What We Mean ll Alternative Activist Empowerment Progressive Talk Radio

ALTERNATIVE  ACTIVIST  EMPOWERMENT PROGRESSIVE

TALK RADIO

What We Mean—and Why It Still Matters

For decades, OUR COMMON GROUND has described its broadcast tradition as Alternative Activist Empowerment Progressive Talk Radio. It was never simply a tagline. It described what we believed independent Black media could—and should—do.

▶ ALTERNATIVE
We create space outside the boundaries of conventional media—where Black perspectives, ideas, experiences and analysis are not filtered through someone else’s priorities or definitions of what matters.

▶ ACTIVIST
We believe information carries responsibility. OCG has never been content simply to describe injustice from behind a microphone. When circumstances demanded it, we used our voice, relationships and platforms to bring attention to real struggles, mobilize concern, and stand with people confronting injustice.

▶ EMPOWERMENT
Knowledge should increase our capacity to act. Our conversations are intended to leave people better informed, more critically aware, more confident in their own agency, and better equipped to engage the forces shaping their lives and communities.

▶ TALK
Conversation is our instrument. We question, listen, challenge, disagree, teach, learn and make room for ideas to develop in real time.

▶ RADIO
Radio is where we learned the craft and built the community. The microphone gave us our first meeting place.

But radio was never the boundary of the work.

Today, Alternative Activist Empowerment Talk Radio describes a tradition that has grown beyond broadcasting into digital media, public education, advocacy, cultural memory, archival preservation, special productions and meaningful public discourse.

Talk that matters OUR COMMON GROUNDTHE MEDIUM EXPANDED. THE MISSION DID NOT.

There is also a deeper connection worth making on the page:

Alternative gave us independence.
Activist gave the work consequence.
Empowerment gave it purpose.
Talk gave us our method.
Radio gave us the microphone.

OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP gave “the work “room to grow.

OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP

TALK THAT MATTERS.

Independent Black media  ▶ Meaningful discourse ▶ Public engagement.

For more than four decades, OUR COMMON GROUND has created Talk That Matters, independent Black-centered conversations that examine the social, economic, political and cultural forces shaping our lives, while moving beyond commentary toward understanding, engagement and action.

#Talk That Matters  describes the value proposition of OCG Media: these aren’t conversations simply to fill airtime; the subject, voices, consequences and engagement matter.

OUR COMMON GROUND MEDIA GROUP

#TalkThatMatters