Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity

As the prolific poet and lyricist Kendrick Lamar once said, “Sometimes you have to pop out and show ‘em.”

For generations, people of color have understood and wielded the power of narratives – interconnected stories, messages and imageries – and storytelling to shift people’s hearts and minds and (re)shape public institutions and policies in service of ending systemic racism, even when it felt like our nation did not want to be shifted or shaped. We have used this power to make our vision of a liberated future deeply felt, where everyone, regardless of how deep their melanin may be, can thrive and have a democratic say in the governance of our communities. But, narrative works both ways.

In response to the Movement for Black Lives and other burgeoning racial justice movements, we have witnessed the mass deployment of narratives doubling down on racist, transphobic, and sexist beliefs meant to fracture our efforts towards a multiracial democracy. These harmful narratives have helped usher fascism into state legislatures and Congress as well as dismantle key policies and practices, such as Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, and the Chevron doctrine. Not only must we fight back, we must produce and amplify narratives rooted in racial justice and collective liberation that unites us and drowns out the hateful noise of our naysayers and opposition. By expressing our racially just narratives through art, culture, and media, we can bring into focus the liberated future we all deserve so that our peoples and communities remain resolute that a better world is possible in our lifetimes.

At Race Forward, narrative strategy is the praxis of using stories, messages, imagery and the arts in a purposeful way to move people toward the values and worldviews we want to achieve. Through storytelling of all types, we can affirm that every human being is valuable and worthy, make real co-governance and multiracial democracy, and claim the pillars of universal and equitable public goods for us all. Yet, dedicated spaces for people, who are committed to realizing a racially just world, to forge meaningful relationships, learn new skills and tactics to shift mindsets, and align on narrative strategies together, are few and far between.

Just Narratives will serve as a lab where together we can co-construct and mobilize racially just narratives that will transform mindsets, policies, practices, and institutions in favor of racial justice and solidarity.

The goal of Just Narratives is to congregate narrative strategists, communicators, creatives, storytellers, cultural workers, organizers, and advocates, who see themselves as part of the racial justice movement, to align our theories and practice for popularizing effective narratives for racial justice, multiracial solidarity, and collaborative governance.
For us to succeed in this moment, we need to grow and strengthen our narrative ecosystem, a network of connected individuals and organizations that can share knowledge, expertise, skills, ideas, capacities, and work to advance a narrative system across a diversity of fronts along different timelines.

By bringing people from across expertise, roles, issue areas, institutions, communities, and regions of the country we hope to expand the narrative ecosystem. By embedding solidarity into all of our work, we hope to strengthen this narrative infrastructure.

Together, we will:

• foster solidarity for racial justice across our identities, geographies, and issue areas;
• share our lessons and best practices from the field;
• offer and coalesce around new narrative and cultural strategies and tactics that make our vision of solidarity and a racially just world real and inevitable;
• learn new skillsets for narrative change by doing; and
• identify opportunities for collaborations on impact storytelling for racial justice through various mediums and platforms.

By harmonizing the various stakeholders of the racial justice movement around shared narrative strategies, skillsets, and tactics, Just Narratives will disrupt and neutralize racist dominant narratives and ignite our path towards a future where communities of color thrive and where we all enjoy the bounties of shared governance and democracy.

Register Now

Just Narratives is an interactive, participant-driven meeting for people and organizations across racial justice movements, who are or want to be committed to building our collective narrative power for racial justice and co-governance, including:

1. Racial justice movement leaders and grassroots organizers, who work closely with people and communities most impacted by systemic racism and, therefore, have the trust, relationships, and lived experience needed to sharpen our narrative strategies for racial justice.
2. Storytellers, communicators, journalists, messaging experts, and digital strategists, who are shaping how we talk about our shared vision of racial justice with the public across any and all issue areas.
3. Movement artists, creatives, media makers and cultural workers, who help us to make meaning of our society and, through the arts, shift mindsets, allowing us to imagine and experience the racially just future world we are fighting for.
4. Racial justice advocates, researchers and practitioners working within grasstop nonprofits, arts and cultural institutions, academia, and government agencies who are looking for narrative guidance and support as part of their institutional and sectoral change work.

We especially want to invite the voices, insights, and practices of people, who identify as women and femmes; transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming; queer and same gender loving; poor and on welfare; documented and undocumented immigrant; neurodivergent and disabled; formerly detained and incarcerated; and other people who are marginalized and minoritized in our society.

Attendees will have opportunities to deepen their understanding and praxis of narrative strategies for racial justice, sparking new ideas and collaborations for storytelling and civic media, movement-building and mass mobilization locally and nationally. Content will include:

• People’s movement assembly and interactive discussions
• Breakout sessions
• Skills-building workshops
• Interactive art exhibits and musical performances
• Social networking activities