Social activism is nothing new in Chicago. From the 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention to the 2000 protests of Laura Schlessinger, Chicagoans make their voices heard. Since 1989, Community Media Workshop ( CMW ) has helped nonprofit organizations and individuals have a voice in Chicago's media.
If you volunteer on a public relations committee for a local nonprofit or if you just want to understand how the news 'machine' runs, CMW hosts forums throughout the year to better acquaint you with the process. On Wednesday, June 4, the group begins their Making Media Connections Conference at Malcolm X College.
While the conference is not geared specifically to GLBT groups, the keynote speaker, Robert Bray, is a longtime gay activist. Bray's story is one that stirs the least active among us.
Bray's family history is one of activism, dating back to his great grandfather, Doroteo Arango, better known as Poncho Villa, the famous Mexican revolutionary general. Bray's father, like Poncho Villa, was a union miner. Bray says the talk of miner mistreatment is what caused him to want to support the underdog.
After graduating, he took a 10-year detour in his career that included a long stint at a major corporation in a 'soul -crushing job.' He said, 'I was making lots of money when I was in my 30s and I had huge amounts of responsibilities in corporate public relations, but I was not happy.'
At the March on Washington in 1987, Bray came out to his family and millions of other viewers on national television and began his career as a gay and social activist. Every successful social activist organization has interaction, good or bad, with the media. Following is an edited discussion with Bray about media lessons he learned while working in corporate America, the Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force ( NGLTF ) .
WCT: When we're working with a media campaign, how much education do we need to give to mainstream reporters?
Robert Bray: I always feel like LGBT people have to take the time to brief reporters. Perhaps you don't do that while the camera's running in a soundbyte, but it's important to maintain and develop relationships with reporters. Whether it's with mainstream reporters or reporters from the gay and lesbian media, I feel there's often a tendency of community advocates to presume that people know what we're talking about—that we live it and we breathe it, but not everyone else is. So sometimes it's important to take that extra time and explain the nuances of our lives and communicate and articulate messages that resonate with people who are reading and watching and listening to the news coverage. So that means speaking in ways, and this is one of the things that I teach in my workshop, to not only educate the press … but also to communicate values that touch people and move them and reclaim democracy for our side … . When we go forward to tell our stories we [ should ] do it mindful that there are a core set of values in this country, that this country was founded on and that [ it ] is our responsibility as communicators to articulate those.
WCT: You were the first media director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.
RB: They had had a temporary consultant before me, but I was the first full-time, on-staff communications director. I built their database, got them articles in The New York Times and other press and started to institutionalize public relations.
WCT: Obviously they're the largest gay-rights advocacy group in the country. How does an organization like that start? From a PR standpoint, what did you need to do that's different from what they're doing today?
RB: It's sort of similar. It's what I do now both with gay and non-gay organizations. First I sort of give them the religion about communications. I do this presentation; I affectionately call it the 'come to Jesus presentation.' Which is, 'here's why communications is important. Here's why it's integrated in everything we do in our social-change activism … .' I always start from a place of 'why communications is critical,' not as an add-on, but as something that should be integrated in all the work we do because we're messengers of social justice. And we're messengers of civic responsibility and participation. Whether we're activists or not, any time we become involved in strengthening and improving our communities, we have a message and we have a story to tell … . So with HRCF [ now they are just HRC ] they had some experience… but it was not really harnessed and institutionalized.
WCT: I don't know if you were at HRCF, I think it was probably after you left, when they were working on ENDA [ Employment Non Discrimination Act ] …
RB: Hmm, yeah, by then I was at NGLTF.
WCT: How would you be dealing with that? When you're working toward what you see as a big end goal, trying to get equal opportunity for gays and lesbians, and there's another group that deserves that right as well, transgender people, and they say, 'You haven't included us.' How do you spin that positively for yourself and still deal with this other group.
RB: I think there's strategic and tactical ways of approaching it. For me, personally, I was moved into an awareness of discrimination on gay issues when I would leave Washington and go on work trips to communities around the country where the reality of what I saw and who was actually there in the room telling stories of discrimination, was much more pluralistic than how we would simplify these issues to members of Congress. I would see bi people and transgender people. I would see queers of color. I would see young people, senior gays and lesbians and I would see gays and lesbians in suits. Although, tactically we were trying to pass particular legislation, ultimately we would have to move in a direction that provided coverage for all those people that come into our community. And the guiding principle for my time there … was that the true test of the power of democracy was how it protected those who were not like everyone else—including and in particular those who are on the fringes of society.
WCT: So when you're spinning for an organization that's seen as not protecting those on the fringe, what do you do?
RB: Well at the time I wasn't. I was over at NGLTF, hence—I moved over to NGLTF because it was a better match for my own personal politics.
WCT: When we're looking at HRC versus NGLTF, I know that NGLTF, at least the NGLTF of today, has been criticized for being too widely focused on race, gender, ageism—any other issue that people don't seem to see as a 'gay' cause, whereas the HRC of today is sort of the antithesis—
RB: I think they're both finding their niches. I feel like they both serve a purpose and appeal to different kinds of people, and sometimes they appeal to both … . I know people who are members of both those organizations. And I think both their tactics and strategies are important to us … . The experience I had in the mainstream gay movement, both at HRC and at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, has not only formed, but has helped me tremendously in taking some of the things that queers do really well and taking those to other movements. For example, we're really good at press. I mean, it's always sometimes an uphill battle, but the fact is, gay people really know how to get a story out in the paper. We know how to stage photo ops. We know how to speak to our hearts. We know how to personalize stories. Some of the basic ways of communicating, we're pretty good at … . We have a lot to teach non-gay people who are trying to make their worlds better. And that's the path I took from the mainstream gay movement to where I am now.
WCT: Let's talk about some specifics. How do you determine what kind of story a media outlet will cover? And who's the right person to whom you should send information?
RB: First of all, read the papers … . Listen to the radio. Watch TV. Get on the Internet. Find out what's out there and what people are tending to cover and sensitize yourself to the newsmaking process. What reporters are covering what stories? What reporters have a particular interest in what kinds of issues? Learn their names. When you respond to a news story why are you responding? Is there something that moved you? Is there something that tickled you or touched you? Was there a quote or a photo or something? And learn why that happened, because if it happened to you, it's happening to a lot of other people … . The second thing is find your story to tell … containing a universal message of affirmation and hope and justice in our own personal stories … . Be for something, not just against something in the media. There's a tendency to focus on how horrible things are as opposed to constructing a vision of how things could be and how much better they could be for people. And then the other thing I always tell people is to stay on message. What is your message? Discipline it and stick to it.
WCT: When you're trying to find the person to send it to, or the persons, if you know someone … is that an 'in'?
RB: Another basic is, try to develop a relationship with reporters that you can then use on a personal level. In particular, when I was working for mainstream gay organizations, I spent a lot of time taking reporters out to lunch or buying them coffee or developing some sort of relationship, because that's always better than a cold call. For example, if you're going to call the Windy City Times and try to get them to cover something in your community, [ it's ] better to have a name or develop a relationship with someone than to fax in a notice of some event and hope they come and cover it … . In particular, if you're trying to get your community media—if you're African American and you're appealing to press that covers the Black community, or if you're Latino and you want the Spanish-language press, or gay and you want the gay community media to cover it—one is to identify reporters and editors and producers in that media that you can reach out to personally and pitch your story. And once you get their attention, you provide them information in a way that helps them do their job easier.
Visit Robert Bray's Spin Project online at www.spinproject.org or visit Web site www.newstips.org for information about the upcoming Making Media Connections Conference.
