A View from the Field: Fighting Musk

A View from the Field is an ongoing feature that highlights the efforts of Free Press’ team of organizers and advocates.

We provide regular updates from the field as staffers work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a just and equitable media system.

• Nora Benavidez took part in “Managing Justice Goals While Responding to Crisis & Chaos,” a panel discussion at a CUNY School of Law conference. Participants discussed ways to fight the Trump administration’s anti-democratic attacks on everything from housing to the civil service to voting rights. Nora spoke about attacks on dissent and the media.
• Jenna Ruddock moderated a discussion with John Davisson of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Vittoria Elliott of WIRED and Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen about the grave dangers Elon Musk poses to our democracy. The conversation delved into how Musk and his team of DOGE techies have set in motion the largest data breach in U.S. history — violating and compromising Americans’ privacy rights. “The breach of that data empowers unaccountable people to work all sorts of harms and exert all sorts of pressure … on people that disagree with them politically,” said Davisson. Watch the webinar.
• Julio Ricardo Varela moderated a discussion with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya at the Knight Media Forum in Miami. The conversation explored the market failures that are threatening the livelihoods of journalists, creators and content distributors serving both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Latinx audiences in the United States.
• Free Press and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism hosted a conversation on ways to defeat authoritarianism in the United States. Jessica J. González moderated the discussion, which featured global leaders who have taken on authoritarian regimes in Hungary, the Philippines and Poland. Participant Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, urged community members and the media to speak out now. “Being silent means you actually give away your rights,” she said. Watch the webinar.
• The Media 2070 team held the livestream “The Lineage of Sacred Storytelling.” Venneikia Williams opened the conversation, which Diamond Hardiman moderated. Historian Arianne Edmonds, artist Allen Frimpong, Black Media Initiative Director Cheryl Thompson-Morton and children’s author Alexa Williams discussed the lineages that inspire their media-making. The conversation was the culmination of Media 2070’s annual Black Narrative Power Month, which this year has focused on how the Black radical storytelling tradition can guard against the threats of our time. Watch the conversation.