Get in touchwith our team.
For any collaborations, inquiries or partnerships, please contact Jon Rodney at jon@immdefense.org.
For any collaborations, inquiries or partnerships, please contact Jon Rodney at jon@immdefense.org.
Based at the Immigrant Defense Project, Jon convenes the Comm/Unity network. In collaboration with Comm/Unity’s partners and directly affected community leaders, Jon works to expand narrative opportunities to humanize all immigrants, especially people with convictions. He provides strategic advice and framing support to campaigns challenging the criminalization of immigrants at the local, state, and national levels, and has placed stories in the UK Guardian, NPR, The San Francisco Chronicle, La Opinión, National Univisión and Telemundo news broadcasts, and scores of other outlets. Jon has also helped shape or advise on approximately a dozen public opinion research projects, working to incorporate key findings into messaging recommendations. He is an experienced trainer. Prior to joining IDP, Jon helped develop and execute communications strategy for key state legislation in California as well as strong local "Sanctuary" policies. He has also supported many deportation defense campaigns for people with past arrests or convictions.Tony, Jon’s chihuahua, maintains an extensive network of reporter relationships.
Zakiya Scott, Chief Training Strategy Consultant Zakiya is a Southern Black queer writer and editor, youth advocate, and communications strategist who believes in the transformative power of storytelling to uproot racist systems, transform culture, and ultimately change the world. With roots in North Carolina’s community newspapers and radio programs, she moved to Oakland to fuse her passion for writing and storytelling with her desire to realize more justice and empathy. She found herself in a familial community as a communications and media intern at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Zakiya went on to work at Fenton, where she provided media relations, messaging and strategic communications support to grassroots nonprofits and foundations within the firm’s social justice practice. Most recently, she worked at Blackbird to further the communications strategies of the Movement for Black Lives—a coalition of more than 50 organizations committed to fighting for Black liberation and community, institutional, cultural, and systems transformation.
