Mark Winston Griffith

Mark Winston Griffith is a veteran community organizer and journalist with more than 40 years of social justice and journalism experience. He is currently the Co-Executive Director of Free Speech TV, a 24/7 television news and commentary network.

From 2011 to 2022, Mark was the founding Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a Black community self-determination organization that led grassroots issue campaigns including police accountability, education, community safety, food sovereignty, and climate change. As Executive Director he served on the leadership teams of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA). He was a co-founder of the Black Freedom Project (NFP) and the Central Brooklyn Food Coop (CBFC) and is currently the CBFC’s board of directors.

Mark is the founding Executive Editor of Brooklyn Deep, a community-based citizen journalism platform for which he won the 2022 David Prize. He was the co-host and co-producer of the NPR limited series podcast, School Colors, which examined race, class and power in American cities and schools.

In the early nineties Mark co-founded the Central Brooklyn Federal Credit Union, which was at the time the largest Black financial cooperative of its kind. Mark has taught economic development at Pratt Institute, urban reporting at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, and community organizing at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. He sits on the boards of the news site, The City Reporter; the Black literary journal, Callaloo; and writes on culture and politics for the Amsterdam News. He is currently writing a people’s history of Communities for Police Reform.

Mark is Jamaican-American and a third-generation Crown Heights resident.