Strategic Communications and the Equal Justice Society
Jul 07
Equal Justice Society No Comments
Below is the text of brief remarks I delivered June 29, 2010, at an event in Washington, D.C., in celebration of the Equal Justice Society’s 10th anniversary.
Good evening and thank you all for being here tonight.
I’m Keith Kamisugi, the director of communications at EJS.
The fact that an organization of our size has a director of communications in itself speaks to how critical a role strategic communications played from the very start ten years ago.
In 2000, there was no Facebook, no YouTube, no Twitter, no iPhone, no iPad. Few were concerned about the death of newspapers. And most folks still bought their music on plastic discs.
What Eva Paterson and the other co-founders of EJS insisted then holds true even more today: we must parallel a progressive legal approach with strategies to creatively educate the public and change hearts and minds about the role of race in our society and to counter the notion of a colorblind America.
Still today we are faced with the vexing challenge of how to communicate about discrimination and structural exclusion in a way that resonates with the average American – and when I mention Americans, I’m not just referring to citizens, but to immigrants as well.
Litigation, legislation, and public policy debates are not the only means of heightening a progressive consciousness around race and racial justice. In order to force the courts’ hand to consider new legal frameworks in adjudicating discrimination cases, EJS draws more attention to racial justice issues, reaching out to the public as the “body-politic,” as potential jurors, as well as consumers.
Almost two years after we elected a Black man as our president, we confront new – and in many ways – more complex challenges about how our society views race, not the least of which is the notion that a Black president signals the end of racism in our country.
Add to this environment the constantly changing landscape of information consumption and we’re presented with formidable communications challenges.
Our approach to meeting these challenges includes three efforts related to popular culture, online activism and communications coalition building.
We’re looking beyond traditional media outlets to evaluate and respond to the reality that music, video games, fictional TV and movies and online social networking are educating more and more people about race issues than ever before. And that education is a poor one.
