Two years ago, on June 18, Counterstream Media was born.
What started as People over Plastic, a project focused on frontline stories closest to the global plastic crisis, grew into something much more. The deeper we reported, the clearer it became that plastic is never just about plastic.
It’s about public health, corporate power, labor, housing, race, democracy, and who gets to make decisions about the places people call home.
Environmental justice is connected to democracy. Public health is connected to housing. Climate chaos is connected to labor, migration, culture, and community resilience. To tell those stories in their full breadth, we needed a bigger container.
That container became Counterstream.
Since then, we've grown from a single podcast into a multimedia storytelling organization dedicated to accountability reporting, cultural analysis, and narrative-driven journalism. Along the way, we've launched new reporting initiatives including our digital magazine Peace & Riot and A People’s Climate with The Nation—our Webby-nominated and award-winning podcast. We’re also proud to have convened Story Salons in key cultural moments, while partnering with incredible movement-led journalists, organizers, artists, and frontline leaders across the country.
What makes me most excited isn't any single project. It's the community that has formed around this work. That’s you.
Thousands of you have joined this community in the last year alone in search of grassroots stories that meet what this moment demands: rigorous, values-driven journalism that is deeply rooted in and accountable to frontline communities.
We’ve accomplished so much in such a short time—and we’ve got BIG things on the horizon. Including:
- 🎧 A new, expanded season of A People’s Climate
- 📖 A very special issue of Peace & Riot
- 🤠 Story Salons coming to a brand new city
Thank you so much for being part of our community and supporting stories that the mainstream media often miss.
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Worth Revisiting
Reframing Resistance
Bringing the human stories of the climate crisis into focus.