Jasmyne Cannick has developed a strong local and national following for her willingness to take on uncomfortable and hard to discuss issues around race, politics, and society and tell it like it is. She is known for bringing attention to stories that would have gone under-reported, overlooked, or just ignored.
She has won numerous awards for her op-eds and reporting and is a frequent on-air contributor. Her writings and commentary have been featured in newspapers from coast to coast and on websites including the award-winning Huff Post, L.A. Weekly, Advocate, Los Angeles Sentinel, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, and Ebony Magazine to name a few. Her television credits include CNN, Fox News, Dateline, Good Morning America, The Young Turks and more.
Among her many accolades, Jasmyne was named one of ESSENCE Magazine’s 25 Women Shaping the World, one of the Most Influential African-Americans in Los Angeles Under 40 and one of Los Angeles’ Most Fascinating Angelenos by the L.A. Weekly. In 2019, she was one of the Out100 as Journalist of the Year award from Out Magazine and was awarded the John Anson Ford Human Relations Award by the L.A. County Humans Relations Commission.
A forward thinker with the ability to tackle hard to address issues from an unapologetically Black point of view, Jasmyne continues to challenge and shape public opinion while encouraging civic engagement for positive social change and advocating for underrepresented and marginalized communities.
For nearly 15 years Jasmyne has worked at all levels of government including in the California State Assembly as a press secretary before reprising that role in the House of Representatives for a member of Congress. Locally, she’s worked for several city and county governments including five mayors.
Since 2018, Jasmyne led the effort as campaign director for Reform L.A. Jails, a criminal justice reform ballot measure that will appear on the 2020 ballot in Los Angeles County.
She currently works part-time as a Special Assistant to the President of the Los Angeles City Council.
Jasmyne has been a voice and an advocate for causes near and dear to her heart. She led a national campaign to retire white gay comedian Charles Knipp’s character Shirley Q. Liquor, a self-described inarticulate Black woman on welfare with 19 kids. In 2005, she used her to voice to help make sure that the Los Angeles City taxpayers did not foot the bill to honor a homophobic Black pastor. That same year, she helped lead a protest against the ”Tookie Must Die Hour” on KFI AM with talk-show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou. Stanley “Tookie” Williams was the founder of the Crips gang and scheduled to be executed after being convicted in the 1979 killings of four people. Cannick also was the last person to interview Williams before his execution. She would go on to face off against KFI AM again after talk-show hosts John and Ken made fun of Whitney Houston after she was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton calling her a “crack ho,” a comment that resulted in their suspension from the station–a first in the duo’s 20 plus year career. Several years later Jasmyne took KFI AM morning show host Bill Handel to task for calling Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson a “cheap sleazy Democrat whore” on air that resulted in him having to make a public apology.
When Mitrice Richardson went missing after being released from a Los Angeles County jail in Malibu, through her journalism Jasmyne worked with Mitrice’s family to call attention to the case and to challenge the Sheriff’s Department on the narrative they were spinning in the media.
Recently, she won a major victory on behalf of a dozen tenants in South Los Angeles facing homelessness after a transitional housing manager took their money, failed to pay rent and abandoned the property. Through her journalism and advocacy for the victims, she was able to get them relocation assistance as well as call attention to a new practice taking place in Los Angeles where low-income renters are being taken advantage of with rent-a-room scams.
Most recently Jasmyne spent two years covering and going after Democratic major donor Ed Buck after two men died in his apartment of meth overdoses and countless other Black gay men came forward about the white man in West Hollywood who had a Tuskegee Experiment like fetish that included injecting young Black men with meth. Ed Buck was finally arrested in September 2019 and charged in the deaths of Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean.
No stranger to radio, she is a former co-anchor and reporter for the “Evening News” on Los Angeles Pacifica radio station 90.7FM KPFK. Prior to its recent cancellation, Ms. Cannick was a regular on TVOne’s NewsOne Now with Roland Martin and continues to appear on Martin’s new show “Roland Martin: Unfiltered.”
Jasmyne has been a regular commentator on NPR including the now-defunct “News and Notes” shows. She’s worked as a segment producer on KJLH-FM’s “Front Page” show and continues to be a regular contributor to Southern California’s premier news and current affairs show focused on the African-American community. She is also a regular contributor to KABC 790 AM’s “Midday Live with Dr. Drew.”
She is the co-founder of My Hood Votes along with Compton rapper Eric “Eazy-E” Wright’s son Lil E, a voter registration initiative focused on Los Angeles County’s roughest neighborhoods. Jasmyne is a proud co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, the nation’s largest and oldest Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. She is a former co-chair of the National Stonewall Democrats Black Caucus.
Jasmyne is a proud Angeleno living in the Adams-Normandie community.
