Every Hour Counts: A Crisis Simulation for Comms Staffers
Session Type(s): Training
Training Tag(s): Communications
Starts: Saturday, Aug. 4 2:00 PM
Ends: Saturday, Aug. 4 3:15 PM
Room: R05
Hour 1: News breaks on social media of a truck attack in Lower Manhattan. Hour 2: Initial media reports speculate on the suspect based on traffic cameras. Hour 3: Local law enforcement hold press conference. The first hours after a major crisis can be trying, even for the most experienced comms pros. ReThink Media has worked for eight years with the Muslim, Arab and South Asian community to coordinate a collaborative communications approach to crisis response incidents. We’ll guide participants through an hour-by-hour crisis response simulation. In teams, participants will walk through every action they would take in response to the developing story and how they can shape the media narrative.
Trainers
Firdaus Arastu
Firdaus Arastu is a communications strategist working to shift the narrative of Muslim communities in America by increasing the visibility of Muslims in the arts and storytelling mediums. She researched and co-authored the chapter, “American Muslim Women and Faith-Inspired Activism,” in Feminism and Religion: How Faiths View Women and Their Rights (2016). She provided research assistance for “American Muslims, American Islam, and the American Constitutional Heritage,” published in Religious Freedom in America (2015). She is an editor at altMuslimah, and has been published in Al Jazeera English, Teen Vogue, The Huffington Post, Patheos, and The Tribune India. Firdaus holds a B.S. in Anthropology and Psychology from Syracuse University.
Other sessions: Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) Caucus
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons works at the intersection of religion and public policy. For the past five years, he has worked on major issue advocacy campaigns with the nation’s most prominent faith-based organizations. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in social ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. His political and religious commentary has appeared in NBC News, Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, CBS News, Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY and many other outlets. He started “The Resistance Prays,” a daily prayer and action letter, in July 2017.