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# Narrative Initiative: A strategy hub for movements building narrative power

## Sitemaps
[XML Sitemap](https://narrativeinitiative.org/sitemap_index.xml): Includes all crawlable and indexable pages.

## Posts
- [What is the “Sandwich Generation”?](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/what-is-the-sandwich-generation/): Caring for our families and communities is one of the most universal human experiences. That’s why our Care and Health Equity Working Group chose to focus on the “Sandwich Generation” caregiving crisis as an opportunity for narrative disruption. Pew Research Center defines the “Sandwich Generation” as middle-aged adults caring for aging parents and kids. John Legend pointed out on the View over 50 million people across the U.S. are providing some form of unpaid caregiving. A 2025 report by the National Alliance for Caregiving found that number is closer to 63 million people. Considering most of anyone's labor caring for children, parents or other loved ones, regardless if they are well, ailing, disabled or chronically ill, is unpaid, this number is not surprising. Care is an act of love for our families and communities but it takes its toll when we also have to keep roofs over our heads, the lights on and food on the table. This was never easy, but our current economic situation makes it nearly impossible for millions and millions of us. 
- [Is Your Writing Focused on Solutions?](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/is-your-writing-focused-on-solutions/): We think it should be. Here’s why.
- [The Fair Chance Framework and the Power of Person-First Language](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-fair-chance-framework-and-the-power-of-person-first-language/): How we talk about formerly incarcerated people matters.
- [Introducing the Spring 2026 Changemaker Authors Cohort](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/introducing-the-2026-spring-changemakercohort-members/): For 2026, the Changemaker Authors Program, a joint venture between Narrative Initiative and Unicorn Authors Club, shifted focus to supporting social justice leaders produce short to medium-length non-fiction, rather than a book-length project or proposal. Our first invite-only cohort met for the 10-week spring 2026 session, producing a submittable piece on health equity at any intersection (i.e. health and climate change, health and immigration). Read more about the program's shift in focus here.
- [The Changemakers Authors Cohort Shifts Focus from Books to Long-form Articles](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-changemakers-authors-cohort-shifts-focus-from-books-to-long-form-articles/): Over the last six weeks two of Narrative Initiative’s marquee projects have joined forces: Word Force and The Changemaker Authors Cohort. The combined program expands the definition of author to include movement workers who perhaps may have a book in them, but have not yet established themselves as seasoned writers with numerous bylines beneath their belt.
- [Moved to Act: Why People Really Join Movements](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/moved-to-act-why-people-really-join-movements/): A few years ago, I was playing around with book ideas, when I fixated on Eat, Pray, Love. The title was the best part of that book, and I wondered what the “eat, pray, love” of organizing would be. I settled on “think, feel, act.” I started writing about how a person could go about thinking and feeling the things that would get them to take action for freedom and justice. 
- [Narrative Work Feels Hard Right Now. This New Tool on Narrating Racial Justice Can Help](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-work-feels-hard-right-now-this-new-tool-on-narrating-racial-justice-can-help/): A new decision-making tool from Berkeley Media Studies Group and Narrative Initiative can help you and your partners navigate that uncertainty and overcome decision paralysis.
- [Thinking Long-Term: What 2025 Taught Us About Narrative Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/thinking-long-term-what-2025-taught-us-about-narrative-power/): We want to end the year with this reading list, featuring some of the best thinking in the field on power building, narrative infrastructure, and resource organizing for narrative change.
- [Fire and ICE: A Close Look at the Narratives that Emerge When Immigration Enforcement and Disaster Relief Collide](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/fire-and-ice-a-close-look-at-the-narratives-that-emerge-when-immigration-enforcement-and-disaster-relief-collide/): ICE's detention of firefighters responding to the Bear Gulch Fire – the largest wild fire recorded in the Olympic Peninsula – ignites a powerful conversation on immigration enforcement and its cost to all of us.
- [Teaching to Regress: On the Compact for Academic Excellence for Universities](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/teaching-to-regress-on-the-compact-for-academic-excellence-for-universities/): A collection of lessons for organizers working in higher education
- [“Flooding the zone”: On Narrative Power during Climate Catastrophes](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/flooding-the-zone-on-narrative-power-during-climate-catastrophes/): A close look at the harmful and helpful narratives that emerged during the Texas Floods of July 2025–and what they can tell us about the narrative power needed for a true, pluralistic democracy.
