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Raising the Bar on Youth Coverage During Elections
When State Senator George Runner, R-Lancaster, continued California’s legacy of predatory youth policy and introduced the innocuously titled Safe Neighborhoods Act of 2008—which sought to reduce spending on schools and spend the money on increasing prison capacity instead—the Community Justice Network for Youth, their member groups, and social justice youth organizing groups from across the state jumped in. In order to defeat the measure, which appeared on the November 2008 ballot as Proposition 6, activists had to educate voters on what was at stake for young people and communities of color; to support that goal, they partnered with the Center for Media Justice to conduct a grassroots communications campaign.
From August to mid-November, CMJ placed at least 68 stories that included youth spokespeople or advocates, and successfully influenced the public debate on this bill. CMJ trained youth spokespeople, conducted press work, and changed the story from a simple “we can’t afford it during a budget crunch” frame to one about how Prop 6 tried to force a choice between funding schools or prisons. At the same time, we supported organizers to introduce the topic of racial disparities into the public debate in a way that helped shift the blame from young people to predatory policies.
Prop 6 was the first “tough on crime” bill ever defeated through the state of California’s ballot initiative process. Groups working for the defeat of Prop 6 won by the largest margin of victory of any campaign during the ’08 election season; not a single county voted in its favor.
Check out how CMJ helped our partners change the story on this issue
