Job Opening: LCSC Media Director

Position: Media Director

Supervisor: Eric Mann, Executive Director

Location: Los Angeles

The Labor/Community Strategy Center is hiring its first director of media relations. While it has had a strong in-house media tactical plan and substantial media victories, the organizing work has far outstripped the organization’s capacity to “get the word out” consistently and most effectively to the largest and most influential audiences-especially the national Black and Latino communities and international social movements.

The Strategy Center is a multiracial “think tank/act tank” for regional, national and international movement building, founded in 1989 and based in the 10 million-person world city of Los Angeles.

Our campaigns, projects, and publications are rooted in Black and Latino working class communities and address ‘the totality of urban life” with a view of the whole human being and community in a revolutionary relationship to society. Our primary focus is civil rights, environmental justice, public health, global warming, and the criminal legal system. We build consciousness, leadership, and organization among those who face discrimination and societal attack-Black and Latino high school students, bus riders, security guards, college students, women, immigrants, workers, LGBT people, youth, all of whom comprise our membership.

• The Center is known for building “big picture campaigns” that make the link between the wars abroad and the war at home. We are also known as an organization that “fights to win” – we come out of the traditions of those who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, organized in Mississippi, worked to end the war in Vietnam, fought for OSHA, the EPA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and nuclear arms treaties. In the past 25 years, some of the Center’s highest-profile victories include:The Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open that forced General Motors to keep its Van Nuys assembly plant open for a full decade after it planned to close it, saving the jobs of 5,000 auto workers.

• The Billions for Buses Campaign in which the Bus Riders Union, and Labor/Community Strategy Center, fought a landmark civil rights case in a powerful collaboration with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, grassroots organizing, a “no seat no fare” campaign, and federal court orders that won 2,500 new compressed natural gas buses, dramatic reductions in fares, 1 million hours of new service and yes, $2.7 billion for 500,0000 LA County Black, Latino, elderly, disabled bus riders.

• The Community Rights Campaign, fighting the School to Prison Pipeline and the Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino communities has reversed L.A.’s “daytime curfew law” and stopped the Los Angeles School Police Department and LAPD from issuing 40,000 “truancy tickets” for low-income students and is challenging the entire “stop and frisk” policy in the schools, on the streets, and on the buses and trains of L.A.
  The Position

The Director will head up a comprehensive and multi-faceted media strategy and press campaigns to help secure victories, highlight accomplishments, build the organization, it’s political ideas, greater public recognition of its unique contributions, and strengthen the movement. Media work will include: social media strategy, placement and campaigns, media relations, publications promotions and increasing visibility of the organization’s director, and his books, publications, videos and weekly radio show “Voices from the Front Lines” as well as the visibility of other key Strategy Center leaders.

Ideal candidates must be passionate for racial and social justice, proactive and organized creative thinkers and skilled multitaskers who know how to utilize a range of communications tools to advance campaigns and build a movement.

Primary Responsibilities

• Work with executive director and leadership team to execute communications plans, including a breakout and coordinated social media campaign, media relations, new media and membership communications.

• Work to make the Strategy Center a major force in social media with great name and message recognition-on the ever expanding platforms-Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and many others with a great emphasis on a Black and Latino youth and multi-generational audience-and key opinion makers who increasingly quote the Strategy Center as a source of frontlines theory and practice. Build an even stronger and more responsive email list with breakthroughs in measurable outcomes in terms of written responses, calls, attendance at rallies, letters to elected officials, visits to the office-ability to use email as a mobilizing tactic. Coordinate content for Strategy Center website.

• Build on the director’s national media connections to further position him as a spokesperson for social justice issues on a wide variety of platforms. Build the profiles of 3 other key Strategy Center spokespeople.

• Work with the director to syndicate Voices from the Frontlines-Your National Movement Building Show now broadcasting on Pacifica KPFK Los Angeles  www.voicesfromthefrontlines.com

• Build the Center’s Frontline Press-an independent publishing house. Frontlines Press has published Eric Mann’s L.A.’s Lethal Air, Dispatches from Durban, Katrina’s Legacy, and Camino Para Progresistas (the Spanish Language edition of Playbook for Progressives: the 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer published by Beacon Press). It will be doing a major new edition of Katrina’s Legacy on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, exploring joint publishing ventures with commercial and online publishers, and publishing new authors such as the poems of recently deceased revolutionary Salvadorean Maria Guardado.

• Expand upon and strengthen the organization’s relationships with key national publications including Counterpunch, Colorlines, Black Commentator, and the Nation.

• Identify “newsworthy” components of organization’s work and develop media materials and messages. Initiate contact with and respond to inquiries from print, radio, and television journalists; pitch story ideas and provide information to generate positive media coverage; look for opportunities to insert the director and other key spokespeople into breaking news stories.

• Expand upon the Center’s relationships with labor, political, immigration reporters and other key media, including African American and Latino press outlets. Review and place op-eds and written materials in newspapers and blogs.

• Write news advisories, news releases, background pieces, fact sheets and other press materials for campaigns and initiatives; write, edit and produce clear, engaging, compelling publications.

• Coordinate closely with the executive director to enhance Strategy Center fundraising efforts.

 Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have:

• Three to five years of experience in media relations in labor, politics or advocacy organizations with strong social media skills

• Experience in strategic media planning in a multi-faceted organization.

• Experience in the creation of successful social media strategies and campaigns.

• Demonstrated fluency in communicating in all formats and mediums; able to create strong press releases, message documents and communication materials.

• Experience generating media coverage for policy issues and a track record of packaging ideas and pitching and placing stories in local and national media outlets, including online venues.

• Excellent writing, speaking and analytic skills.

• Enthusiastic support for the Strategy Center agenda and a strong commitment to our mission and vision; demonstrated commitment to racial, social and economic justice, and if possible, work with labor, low-wage and Black and Latino communities.

• Strong work ethic and interpersonal skills, flexibility, creativity, curiosity, and a good team player.

• Able to work with a strong director and take great initiative within clear political guidelines.

Strong salary and benefits package and the chance to grow with the organization.

Application Instructions:

Please email resume and cover letter to: Crystal@thestrategycenter.org