recalled the team’s weekly meetings with YMC:

YMC’s training started with an overview of the media landscape and a crash course in media litera-cy -- who controls the media, what gets in, how it works. We then took that information and applied it to our campaign and developed an argument that would be compelling to journalists. From there we just started crafting press releases, calling up journalists, canvassing. Then, it was just a matter of legwork, getting journalists to show up to our events and providing a compelling argument.

Conduct Research and Craft Persuasive Messages. AYPAL’s media team identified the need for data to demonstrate the impacts deportations were having on their community. Working with the YMC and research partner the DataCenter, AYPAL released a fact-driven report on the results of IIRIRA. Armed with the data, the team then focused on framing the campaign in a way that appealed to a mass audience. Their message of deportations “tearing families apart” hit a chord with the public and with decisionmakers, especially when they backed it up personal stories.

Make the Media Come to You. Using the report release and the anniversary of the Cambodian Repatriation Act as a hook for a media event, AYPAL’s media team planned a creative, visual event that drew out nearly every major media outlet, including the ethnic press, from the region. With placards showing statistics from their report, spokespeople from religious leaders to immigrants affected by the IIRIRA, and performers, AYPAL’s staff coordinator talked about the significance of using media in this way as a youth organization:

One of the things we realized was that it was difficult for us to influence Congresswoman Barbara Lee as a youth organization. A lot of us are under 18, can’t vote and are coming from immigrant communities. But when we made the issue public through the media, we were able to take our message much further and make Congresswoman Lee much more accountable.

Overall, their efforts resulted in some key victories:

• AYPAL’s campaign was strengthened by strategic media advocacy. AYPAL’s media team helped win the primary demand of getting Barbara Lee to co-sponsor the non-compromise bill “Keeping Families Together Act” to reform the 1996 IIRIRA.
• AYPAL exposed racism through media accountability. AYPAL’s media team confronted stereotypes in media and highlighted the racist rules of immigration law enforcement agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and its effects on Asian and Latino communities.
• AYPAL showed youth-led communications works. Youth chose a strategy that AYPAL staff thought was too ambitious, including producing a report and organizing “no-deportation zone” block parties, culminating in a media event to release the report. The successful outcomes of the campaign show that youth-led organizing and communications can work when given adequate support and guidance.

Impact: A Team Built to Last
Having learned that successful media work takes time and dedicated point people, AYPAL invested in a permanent media team by setting out and following a few key principles:

1. Clear Staff Responsibility for Media Work. AYPAL devoted 5-10 hours per week to media capacity-building work over the 16-month period and for the next year after the IIRIRA campaign. Now, one co-director coordinates the media team.
2. Experienced Youth Organizers Lead Media Work. The media team is seen as an advanced leadership position for six young people who have gone through the yearlong AYPAL leadership training. Media interns build advanced organizing skills and progressive political analysis, allowing them to not only implement strategic media work within an organizing framework, but also to teach other AYPAL youth about the relationship between communications and organizing.
3. Clear division of roles among staff, media interns and organizing interns. The co-director is responsible for press release writing and pitching, as well as training youth in media analysis and skills. Youth media interns lead framing, messaging, planning and creative action design, and act as primary spokespeople for the organization. Media interns follow the lead of organizing interns who develop campaign strategy, but make final decisions about creative actions designed to attract media attention. Media interns also act as primary spokespeople for the organization.
4. Comprehensive program to train media leaders. Media interns receive well-rounded training including media literacy and media structure. They also visit different media outlets to see how the newsrooms operate and to build relationships with reporters. Interns apply this training directly to AYPAL campaign work throughout their intern year.

The pilot media team left a legacy that continues through today. After the One Love, One Nation campaign wrapped, the team went on to lead successful communications to build the youth movement.  In 2006, the AYPAL media team, in conjunction with Californians for Justice and the Organize da Bay Coalition, played a key role in holding the Oakland Unified School District accountable to improving conditions at Oakland public schools.  

Through strategic media work that included pitching to community outlets and a front-page story in the Oakland Tribune, AYPAL’s media team helped pressure school principals, district officials and State Superintendent Randy Ward to improve conditions at their schools, and OUSD officials have promised that all students will receive needed supplies and textbooks for the 2006-2007 school year.

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