- [Narrative Initiative Welcomes Noor Mir as New Chief of Staff](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-initiative-welcomes-noor-mir-as-new-chief-of-staff/): Narrative Initiative is excited to announce Noor Mir as our new Chief of Staff. She will lead efforts to align our programmatic work with our vision and lead internal management of our organization. Narrative Initiative is a strategy hub that collaborates with movements to transform deeply held values and beliefs to make equity and justice the foundation of multiracial democracy. Noor brings significant experience in the narrative change ecosystem and deep experience leading organizations and coalitions through visioning, goal-setting, and systems-building. She joins on August 18, 2025.
- [Connecting with Our Narrative Power: The LGBT Movement](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/connecting-with-our-narrative-power-the-lgbt-movement/): Every authoritarian movement has made policing relationships, families, and gender expression a key piece of its worldview. The opposition we face today is no different. In spite of the relentless attacks to LGBT people and rollbacks of hard-won policy gains, the LGBT movement's narrative power is evident in the public conversation. Here are some enduring narrative shifts instigated by nearly half a century of organizing:
- [Narrative Power is Movement Power: Reflections from the Narrative Power Summit](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-power-is-movement-power-reflections-from-the-narrative-power-summit/): Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the Narrative Power Summit (NPS) hosted by the Radical Communications Network and ReFrame in New Orleans, Louisiana. Social justice communicators and movement makers from around the world convened to build narrative power, community, and to develop narrative strategy and infrastructure for the future of our movements.
- [Narrating Toward a Bigger “We”: How We Build a Model Majority](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrating-toward-a-bigger-we-how-we-build-a-model-majority/): But the flip side: the Model Minority Myth is a myth. We know Asian American communities are far from a monolith and Asian American histories are deeply interwoven in the histories of Black Americans, immigrants, people living with disabilities, rural people, and working people. So why haven’t we been able to "debunk" the myth of the Model Minority?
- [Meeting Crisis with Community](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/meeting-crisis-with-community/): When COVID-19 vaccines first became available, Southern California Pacific Islander Community Response team (SoCal PICRT) launched a campaign that filled critical gaps left by mainstream public health messaging. Rather than relying on  press releases or canned messaging, they grounded their approach in cultural care, community trust and self-determination.
- [Harmful versus Helpful Narratives](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/harmful-versus-helpful-narratives/): How do you know if a narrative is harmful or helpful?
- [Fighting for Birthing People in an Uncertain Future](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/fighting-for-birthing-people-in-an-uncertain-future/): We are living in a time when “a broad anti-sexual and reproductive rights agenda” is being implemented at the direction of a new administration. As daily damage unfolds, doulas and other advocates do what they can to support birthing people as a matrix of legislation threatens their well-being, and the rights of many are on the chopping block. The next four years—or more— require a concerted effort anchored in legacies of resistance, community care, and new technologies to support the most vulnerable through birth and beyond. 
- [Where Somebody Says Doula, We Say “Auntie”](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/where-somebody-says-doula-we-say-auntie/): It’s nearly impossible to discuss solutions for the maternal health crisis— one that leaves Black and Native women 3 - 4 times more likely to die in childbirth— without hearing the word “doula," a birth worker who nurtures birthing people as they navigate pregnancy and postpartum. Advocates like Ericka Dorsey, a health and lactation educator, and Co-Founder of Flourishing Families, Inc., affirm doulas as frontline support to ensure birthing people have agency and autonomy in their birth. She says doulas represent a “Sankofa”—a principle from the Akan people of Ghana reminding us, if necessary, you should go back "to retrieve" and get what you forgot to move forward—toward traditional pregnancy, birth, and community-based mothering customs. However, whitewashings of history mean birthwork–and doula history–are often hidden in plain sight.
- [Today’s Doulas Support Birthing Parents, But Aren’t the Solution to a Broken System](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/todays-doulas-support-birthing-parents-but-arent-the-solution-to-a-broken-system/): In 2022, 817 women* died of maternal causes in the United States. Admittedly, that’s a decrease from the 1,205 maternal deaths in 2021. But despite a gradual decrease in annual maternal deaths nationally, a few things remain unchanged. First, the majority of these deaths (80 percent) are preventable. Second, Black and Indigenous women face the highest risks of maternal death. And third, the United States continues to have the highest rates of maternal death of any high-income nation globally. 
- [Friends in Struggle](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/friends-in-struggle/): In 1967, less than three years after receiving the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood at a lectern in Riverside Church in New York City. There, he delivered a paradigm-altering speech called “Beyond Vietnam.”
- [Engaging Organizers on Climate Migration: How do we create Content to Grow Our Audiences With/Behind/to Push Our Solutions?](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/engaging-organizers-on-climate-migration-how-do-we-create-content-to-grow-our-audiences-with-behind-to-push-our-solutions/): It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the dismantling of our government and attacks on those who are speaking out for democracy and justice. But this is exactly the moment when narratives of determined collective action can generate hope.
