What Winning the News Prize Means to Me

I am both honored and humbled to be selected as a recipient of the North Star News Prize for 2009. What's not to admire about the legacy of North Star Fund? Inspired by the life and work of Frederick Douglass, North Star is a fierce supporter of New York City's grassroots movements for justice that bolster struggling neighborhoods and empower communities of color. North Star Fund has emerged out of a modern take on abolition history and human rights advocacy, representing the immense potential to craft a world by the principles of fairness, inclusion, peace and justice. Many of the organizations I've worked with throughout my career have been North Star grantees, including Make the Road New York, FUREE, Mothers on the Move, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York.

I am especially honored to join the ranks of award. ColorLines magazine also named Deepa Fernandes of the People's Production House a 2008 Innovator and Maria Hinojosa of NPR's Latino USA encouraged me when I was making the transition from activist to journalist. Jeff Chang and I went through the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program together when we were barely out of our teens. Jeff was on the founding editorial of Colorlines Magazine. I learned a ton in the Women's Media Center's Progressive Womens' Voices program, which Carol Jenkins founded. It's so satisfying to be in such a cohort, one that creates accessible media that accurately, responsibly, passionately reflects not only the struggles of communities that have been left behind, but also the modern solutions that emerge from their experience.

The News Prize comes at a particularly crucial moment in our nation's history. While we struggle with the confounding political quagmires of healthcare and immigration reform, we are also hard-pressed to protect our media from being overrun by false reporting, racist agendas, and sensationalization. The racially coded rhetoric and language that starts out on the fringe inevitably reaches the mainstream, ultimately affecting the outcomes of those policy debates, and eventually causing real pain for real people. At the Applied Research Center, we are working hard to shape the media landscape in ways that allow communities to represent themselves and frame the debates of our time. We tell the truth, and we will not stop, in the spirit and example of our ancestors.