Dear Black CMG members,

First, thank you for your leadership in stepping forward yet again over the last year to share your experiences and your insights into a media industry that too often undervalues and dismisses you. Many of you have courageously pointed out a pattern of hurtful behaviours and actions that must be rooted out if we are to have better media workplaces and better journalism. And you have worked to develop tangible proposals to ensure lasting change.

In calling out media organizations across the country for their lack of fairness and equity toward BIPOC workers, you took personal and professional risks, even as you continued to deal with these issues, in addition to coping with a pandemic and delivering on your daily work like all your colleagues.

We honour you for doing all of this work. We know you should no have to. You certainly should not have to do it alone.

As a union, we are committed to doing our part to ensure fairness and equal opportunity are a reality in all our workplaces. We want to help bring about the numerous benefits everyone will accrue when we make addressing racism and all related injustices a priority.

Here are some of our commitments:

• *We will focus on bringing fairness, equity and inclusion to all of our committees and bargaining tables, working toward tangible solutions.
  We know how busy things are, but we encourage all members, as much as they can, to join these efforts.
• * We will work with members, with other unions and with employers to ensure workplaces are the welcoming and nurturing places we all expect them to be.
• *The CMG has already started and will be holding future education on recognizing, understanding and overcoming racism.

Email info@cmg.ca  Subject line “ANTI-RACISM” if you are interested in attending a session or hearing more.

And thank-you to everyone who contributed these valuable features on the CMG website.

In solidarity,

Carmel Smyth
President, Canadian Media Guild (CMG)