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FEATURING CRAIG AARON - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Craig Aaron the co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action joins us. He also edits and writes weekly for the Pressing Issues newsletter. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I've spoken to you many times over the years through around your work with Free Press, and I recall the first sort of exposure that I had to Free Press was around issues of net neutrality. This was an issue that had animated a lot of folks in the media justice realm, but Free Press seems to have become so much bigger than that as well in recent years. And I imagine that's in response to the fact that our press freedoms are being whittled away. How do you describe what the organization's main goals are in this moment? 

Craig Aaron: Sure. Well, at our core, Free Press has always been a media policy organization, but one that really cares about involving the public in those decisions. So, from the start, 20 years ago, the idea was there were all these decisions happening in Washington and being made in corporate boardrooms, sort of in the public's name, but without their involvement or consent. And so, what we've tried to do is change that, is to give the public a voice in these important deliberations, in shaping policies. And as the media changes, of course, we've had to change with that. 

So back when we started, we were working a lot on media consolidation, and then we had, well, now it's the Internet. We're gonna talk about net neutrality, we're gonna talk about internet freedom. And here we are in this media moment where I think everything is combining and colliding together. Where a group like ours that has its origins in press freedom and free speech is suddenly talking about free speech a lot because we're seeing so much government censorship, government shakedowns. 

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