Our 2023 MediaJustice Network Fellows are here! This year, 12 Fellows are bringing their power, creativity and leadership from across the MediaJustice Network and across the globe to innovate a future free from racialized disinformation.
Disinfo doesn’t stand a chance.
The 2023 MJNF will focus on racialized disinformation. Disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. Racialized disinformation uniquely targets and disproportionately impacts communities of color (ex. Voter suppression, deceptive ICE stings, COVID disinformation, etc.)
Over the next 8 months, Fellows will team up with our MJNF Mentors on a project aimed at combating racialized disinformation in their community. They’ll learn about real-time challenges and opportunities in the fight to dismantle disinfo from Network members and media justice movement leaders, then share their insights and strategies with their communities. Come back later in the year to learn about the projects they dreamed up, (and check out what our 2022 MJNF cohort taught us in the meantime)!
Learn a bit more about this year’s Fellowship on our FAQ page (please note that applications are now closed). Questions? Get in touch with us at [email protected].
William Bentley
Nominated by: Movement Alliance Project
William Bentley (he/him) joined Youth Arts & Self-empowerment Project (YASP)’s staff as the Youth Organizer February 27th 2019. William was born in North Philadelphia. In 2014 when William was just 14 years old, he was sent to P.I.C.C .(an adult jail.) William met [YASP Director] Sarah Morris through his friend Terrance “TA’ Williams. After meeting her William’s life drastically changed. After losing TA to a shooting in North Philadelphia. William realized he had to change his lifestyle. William made up his mind that he wants to become a public speaker to teach the youth on not falling in the same footsteps he once did. William is also an underground North Philadelphia music artist. He is using his music to let people know what being incarcerated at such a young age does to you.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “The Bigger Picture” by Lil Baby
Priya Prabhakar
Nominated by: [people. power. media]
Priya Prabhakar (she/her) is an organizer, film & media-maker, and researcher. She is currently based out of Oakland, California and grew up in Chennai, India. She currently works as a Housing and Land Use Organizer at [people. power. media]. There, she produces grassroots film & research, and organizes with more than 40 grassroots organizations throughout San Francisco around the de-commodification of housing and land. Her process of media production is rooted in the confluence of anti-imperialist struggle with a materialist exploration of archival and contemporary art, music, film, and design. Her current body of work (video, audio, and web) spans themes such as the perils of biometric surveillance in India, the material impact of the US blockade on Cuba, and labor organizing in California. Amongst many things, Priya loves chess, gongura pickle, old-school reggaeton, and queer cinema.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Time: Donut of the Heart” by Jaubi
Nyasha Grace Munangatire
Nominated by: Highlander Research and Education Center
Nyasha Grace (she/her) is a television broadcaster, panel moderator and media specialist. Nyasha has hosted for the New York based Fintech TV as the Southern African correspondent reporting on fintech, digital assets, technology and impact businesses in the region. The show was featured on CNBC Africa. She is currently host of the TV show Meet the CEO which airs on DSTV channel 319. Having started her broadcasting career in Zimbabwe at Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services she hosted shows across the business, politics and sustainable development desks. Nyasha is also founder of Afrospace, a pan African media start up which profiles Africa’s diaspora and looks at the political economy of the continent. Nyasha is a pan African broadcaster who is passionate about leveraging media to support democracy, social justice and socio-economic development to eradicate poverty in Africa.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Peace” by Hillsong Young and Free
Lorie “LB” Bryant
Nominated by: Southerners On New Ground
Lorie “LB” (she/her) is a Black Geechee/Gullah fisherman. Lorie was born and raised in Charleston, SC, but she is currently based in Memphis, TN. She works alongside the Membership Team at Southerners On New Ground to reimagine systems that share new and legacy resources with new members. Lorie’s degree is in Computer Electronics, so when she isn’t working, she enjoys teaching her friends and community members how to fish. She also enjoys teaching Black community members how to use computers and navigate cloud-based applications online.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Questions” – The Midnight Hour, Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, CeeLo Green
Trinity McFadden
Nominated by: HEARD
Trinity McFadden (she/her) is a Black-Indigenous deafdisabled thinker, abolitionist, disability justice advocate, color guard coach and dog mom with a passion for learning and community building. At HEARD, she heads up the organization’s communications efforts and acts as archivist and documentarian for incarcerated deafdisabled community members. A recent graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf (RIT/NTID), Trinity is excited to learn more about carceral systems, the global impacts of imperialism, settler colonialism, Black anarchism, surveillance, and the power digital organizing. She is so looking forward to skill-building and discovering more alongside this year’s cohort.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Diamond In The Ruff” by Sampa the Great
