By Sarah Massey

Becoming a Live Green Spot is a natural extension of my work at Massey Media and, basically, everything in my life. My goal is to help audiences to see the connections between the health of our communities with the health of our planet. I’ve worked with under-served communities in urban neighborhoods to give voice to environmental justice. At Massey Media, we stand up to the companies and government agencies that dump, pollute, and rip mountains apart for coal. We advocate for good, green jobs so workers can be a part of the green economy, building for a healthy future for our children and grandchildren.

My BA is in International Studies and Geography, and I went exploring in Mexico and Europe to better understand human systems. What you might not know about me is that I hold a Masters of Urban Planning (MUP) with a concentration in transportation and environment from Hunter College. Hunter College is a university rooted in social justice, and the MUP’s focus is bringing public services, health, and equality to under-served communities. My degree taught me to both plan for public transit and to take an advocate role with government to access the needed support and funds. Everyone knows public transit is better for the environment and helps people with disabilities get around, so why can’t we have more of it?

With that knowledge, I worked as a transit riders advocate with the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, the country’s largest transit system. I rode the rails and studied bus lines. I worked with passionate people who wanted public transit to be the best it could be for what they saw as the capital of the world. At work, I met a group of community organizers from Harlem, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, who were fighting to make sure that transit would have only positive impacts for the community. I felt compelled to help more directly. We championed the “If You Live Uptown, Breathe at Your Own Risk” campaign that brought clean air buses to NYC and also DC. Later on, my passion for working on rights campaigns took me to the labor movement at the National Employment Law Project and the AFL-CIO, where I advocated for better, healthier working conditions for all workers. I see myself as a connector between the two movements: I am both green and blue.

As a New Yorker, I’ve always loved public transit, walking through cities, and I know how to live with a small footprint. DC allows me to also live near green spaces and access bike trails and local farms. I buy used and recycled clothing and products whenever I can. I’ve never owned a car and I hope I never have to. I have four wheels: a mountain bike and a road bike.

my road bike with spray paint

My professional and educational experiences, along with my personal values, have informed my choices for running my own company. As a business owner and a boss, I want the best for my staff, our clients, and everyone we impact. We empower our clients to have strong voices for a positive vision of the planet. My team has flex time and a communal workspace to make the work life more healthy. We are dedicated to reducing waste on the job. Being a business owner offers a special opportunity for leadership, and I strive everyday to be a good role model. I serve on the Board of the DC Employment Justice Center and I am the founder of the Fabulous Women Biz Owners DC, a group for support and networking. I am proud to exemplify what it means to be both environmentally and economically sustainable. I hope others get on board.

Making Massey Media a Live Green spot and being an environmentalist, a community organizer, a labor activist, a vegetarian, and living without a car, wearing recycled fashion, and buying produce direct from a farm are all the big and little choices I make everyday to show my commitment to a better planet for all of us. My mom and dad, who are also social justice advocates, taught me that fulfillment comes from doing generous work and living with integrity. I try to follow in their footsteps, and I pay homage to my parents by giving the company our family name.

Hip-Hop Theater Festival Comes to DC
Massey Media is thrilled to be the PR team building audiences for the 9th Annual DC Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Read the preview coverage here at the Washington Afro-American, hear it on WAMU, and blog at Brightest Young Things. Please join us tonight at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage for the kick-off event to see the skills behind the art form of turntablism. This is when turntables, under the hands of the DJs, become instruments to rock the crowd. Special guests include legendary DJ Rockin’ Rob, from the Bronx, NYC and DMC USA Supremacy Champion, DJ I-Dee. It’s free and amazing.

Do you know Chispa? chispa: what artists + organizers + change agents are thinking + dreaming + doing
Join Sarah Massey this Thursday night at 7:00 PM at The Fridge. She’ll be talking about how to make headlines for social change and the arts. The fee for the event is only $5.

The Rivera Project Launches with Style
Those of you who have followed Massey Media’s almost five-year evolution know that we love social justice and we love the arts. What could we love more? A new non-profit and art show celebrates the intersection of arts and activism. Launched this June with the show “Arts in Crisis,” the Rivera Project’s vision is to bring the arts community and activist communities together to support each other’s efforts. Read more in this front-page story from the Washington Post Style section.

Do you want to make headlines in DC? Call on Massey Media.
Recent press results for our clients:

* 6/23/10, Washington Post, Cesar Maxit, Graham Boyle, other Artists Inspired by Community Activism
* 6/15/10, WAMU, Environmentally Conscious Consumers Catch A Break
* 5/20/10, WTNH, News8, Red Cross Workers Strike
* 5/11/10, Washington Post, Ernest J. Gaines’s ‘Lesson’ Prompts Teens to Grapple with Stark Realities

Affinity Lab Spotlight: December 2009 Newsletter

Massey Media
Washington DC Public Relations Firm
(Affinity Lab member)

Why did you start your own business?

