TELLING YOUR STORY
Bobbi Murray is a writer and communications specialist. She works with front-line social and environmental justice activists to create clear, accessible messages and shape compelling narratives to effectively tell their stories to a wider audience.
Her work as a journalist and background in on-the-ground policy work puts her in a unique position to shape and sharpen the community stories that justice activists want to tell to help bring about positive social change.
Bobbi’s journalism experience has honed research, writing and story-framing skills. Her articles for the LA Weekly, The Nation, the Los Angeles magazine covered politics, police reform, animal welfare issues, health care, economic and workplace justice. As a staff writer at the Los Angeles Daily Journal she wrote about Big Pharma and other litigation.
She is a regular contributor to the award-winning on-line publication Capital & Main. Her investigative article about a stealth bill in the California legislature to undercut local minimum wage ordinances won a Southern California Journalism award from the Los Angeles Press Club.
Her piece for the public radio program Making Contact--A Look At Sanctuary and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era aired earlier this year and examined the immediate impact of proposed policies on immigrant communities.
Bobbi’s experience beyond journalism includes fundraising and communications work with such organizations as Medical Aid for El Salvador, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA) and the get-out-the-vote grassroots group Coalition LA. She began her career as a tenant organizer with the Orange County Renters Association.
Contact Bobbi for:
- Media outreach and pitching
- Communications strategy
- Website content creation and social media support
- Shaping message and talking points
- Help with special events
COMMUNITY ADVOCACY WORK
The Los Angeles City Council passed the landmark environmental justice policy Clean Up Green Up LA in 2016 to reduce pollution in three LA toxic hotspot neighborhoods and provide economic support for local businesses there.
Bobbi developed the communications strategy for the five-year campaign. She broke down a complicated policy to explain it in accessible terms, developed the language for the website and the materials needed for door-to-door outreach in polluted neighborhoods and prepared community activists to confidently speak with the media and before City Council. She landed television, radio and social media coverage and a Clean Up Green Up story of the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
In other work, Bobbi led the effort to re-launch the website for Communities for a Better Environment, created the structure for the new site and wrote the permanent content.
She did the research and crafted the messaging for the San Gabriel River Discovery Center environmental education center at Whittier Narrows. She created the written content for the website.
Bobbi developed the narrative arc and conducted the interviews for the video “Stay Vigilant, Stay Creative, Stay Positive” for OpenDemocracy.net, an independent public interest website.
She holds a second-degree black belt in kenpo jitsu ryu and teaches women’s self-defense.