Claire Nguyen
Nominated by: 18 Million Rising
The eldest daughter of Vietnamese refugees resettled in San Jose, California, Claire Nguyen (they/she) is an artist, organizer, and storyteller. While finishing their undergraduate degree in History, Claire became the Community Defense Coordinator at VietLead, a grassroots organization based in Philadelphia and South Jersey that is creating a vision and strategy for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian self-determination, social justice, and cultural resilience. Day-to-day, they manage the cases of community members seeking post-conviction immigration relief, support the leadership development of impacted community leaders, and work on local and national campaigns to stop the detention and deportations of formerly incarcerated Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants. They also became VietLead’s Communications Coordinator in the summer of 2022 and oversee VietLead’s social media and communications channels. They have experience in political education workshop creation and facilitation, archival and oral history research, and youth mentorship. Claire is a theater kid at heart and budding ceramicist who uses art and storytelling in their political practices to generate healing from their community’s inheritance of trauma due to war, imperialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. She can also be found in the kitchen deep frying and pickling various foods.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Love” by Keyshia Cole
Maliyah (or JOY)
Nominated by: Alternate Roots
Maliyah (or JOY) (they/them/he/him) is a Black Two-head Cultural Worker, Digital Artist, and Curator. Their work centers on Black Trans* Liberation, Black Lesbian* Feminist Praxis, and the abolition of prisons/police. My current mediums are digital and curatorial, however, I am in practice with zine and archival work. My art practices are socially influenced which is by my beloveds, ancestors, community members, and past revolutionaries + radicals.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Remind Me” by Patrice Rushen
Peruth Nabirye
Nominated by: Highlander Research and Education Center
Nabirye Peruth (she/her) is an organizer on the Global Campaign Against Racism-EqualHealth, an artist and visual communicator in health with a Masters of Science in Medical illustration from Makerere University. She is passionate about health equity and social justice, and uses her artistic skills, passion for storytelling and oral poetry to address social, economic and political challenges that are embedded in systems and structures of governance at the global and local level.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley
Matyos Kidane
Nominated by: Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
Matyos Kidane (he/him) is a Tigrayan immigrant and Black Angeleno whose work is concerned with the achievement of Black liberation and the abolition of policing. Matyos is a community organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a community based abolitionist group working to dismantle the police surveillance state. We are housed in the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) in Skid Row.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Giraffe Hunts” by Billy Woods and Moore Mother
Yoon Grace Ra
Nominated by: 18Million Rising
Yoon Grace Ra (they/them) is a trans filmmaker and composter of the Korean diaspora who was raised on Lenape Land (Queens, New York and North New Jersey). They are committed to land justice and liberation movement through cultural recording, labor organizing, and soil education.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Ritual Virtuality” by Sainkho Namtchylak
Bria Thurman (she/they)
Nominated by: Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
My name is Bria Thurman, I am from Alton, Il and am currently a senior studying creative writing at the University of Illinois U-C.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus
Anne Marie Collins (she/her)
Nominated by: Highlander Research and Education Center
I come from a broad trajectory of organising, advocacy and influencing/reimagining public policy. I have always worked at the intersection of public health and community organising internationally from Colombia to Liberia and in harm reduction with the EU. In the past five years I have been more focused on community organising within the surrounding communities in Barcelona to struggle against systems of oppression globally, working at an adult school that used the Freire methodology and more recently attending thereafter teaching at a decolonized feminism school, understanding the collective need of our communities to move away from colonial frameworks in response to structural and systematic problems. I am one of the lead organisers for EqualHealth´s Campaign Against Racism, working with organisers and health workers from across 14 Chapters globally to dismantle racial capitalism. I am also the co-lead organiser for the Red Antirracista a multi racial, afro descendent women led platform, which two years ago pushed governing parties to declare racism as a public health crisis at the local council level.
What’s your addition to the MJNF ‘23 Playlist? “A Galopar” by Paco Ibañez