Sarah Massey: “I launched Massey Media as a public relations consulting business exactly four years ago. A colleague from AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) needed public relations assistance while opposing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s attacks on workers rights to choose a union at the workplace. Rumsfeld said that the unions were a threat to national security. This is illustrative of Bush Administration doublespeak, meaning the government didn’t want to pay employees living wages and benefits. I helped position AFGE in the media, showing the strength and determination of the union for its members and its cause.

Lacy and Sarah

What I learned on that first job was how to lend the expert extra set of hands that campaigns needed, do the great work of making headlines, advance the issue for the client, and build capacity for the client. We then researched and identified a demand for creative media consulting in the progressive political arena and stuck with our niche market until we had mastered it. Most of Massey Media’s clients have been progressive nonprofit organizations, but lately we’ve been expanding our mission. Throughout 2009, we expanded Massey Media’s target markets to include socially responsible businesses and the arts.”

What makes Massey Media different from other PR companies?

One of the reasons our clients select Massey Media is because we are passionate and deeply connected to the issues of our day. Everyone at Massey Media comes from the progressive movement, and we care as much as our clients about advancing their causes. From workers rights to environmentalism, from global justice to public art, Massey Media has a vision of a more just planet where everyone enjoys freedom and has a roof over their head, safe and healthy food and water, literacy, and so forth. We are deeply connected to the media that covers these issues and know how to craft stories that producers and journalists want to use. Our clients know us from the community we serve and see how we work to make stories happen in the press on a daily basis.

Our team has years of experience in the top national and international campaigns: raise the minimum wage, campaigns for global justice, promotion of a climate treaty, protection of voting rights, and so forth. Massey Media identifies the successful campaign tactics and applies them to local projects and small business public relations, and it’s working. For example, we worked with Albus Cavus this summer to publicize their work on DC’s largest public mural in Edgewood. Massey Media operated the media work as a campaign to win more walls for public murals in DC. We announced the artwork project with a press release (campaign launch), we wrote a press release a week telling the story of the artists and the community (developing the campaign platform), taught a workshop on spokesperson skills to the artists and the 45 young people working with the group (empowered campaign supporters), brought the press to the mural wall to see the work in progress, and culminated with a huge community event with live painting (victory rally). The DC art and event press loved it, ultimately awarding us the front page of the Washington Post weekend section and the center spread of the Style section. This coverage has led to more projects for Albus Cavus and renewed interest in public art in DC.

Another reason we stand out is that we take our ethic of empowerment to our clients. When we partner with a client to promote their issue, we hand over all of our intelligence and information tools and help them to use it. Each client gets a Massey Media kit that includes the press results we create, the press list we use and notes with full contact information, all the materials we write, and also a debrief memo on how to be your most effective in story-telling. We believe that using the power of the press is a powerful tool for communications and that the ability to make headlines should be more democratic.

Tell us about one of your newer clients and what you are doing for them?

Massey Media recently started work with the Zinn Education Project to promote their creative teaching tools to high school and middle school teachers. The project brings Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, to life for teenagers. Our public relations work is to place stories about bringing history alive in the traditional press that reaches teachers, as well as social media and popular websites. It’s an honor to be assisting Howard Zinn and the Zinn Education Project, and we feel this partnership a special acknowledgment of our vision. Zinn has helped shape our perspective as active participants for social change. We are proud to be serving our communities by helping people to learn their own history and tell their own stories.

What advice do you have for small businesses and arts organizations who are considering PR?

The most important first step to consider is whether you have the capacity to take on a sustained public relations partnership, both in terms of time and financial resources. The press is demanding. They want stories, photos, and interviews and they want them on a 24/7 news deadline. Do you have time to help supply this or a budget that allows your PR firm to take care of it for you? The best avenue for earned press is to position your business or yourself as an expert in the field. Do you have time to invest in creating this profile? When you get press attention, do you have the capacity to fulfill the increased demand for your services?

The next piece of advice we have is to get ready to get creative. We all think we’re newsworthy; however, the press has a certain approach to storytelling, and there is a lot of competition for their attention and airtime. Your PR pro will help shape your project, product, service, or cause into a story the press wants to cover. This will include chiming in on holidays, (like “Eat Well to Feel Well in 2010” for New Year’s Day) creating fun visuals (fake health care lobby greenbacks with pictures of Joe Lieberman), and having you practice slogans (“hard work deserves fair pay, so raise the minimum wage”) so you get quoted in the press. Get creative and have fun with it!

