Teresa Basilio Gaztambide is the Senior Political Education Director at MediaJustice, a native of Puerto Rico, and has been a Brooklyn resident for over 20 years. She is the founder of Resilient Just Technologies (RJT), a community organizing and digital justice organization aimed at leveraging media, communications, political education, and decentralized technologies for immediate use by organizers on the frontline of racial, economic and climate justice movements to envision a world where all of our communities have access to a fair and just communications system. RJT partners with researchers, policy and advocacy organizations, and healing justice practitioners to promote larger scale systemic change in the telecommunications and media fields with a specific focus in supporting Puerto Rican self determination efforts.
Previously, Teresa was the Deputy Director of the Resilient Communities Program at New America where she ensured the successful completion of five neighborhood wireless networks built, maintained, and governed by local residents aimed at providing critical communications infrastructure for resiliency, emergency preparedness, and community organizing goals in flood-prone, hurricane Sandy impacted areas of New York City. As the Co-Executive Director of Global Action Project (GAP), she provided executive leadership for nationally recognized social justice youth media organization with a mission to work with young people most affected by injustice to build the knowledge, tools, and relationships needed for community power, cultural expression, and political change.
Teresa is also a filmmaker co-producing the documentary Voces de Fillmore focusing on the impact of gentrification and displacement on working class communities of Puerto Rican and immigrant families living in the Los Sures neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She co-organized with Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Adela Nieves, the Detroit – Puerto Rico Solidarity Exchange Network Gathering at the 2017 Allied Media Conference which brought together 80 Detroit and Puerto Rican organizers and cultural workers committed to grassroots efforts rooted in self-determination to share narrative and organizing strategies, build relationships, and imagine a world where our people are free.
