Steven Renderos

Taking Care of Our Staff in a Capitalist, Ableist, and Racist System

MediaJustice is a 20-person, all-remote, multi-state organization. In 2022, we set-out to revamp our salary framework and benefits to be aligned with our values as anti-capitalist, anti-ableist and anti-racist, after having a discretionary, non-transparent salary framework. We were excited to create something new - to start from a place of creating something for our people instead of simply “benchmarking against the status quo.” However, we also had to balance recruitment and retention in a capitalist world, the concerns of funders, our budget, and state laws. And as people, we also had to interrogate how white supremacist thinking shows up in ourselves. We created a framework that is transparent, has a 9-page FAQ to clearly share our decision-making, decouples performance from anything monetary, is negotiation-free and includes benefits to meet our people including a culture of accessibility and focus on staff-wellness (such as, unlimited restorative days and a 4-6 month hybrid parental leave).

This breakout session is to get practical about what it took to get here, and connect with others. The session will be a deep dive into MediaJustice’s process including how we decided on our most important values, selected a consultant, decided on our priorities, budgeted for our benefits including long-term leave, engaged our staff, and our own retrospective. There will also be small groups based on roles (EDs, HR, Operations and Finance) to get even deeper into the weeds. And there will be brainstorms to learn from and connect with each other.

Speakers: Shubha Balabaer, Shilo McCabe, Steven Renderos

Enemies of the State: Surveillance of Communities of Color

The NSA scandal came as a shock to many people because it revealed the lengths our government has gone to spy on U.S. residents and citizens. It also revealed how the government worked closely with telecom and tech companies to violate our civil liberties.  Our government has a long and shameful history of using surveillance to disrupt and discredit movements for racial justice lead by people off color. And government surveillance of communities of color continues to this day through law enforcement operations that racially profile people of color. During this session, we will discuss the current debate about reigning in the federal government spying operations and we will expose the history of surveillance in activist communities.

Speakers: Steven Renderos, Matt Cagle, Seeta Gangadharan, Hamid Khan

Campaign Weaving and Movement Building: Challenging the Incarceration Nation through Creative Action

Across the country organizers and advocates are leading campaigns to challenge the impacts of mass detention/incarceration. From death penalty abolition to ending the high cost of phone calls, and mandatory detention--these organizations are using creative actions, first voice media and innovative policy advocacy to bring the media policy, immigrant rights and criminal justice sectors together to fight the profiteering in mass incarceration.

Speakers: Cherrell Brown, Steven Renderos, Silky Shah, Zachary Norris