- [The Narrative North Star: How building alignment on a shared worldview can strengthen movements](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-narrative-north-star-how-building-alignment-on-a-shared-worldview-can-strengthen-movements/): Narrative alignment can be a force for evil, or a force for good. We see how corporations, politicians, influencers, media, and talking heads can echo the same worldview. They may have different ways of talking about it. Some are more coded, and some are more outright. But at the core, there is alignment around a particular worldview. Together, these voices shape the worldview of others. While people may disagree on the nuance of the message, the underlying worldview is accepted as fact. They see the power in that worldview - or rather, the power it could bestow on themselves - and they make it their own.
- [Labor Days](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/labor-days/): Aliya Sabharwal helped organize the Toys ‘R’ Us workers, securing them 20 million in severance. The stories she gathered to organize the campaign inspired her to write a nonfiction book on the impact of economic inequality on everyday life. Her work offers a deep dive into understanding concepts like “financialization” while presenting a unique history of labor organizing and life in financialized economies. Now, she is building a national coalition of Wall Street accountability activists with Americans for Financial Reform to fight back against the private equity industry's takeover of other key economic sectors. Aaliya is a member of the 2023-24 Changemaker Authors Cohort.
- [Organizing as an Adult who Believes in Young People’s Potential, Promise, and Leadership](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/organizing-as-an-adult-who-believes-in-young-peoples-potential-promise-and-leadership/): It is hard to overstate the courageous contributions students and teachers make towards building a functioning multiracial democracy. Notably, it was students who energized national movements like March for Our Lives, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock/No DAPL, Occupy Wall Street, and more. Eight year-old Mari Copney called national attention to the Flint Water Crisis that got President Barack Obama to visit Flint, Michigan in 2016. In the immediate aftermath of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, X González gave a viral rallying speech that foreshadowed new leadership around gun violence control. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers unions were often the stopgap that worked to ensure classrooms stayed open in line with public health best practices.
- [Narrative Power in Crisis: How to Narrate Towards Action](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-power-in-crisis-how-to-narrate-towards-action/): A key element of the Trump administration's strategy is to convince the public that the MAGA movement is unstoppable. They will broadcast the message that “No one can beat us” with each advance, whether the arena is legal, journalistic, educational or civic. They will be doing this on multiple issues simultaneously, hoping to send community, labor and cultural groups into panic mode. When everyday people, without whom mass movement is impossible, absorb the idea that something is unstoppable, they lose the political will to organize and act. We can narrate in a way that inspires action, rather than contributes to its depression.
- [One Educators’ Journey Advocating for Racial Justice Leads to Stronger Family Bonds](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/one-educators-journey-advocating-for-racial-justice-leads-to-stronger-family-bonds/): In June of 1982, Vincent Chin—a Chinese American engineering technician—was out with friends in Detroit celebrating his bachelor party. The night took a terrifying turn after two white autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, chased Chin with a baseball bat and beat him to death. Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz were only fined and put on probation—even a later federal conviction of Ebens would be overturned. Vincent Chin’s mother, Lily Chin, traveled the United States seeking justice for her son’s murder. The details of the hate crime that took Vincent’s life catalyzed pan-Asian organizing in Detroit and a national conversation on anti-Asian racism in the broader context of racism in the United States–one that continues to be examined and re-examined today.
- [How A Winter Storm in Texas Catalyzed A New Strategy Hub for Disaster Relief and Organizing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/how-a-winter-storm-in-texas-catalyzed-a-new-strategy-hub-for-disaster-relief-and-organizing/): The first time I met Ginny Goldman on a zoom call, I wasn’t surprised to hear the origin story of Organizing Resilience involved a major storm. We are both Houstonians, and it’s part of the local culture to mark the passage of time by hurricanes formed in the Gulf Coast. The storm that would eventually lead to the founding of OR, however, was a winter storm that started in the Pacific Northwest and — through its boomerang path of destruction across Canada, the United States, and Northern Mexico— would knock out the Texas power grid, leaving over 4 million people without power in subzero temperatures for about a week. Official Texas state numbers show 246 people died from the storm, but the tally varied widely. 
- [DIY Narrative Research Methods in Narrative Organizing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/diy-narrative-research-methods-in-narrative-organizing/): Narrative change is an essential tool for our movement. As narrative organizers seek to build a vibrant and equitable democracy where everyone belongs and everyone has a voice, we need to overcome a few obstacles that, while not insurmountable, will require practice!
