Media Strategy for Defendants with Kris Hermes

To start, could you introduce yourself and your anti-repression media background?

Sure.

Um, hi, thanks for having me.

My name is Chris Hermes.

I'm a non-lawyer legal worker and someone who has worked within the media space, both paid and unpaid, for a long time.

I started out my activism, uh, at least my more militant and radical activism, in the late '90s with ACT UP and by doing our own legal support work, uh, fundraising, media.

We sort of learned the ropes as we went, and that is how I became generally equipped with some of the tools to fight against political repression.

What are your goals in your work or your theory of change, and how does media fit into that?

The goals are generally because I do a lot of work with activists caught up in the legal system, is to vindicate their, uh, their claims and, and their narratives, and really fight the charges, get them off, out from under the state.

And if we've dismissed the charges after a long-fought legal battle, that's, that's considered a victory.

Um, the, the theory of change that that is sort of ingrained in is this idea that, first of all, that collectively we are stronger.

Um, we will overcome the state if we can work together in solidarity, that a lot of the, uh, repression that happens, uh, even though criminal charges are used as a tool by the state to repress activists and political movements, the repression largely happens outside of the courtroom.

So if you want to have an influence on that repression, you have to utilize tools that go beyond the courtroom.

Uh, so you can't just rely on, at least completely, on, on a good lawyer, a, a good support committee, and good facts.

All of those things may not matter, and often what matters most is, uh, shaping and shifting political narratives in the public sphere, the public domain.

And that is quite often done through influencing media, influencing and engaging media in order to, uh, be able to shift and shape those narratives.