A broader view of literacy has emerged as part of the larger debate about educational reform across the globe. Many now argue that availing children with additional skills in technological and media literacy will foster creativity, motivate youth, and improve their economic opportunities while increasing the core of high skilled labourers available to meet the needs of the "knowledge" economy. From Canada and England to Australia and New Zealand, media literacy has become part of the core curriculum. Within the U.S., implementation of reform in this vein has been slow and a number of informal education institutions have stepped in to meet the perceived need, augmenting the core curriculum with media literacy and production opportunities. Yet there are serious questions about what skills the children are actually learning and whether the literacy discourse is yet another attempt at ignoring persistent educational inequalities along the lines of gender, race, and class. In this paper, we consider the viability of combining critical media literacy with standpoint theory to strengthen the multiliteracies movement, offering a more critical and empowering pedagogy. To this end, we analyze an exemplary site of this approach in Los Angeles. (Contains 4 notes.)