Building Media Power: AYPAL's Youth Movement & Immigration (Best Practices)

Overview
AYPAL (Asian and Pacific Islander Youth
Promoting Advocacy and Leadership) is a 300-member youth organizing
group based in the Bay Area. In 2003, AYPAL organizers decided to
confront immigrant deportation by challenging the Illegal Immigration
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Since IIRIRA was
passed in 1996, deportation levels had risen dramatically. Youth in
AYPAL were experiencing the impact of IIRIRA firsthand as hundreds of
families in their community were torn apart. In 2003, they launched the
“One Love, One Nation, Stop Deportation” campaign to repeal the IIRIRA
and bring local attention to unjust deportations.

In June 2003,
Youth Media Council began a 16-month media capacity-building project
with AYPAL incorporating three building blocks of media work:
communications strategy, media capacity and creative action. Prior to
this AYPAL had conducted media work only occasionally and outside of
their campaign work, which had resulted in coverage in one local paper.
  And in 2002, the YMC began media capacity-building work with one of
the six AYPAL sites, which turned out to be difficult to sustain in
addition to their base-building work. 

 Building on these
lessons, the YMC worked with two full-time AYPAL staff to craft a
sustainable plan for media strategy development, presswork training and
creative media action design. To build lasting media infrastructure,
YMC also assisted AYPAL to plan, implement and evaluate strategies that
would support their media work beyond the One Love, One Nation
campaign.

The 16-month project garnered AYPAL the support of
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, one of their key campaign goals, built new
media leadership amongst staff and members, earned significant media
coverage, and established the first ongoing media team in a Bay Area
youth organizing group.