Sarah Massey, Principal
Lacy MacAuley, Project Director

(Washington, DC, July 9, 2009) - One gallon of paint covers 300 square feet. To paint the Edgewood mural, the 45 DC young participants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Summer Youth Employment program will need 17 gallons of paint to cover 5100 square feet. This week, the participants tackled the big the task of planning for a large-scale mural and learned that it will require more than just a can of paint. The young people will also need to find sponsors and determine all the supplies they will need to transform their blank wall into a work of art.

Under the direction of Albus Cavus, a public arts non-profit and artists Pose 2, Quest Skinner, Joshua Mays, Decoy, and Chor Boogie, the 45 participants used the public artists’ toolbox to hammer out their vision for the mural that will run alongside the Metropolitan Branch Trail near the Rhode Island Metro stop. They discussed the best way of putting their own personalities in paint by drawing on sketchpads and reading poetry. In the afternoon, though, the lesson turned to logistics and planning: how do you determine how much paint you need? What supplies will be necessary? How do you approach and speak with potential sponsors in the neighborhood?

With a giant tape measure, the artists and participants cordoned off the mural wall, counting blocks and measuring feet. A piece of chalk enabled the practice of long division and multiplication. “This program is not only about painting the mural; it’s about equipping DC’s young people so they can take these skills and do this in their neighborhood,” Albus Cavus director Peter Krsko explained. One of the goals of the Edgewood Mural project has been to provide the participants with a toolkit and curriculum for creating their own future public art projects.

The next task for the Edgewood mural team is garnering more support and sponsorship. In teams of four, the young participants practiced their request pitches on one another and were mindful to stay positive and keep it brief. Pose 2 reminded his group, “You’re a team.” No one would be working alone. The teams sought gift cards, painting supplies, water and food from churches and stores. Participant Amma Owusu reflected that the day’s experience showed them “the steps of action you need to take to get to the final product.” The program is teaching the participants the steps and behind-the-scenes work that it takes to put together large-scale projects before a paintbrush is even picked up.

During this experience, the project team continues its interaction and conversation with the community online through their crowdsourcing website, Create Public Art DC (http://createpublicartdc.ning.com ). Here the young people and artists communicate their personal vision through photos, forums, and blog posts, while collecting the ideas that the community has posted. For the participants, the mural is more than a picture on a wall; it is a process that will be greater than the sum of its parts and equip them with yet another skill for success.

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For interviews and high resolution photos, please contact Massey Media at 202 518-6186

Just this past Wednesday (24 June 2009), a bill cosponsored by 106 Representatives was introduced to the House that would place the currently undemocratic trade agreement system into the hands of the people. The bill is called the TRADE Act, an acronym standing for “Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment” (HR 3012). If passed, it would protect human rights and put environmental safeguards into effect in both past and future multinational trade agreements. It would also vastly increase the transparency of such agreements, rightly giving the ultimate power not to a select few, but to Congress. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), the Chairman of the House Trade Working Group. Its wording advocates a strong position on core labor standards which promote fundamental human rights as defined by the UN. The bill will not only ensure these rights for US citizens, but will also protect the rights, human and otherwise, of the citizens of the country with which the agreement exists. The bill requires that in order for the US to start or continue trade with a country, that country must live up to basic human rights laws that are already in effect in the US. Passing the TRADE Act would help to give needed jobs back to Americans by making it less economic to outsource labor to countries with bad human rights records simply because they have cheaper labor.

The bill itself makes provisions that would not only change the way future agreements are created, but would call for an extensive review of agreements already in place. This would include a review of trade agreements’ impact on citizens both in the US and the country in question, and would require renegotiation of existing agreements when necessary. This would ease concerns that have been ever increasing among the world populace. Call to mind the massive protests over the G8 Summits each year, and you’ll get the idea. Up to this day world trade and all things monetary are being regulated by organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions are responsible for closed-door agreements that are written “by and for corporations” (GlobalExchange.org).

Examples of WTO rulings include laws making it illegal to ban a product because of the way it is produced, not excluding morally negligent practices like child labor. According to GlobalExchange.org, the WTO has also ruled that “governments cannot take into account ‘non commercial values’ such as human rights or the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma.” Additionally, the WTO has blocked countries with rampant health concerns like AIDs from producing generic drugs. The WTO has cited rulings of companies’ “right to profit” to enforce such policies, and has often undermined countries’ preexisting laws in doing so.

“The TRADE Act acknowledges rights greater than a corporation’s supposed right to profit,” says Ben Beachy, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizer of Witness for Peace. “These include the rights of family farmers to a stable livelihood, the rights of parents to affordable medicines, the rights of all of us to environmental protections. The TRADE Act spells the overhaul of the NAFTA model that has not only failed to recognize, but has outrightly trampled, such basic human rights.”