- [How storytelling preserves traditions of reciprocity, resilience, and hope](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/how-storytelling-preserves-traditions-of-reciprocity-resilience-and-hope/): When was the last time you asked someone their story? Stories preserve memory, pass on tradition, convey wisdom, and offer a glimpse of hope. In this way, asking someone about their story is not unlike asking them about what values they use to navigate their daily lives. 
- [Ecosystem for a New American Narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/ecosystem-for-a-new-american-narrative/): The field of documentary impact has officially entered its maturation phase. For over two decades, the documentary film sector has developed tools and methodologies – even professional strategists – in an effort to maximize the impact of powerful nonfiction work.  Though relegated to a corner of the broader field of cultural strategy, the practice of documentary impact rests on the belief that the form is uniquely powerful at educating audiences, challenging persistent attitudes and beliefs, and amplifying social justice efforts through a mix of complex, nuanced storytelling and rigorous journalism. 
- [On Mourning as a Motive Force: Grief and Black-Palestinian Solidarity](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/on-mourning-as-a-motive-force-grief-and-black-palestinian-solidarity/): There is so much on my mind. My thoughts, like my feelings and even the sensations in my body are tangled, the emotion I have felt most recently is terrified. What a season of extreme loss, and this – a moment of heightened visible brutality. What the Palestinian people have been experiencing as a matter of policy for more than 50 years has now been felt more widely across the United States and around the world. The brutality we are witness to is soul crushing. No one should have to suffer this particular juncture of violence or experience state-sponsored genocide as both Jews and Palestinians have, as enslaved Africans and indigenous people of the Americas have— no one. 
- [Orienting Together: Mapping your Narrative Landscape](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/orienting-together-mapping-your-narrative-landscape/): Imagine your roommate asks you to plan a road trip. Logically, you ask them where you’ll depart from and where you’re headed. In response, you hear “I don’t know.” 
- [Rural Pre-conference at 22nd Century Initiative in Minneapolis](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/rural-pre-conference-at-22nd-century-initiative-in-minneapolis/): In organizing, many progressives fall into traps that cast rural Americans as antagonists to progress writ large. This erases both rural people who are working towards racial, gender, economic, and migrant justice and the particular concerns, realities, and assets of rural communities. At our best, our many movements have shown that we can coalesce around values and visions that unite our causes. Both  rural and non-rural movement people have the chance to build common ground around racial, economic, and gender justice to draw in more constituencies that grow the collective power.  By sharing wisdom about how issues like housing, good jobs, climate threats, the opioid crisis, and more connect with native sovereignty, immigration justice, and the fight against authoritarianism and violent extremists, we seek to gather and connect communities together as we forge pathways toward multi-racial democracy.
- [“Money is Medicine”](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/money-is-medicine/): Back in June, I moderated a panel at Alight, Align, Arise, the inaugural conference on reparations hosted by Decolonizing Wealth. The panel focused on the narrative history of reparations, a history that began well before the end of the Civil War as keynote speaker and author Ta-Nehisi Coates discussed during his opening night fireside chat with Decolonizing Wealth’s founder Edgar Villanueva. It is paramount to understand that the advocacy to win reparations for Black people developed side by side with the development, establishment, and expansion of slavery in the United States.
- [Innovations in Disaster Response After the Almeda Fire](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/innovations-in-disaster-response-after-the-almeda-fire/): NIRIA: Coalición Fortaleza literally sprouted up from the ashes of the Almeda Fire in 2020. On September 8, thousands of us woke up to smoke, chaos, and confusion. We heard that there was a fire burning north of Ashland and that it was being taken care of, but we kept looking at the sky seeing a giant cloud of thick gray smoke getting thicker and thicker and moving closer to us. At 11 am I called my mom and said, “We have to leave. We have to evacuate.” By 11 pm, the Almeda fire had scorched over 2,800 structures in the cities of Talent, Phoenix, and Medford, Oregon. Basically within 12 hours, my community saw our neighborhoods consumed by fire. We lost the majority of our low-income BIPOC neighborhoods and 18 mobile home villages. It’s hard for me to remember that this was in the middle of a pandemic, at the point where there was still so much we didn’t understand about COVID. There was no vaccine. A lot of folks had just lost their jobs. In the peak of summer when it reached triple digit weather, it was too dangerous for farmworkers to work and those wages were lost.  
- [From Rural America with Love](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/from-rural-america-with-love/): Three weeks ago, the usually remote Narrative Initiative team convened in Minneapolis for the inaugural 22nd Century Conference: Forging a People-Powered Democracy. This would mark the first time I would meet my teammates in person, the first time I would attend a conference, and my first time in Minneapolis. As I reflect back on the trip, I keep coming back to how powerful it was for me to experience a supportive space with people from rural and urban areas who, through our conversations, helped me find the language to name and process some of my core experiences growing up in Cut and Shoot, Texas, and then leaving for college in a city. Here are three takeaways I wish everyone would take to heart.
