OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS GROUP
Media · Public Discourse · Advocacy · Engagement
OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP is the organizational and production home of OUR COMMON GROUND and the TruthWorks Network, a Black-centered independent media enterprise committed to informed public discourse, civic engagement, cultural memory, and action on issues affecting Black people and communities.
For more than four decades, our work has moved beyond the boundaries of traditional broadcasting. What began at the microphone grew into an interconnected body of broadcast programs, digital media, public-education initiatives, issue campaigns, special productions, and platforms for voices too often absent from mainstream discourse.
We have long described our broadcast tradition as Alternative Activist Empowerment Talk Radio.
Each word matters.
Alternative because independent Black media must be willing to examine the stories, ideas, and perspectives conventional media overlook or refuse to confront.
Activist because information without engagement is not enough. OCG has not simply talked about injustice. Our work has included advocacy and public engagement around real people and real struggles—including efforts on behalf of Kemba Smith, the Scott Sisters, Marissa Alexander, and others whose cases demanded public attention.
Empowerment because knowledge should leave people better equipped to understand the forces affecting their lives, exercise agency, and participate in changing their communities.
Talk because conversation is our instrument. We question. We listen. We challenge. We teach and learn. We create space for serious Black thought.
Radio is where we began. But it no longer defines the boundaries of what we do.
For decades, OCG has described its work as Alternative Activist Empowerment Talk Radio. The phrase defines much more than a broadcast format—it describes our approach to independent Black media and public engagement.
READ: What We Mean by Alternative Activist Empowerment Progressive Talk Radio
FROM A BROADCAST TO A MEDIA ENTERPRISE
At the center is OUR COMMON GROUND, our flagship and originating voice.
From that foundation grew TruthWorks Network, expanding the OCG mission through additional voices, programs, issues, and audiences.
Under the larger OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP umbrella, that work has included:
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham – The Broadcast Flagship
“Transforming Truth Power, One Broadcast At a Time”
TruthWorks Network — The Black Voice Collaborative
“Truth, the Great Equalizer”
And across the OCG/TWN family:
▶Black Women in the Prism”Black Women in the Prism . . . Unleashing the Power, Fury in the Light
▶The ALFO Show
▶Souls AFire Radio Show
▶PowerViews
▶Working While Black
▶Truth for Our Youth Radio Show
▶Zero Tolerance for the School-to-Prison Pipeline
▶Reparations Primer: RECLAIMING OUR ANCESTORS; REPAIRING OURSELVES
▶ Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice partnership with The Spirit House
These were not simply programs occupying different hours on a schedule. Together they created multiple points of entry into the work—race and politics, Black women, labor, education, youth, justice, history, reparations, culture, and intergenerational witness.
FROM DISCOURSE TO ENGAGEMENT
OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP believes independent media has responsibilities beyond commentary.
There are moments when bearing witness requires action.
Throughout its history, OCG has used its microphone, network, relationships, and communications platforms to amplify cases and causes requiring public attention; convene voices around difficult issues; educate audiences about policy and injustice; connect history with contemporary struggle; and create opportunities for listeners to move from awareness to engagement.
We do not simply report on the ground. We work on the ground.
THE NEXT EXPRESSION OF THE WORK
The return of OUR COMMON GROUND is also an opportunity to expand what independent Black media can produce.
OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP is developing a new generation of conversations, archival projects, public forums, special productions and feature events—work that may require days or weeks of research, development and production.
Projects such as If America Fails? demonstrate what becomes possible when the broadcast is treated not simply as a program, but as a produced intellectual and public-engagement event.
Our future may include subscriber-supported programming, special-event access, institutional partnerships, grants, underwriting and other forms of support that allow ambitious independent Black media to be researched, produced and sustained at the level the work requires.
The objective is not growth for growth’s sake.
It is capacity:
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Capacity to investigate
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Capacity to convene
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Capacity to produce
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Capacity to preserve
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Capacity to advocate
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Capacity to pay people for serious work
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Capacity to remain independent