Beachy states that the TRADE Act “launches a new era of trade.” It is “the first bill of its kind to call for the sort of trade we could support–the sort that places public health, democratic process, and decent work at the center.”

Americans are now personally aware of the disfunctionality of the current economic systems and the reality of just how global our nation’s trade has become. People are trying to learn more about what got us into this situation and how to change it. At the same time, however, it appears that the bigwigs responsible have not changed much at all, nor do they seem to have any intentions of doing so. That is where this legislation comes in. It is proactive yet extremely necessary to ensure the democratic power of the US in this globalizing world. In order to maintain control by the people, an ideal this country was based on, legislation like the TRADE Act is absolutely fundamental. For the first time, it requires that a trade agreement be approved by both Congress and the President (TRADE Act, pg44): Constitutional ideals which have been grossly ignored until this point.

A large success for transparent business practices exists in the bill’s stipulation that “if the trade agreement contains provisions related to dispute resolution, these provisions must “incorporate due process rules and procedures, including insuring… proceedings are open to the public; that public access to information… related to disputes is provided in a timely manner; and that conflict of interest rules apply fully to adjudicators.” It also requires that any dispute settlement panel addressing environmental and human rights issues “include panelists with expertise in such issues” (TRADE Act, pg34-35)!

In order to ensure acceptable treatment of citizens by US trading partners, the bill mandates that every two years a report be issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). This report will cite information regarding whether that country is democratic, respects fundamental human rights and religious freedom, has taken measures to combat public and private corruption, complies with multilateral environmental agreements, has adequate labor and environmental regulations, provides for governmental transparency, and maintains the due process of law. Additionally, there are exceptions to the Act in cases where a country is shown to pose a threat to the national security of the US.

The GAO would also provide information on the effects of existing International Trade like NAFTA and CAFTA which are among the trade agreements that have become considerable examples on which all other trade agreements are based. Their creation included corrupt, unmonitored and extremely exclusionary tactics that have set an unfortunate standard for international trade policies and practices. If the TRADE Act were passed, these agreements would have the potential to be tweaked or improved if Congress felt changes were necessary.

The TRADE Act is a refreshingly non-ethnocentric piece of literature that promotes the right to self-governance and autonomy, significantly pushes environmental protection and human rights causes, helps ensure the transparency of international trade, and has the potential to change the face of America to the world.

By Kelly Flanagan

On April 7th, with the help of Massey Media, the AFL-CIO and Working America launched the Unemployment Lifeline campaign.

This online resource is the first of it’s kind, synthesizing aspects of Wikipedia and Facebook to create a new “one stop shop” approach to out of work Americans dealing with unemployment.

Simply by entering your zip code, you gain access to a wealth of information and resources as well as an entire community of people to offer support. UnemploymentLifeLine.com is a living, growing resource that users can add useful contacts to and add their own comments about their experience.

Here is one of our clips that was syndicated by NBC in over 18 media markets:

http://nwahomepage.com/content/fulltext_news/?cid=81071

Check it out!

- Lyle Harrod

It feels as if I have been waiting to exhale for eight years. Two key Obama cabinet appointments breath new life to the environmental and labor sectors: Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, and now Hilda Solis at the Department of Labor (DOL). Both women bring decades of experience and commitment to their new jobs.

Under the Bush administration, we experienced a true undermining of workers’ rights in America. In 2004, Bush rules rolled back overtime pay for millions of workers, and the administration had the audacity to tell employers how to rip off their workers. The list of violations includes neglecting to pay workers fair market wages in the effort to clean up after Katrina, slashing the Wage and Hour division at DOL, ignoring the recent mining accidents, and more.

Solis has a mountain of work ahead of her at DOL, but her background has prepared her and she has a nation of workers demanding action and reform. Check out this great little video from SEIU on Solis: Who is Hilda Solis? and this one from Spotlight on Poverty Congresswoman Solis (D-CA) Selected to Serve as Secretary Of Labor.

Count on our support, Hilda!

Labor Needs a Radical Vision
Thursday 19 February 2009
by David Bacon

With more radicalism and imagination, the obstacles we face can become historical relics as quickly as did those of that earlier era.

Yes, please!

I agree with Bacon about the need for a new social vision. Yet, he ignores some of the elements that have created the current workers’ rights vacuum, such as the last eight years of oppression here at home. It’s hard to call for a creative vision and taking to the streets when our contracts have been cancelled by Republican governors and mass lay-offs have left Americans without good jobs. The time to organize is now and there are real grievances that deserve air time, too.