Progressive Communicators Network

Short Synopsis

Progressive Communicators Network (PCN) is a racially and socially diverse national network of grassroots communications practitioners who collaborate and share best practices on communication strategy, media messaging, and training.  PCNers also share a common vision of not just achieving gains on their own particular progressive cause, but doing so in ways that collectively advance the communications capacity of all movements for justice.  

Description/Treatment

PCN’s Work The Progressive Communicators Network’s mission is to strengthen and amplify the power, voices, and vision of grassroots movements that are working for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Network participants use communication strategy, framing and messaging, and media tools to: 1) enhance the influence of social change movements on public policy and opinion; and 2) realize a world without poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. Since 2000, PCN has served a vital purpose of bringing grassroots communications practitioners together to collaborate across issues and geography.  PCN is deeply committed to supporting practitioners who represent groups that focus on grassroots and communities of struggle, and is profoundly intentional in the way it approaches diversity and recruitment.  The result is an effective gathering of grassroots communicators who can share resources and experience between the local, regional and national levels. PCN programs strengthen grassroots communication capacity and infrastructure across the country; foster new alliances and collaborations around communications initiatives; and increase understanding of, and support for, strategic communication as a critical tool for progressive change making. For PCN, building communications capacity and infrastructure means supporting communicators working in all regions of the country, fostering the development of new communicators in areas where few formally play this role, and making sure that resources flow to underresourced areas.  In the Midwest, Pacific Northwest and Boston area, regional chapters have convened skills-oriented events and gatherings, in the spirit of the national gatherings, with great results in building solidarity and power across issues and movements, as well as providing that supportive forum for grassroots communications practitioners to develop their skills.  In 2008 the Northwest PCN chapter, for example, organized a digital storytelling training for 9 groups.  (View their stories here:  http://progressivecommunicators.net/en/about/pcn-news/205).  PCN also partners with regional organizations that have overlapping missions of increasing the communication power of grassroots organizations.  In 2008, for example, PCN’s Texas partner group, Colectivo Flatlander, hosted PCN first regional gathering held mostly in Spanish for groups from Texas and the Gulf.  PCN also connects communicators across issues to increase the power and impact of their work.  For example: Criminal Justice Messaging Retreat—When communicators working on criminal justice issues connected at a PCN national gathering and subsequent retreat, they were able to address important challenges their movement was facing around lack of coordination in their media messaging.  With PCN’s support they were able to come to agreement on meta messaging and communications approaches that would serve all strategies and organizations in the field whether they were working on programs of reform or elimination of prisons. Katrina Information Network —Because of PCN’s commitment to the way members are selected, communications practitioners develop trust, knowledge and respect of each other’s work.  In 2005 PCN was perfectly positioned to work closely with one of its partner groups, The Praxis Project, and bring together a skilled group of individual PCNers to develop a rapid response team in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Katrina Information Network (KIN) formed to support grassroots groups in the region with mentoring and collaborations around messaging, as well as extra capacity to launch press releases and cultivate reporters.  This help from outside the region was critical to supplement the teams doing communications on the ground and insure that grassroots voices and frames were advanced. PCN has been collecting tools, tricks of the trade and best practices from among participants in PCN’s programs for inclusion in a Creative Commons-inspired Tool Kit.  And PCNers have a vision to go one step further and train more trainers across the country so that in any bioregion there will be grassroots practitioners available to share skills on traditional and new media tools and best practices.  The 2009 PCN’s national gathering will be focused on training for building communication capacity across the country.  As PCN tools are presented at the gathering from the most creative people working in grassroots communication, they will post them to the Toolbox on our website so that communicators and activists from across the country can have access to them.  See http://progressivecommunicators.net/en/toolbox  Why PCN and Why Now? As progressive grassroots media practitioners, PCNers are in a time of unprecedented innovation and change. Factors such as the current economic crisis, rampant media consolidation, emerging new media technology and the leadership of the Obama Administration each bring unique and urgent challenges and opportunities.  Faced with this changing communications landscape, organizations must make smart decisions about how to effectively communicate for change.  PCN stands uniquely positioned to fill a void and bring together progressive communicators to strategize, innovate, collaborate, share best practices, develop new models and help usher in this new era of communications strategies and tactics. By convening a diverse group of grassroots communicators--both staff and consultant--from across a variety of issues, geographies and backgrounds, the PCN community brings together key players to get a complete picture of the challenges and draw on a variety of expertise to develop solutions. In PCN’s collaborative environment we can test our messages to make sure they not only effectively tell our campaign story, but also create meta narratives that support other progressive groups and causes.  This is especially vital in the current political landscape, as progressives have lacked this message cohesion in the past, while conservatives have shown it to be a cornerstone of their success in shaping public policy and popular opinion on key issues. Together PCNers are also exploring the leading edge of emerging technology and developing tools to communicate for positive change via new media, social networking and web 2.0 as well as traditional media. By building a loose network of skilled media trainers from all around the country who share best practices and innovate collaboratively, PCN can strengthen local and regional networks by developing leaders who can train in the communities where they live, and also provide sustained mentoring and support.  In order to continue our work and expand our training to program to reach across the country, we need funding partners who value a diversity of voices being raised in the public sphere through multiple mediums.  We are seeking $85,000 in funding for 2009 to realize our current plans and visions.