- [Imagining Liberation](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/imagining-liberation/): You have been involved with movements for a long time. What sustains your activism? What kind of world are you working towards?
- [Finding the Freedom to Love Through Faith](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/finding-the-freedom-to-love-through-faith/): For Lamya H, author of the memoir Hijab Butch Blues, the answer was the text. Their Islamic faith, study of the Quran, and intense interrogation of the multiple identities they inhabit at once have provided a framework for living a purposeful, ethical life. This framework counters the arguments made by religious conservatives, who believe teaching students about LGBTQ+ relationships as part of their health and sex education is akin to grooming. While white, evangelicals cling to these bigoted stances, and protest the teaching of inclusivity, studies show that Muslims in the United States are more accepting of the queer community and believe they should be accepted by society.
- [Weaving the Opposite of Fascism: Narrative organizing to build narrative power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/weaving-the-opposite-of-fascism-narrative-organizing-to-build-narrative-power/): If we want a true democracy—the opposite of fascism—landscaping, the process is one way to ensure that we’re building the whole picture. From the Observing Together basket, you move into the: 
- [Art is at the Heart of Disability Justice](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/art-is-at-the-heart-of-disability-justice/): An estimated 7.5% of the adult population in the United States is now living with long COVID, the long-term or chronic effects of a COVID infection, or reinfection, in children and adults. Artist, teacher, and HIV organizer Pato Hebert is one of them. In January, Hebert spoke with Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, who lives with both HIV and long COVID. A native of Philadelphia, Muhammad works as a writer and organizer, and recently received the BIPOC Fellowship for people living with Long COVID and associated diseases from Long COVID Justice, a project of Strategies for High Impact.
- [Storytelling Can Move Mountains](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/storytelling-can-move-mountains/): In 2011, Tania Mattos started working with filmmaker Christina Antonakos-Wallace when she was a leader in the fight for the New York Dream Act. Mattos expected filming to take a day or two. It took eight years and followed her through a pivotal time in her personal life and the immigrant rights movement as a whole. 
- [Changing the Conversation Around Reproductive Justice](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/changing-the-conversation-around-reproductive-justice/): “Reproductive justice” was first coined in 1994 by the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice and defined in 1997 by Sister Song (a formal outgrowth of that group) as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” To that end, reproductive justice is a human rights focused frame for examining the “economic, social, and political power and resources” available for people with the capacity to birth to “make healthy decisions about their bodies, families, and communities in all areas of their lives.”
- [Setting Boundaries in Mission Driven Work](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/setting-boundaries-in-mission-driven-work/): The Changemaker Authors Cohort, a partnership with the Unicorn Authors Club, is a yearlong intensive coaching program supporting full-time movement activists and social justice practitioners to complete books that create deep, durable narrative change, restructuring the way people feel, think, and respond to the world. This interview series features participants in the inaugural cohort.
- [SxSW 2023: A Place for Narrative to Thrive](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/sxsw-2023-a-place-for-narrative-to-thrive/): Two weeks ago, I descended into Austin, Texas for week two of the SxSW conference and festival. It’s a real-life gathering of folks who embody the saying “Revenge of the Nerds.” Politicians and thought leaders, activists and entrepreneurs, tech heads and gamers, cinephiles, bibliophiles and music aficionados; all who arrived were welcome.
- [Fleshing Out History](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/fleshing-out-history/): While some Florida educators have removed their classroom libraries or limited students’ access to them, others have doubled down. Dr. Marvin Dunn is the president of the Miami Center for Racial Justice and a Professor Emeritus at Florida International University. As part of his work with the center, he leads the Teach the Truth tours for high school students in Miami-Dade County to the sites of some of the worst acts of anti-Black racism in the state.
- [Amy Zhang on the AAPI Narrative Studio](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/amy-zhang-on-the-aapi-narrative-studio/): From creating a show about Asian women in America in a small New York City theater to producing TV episodes for Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, I’ve always worked at the intersection of storytelling and impact. But, I yearned to be in community with other creators to think through persistent questions: How does narrative change actually happen? How does the genre of media or platform affect its impact? What does narrative change really entail?
- [Creating Systems of Support](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/creating-systems-of-support/): Silky Shah is the Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigration detention in the US. An organizer for more than twenty years, Silky has worked on issues related to immigration detention, the prison industrial complex, and racial and migrant justice. Her book project contends that the prison industrial complex and U.S. immigration enforcement policy are not separate, but intertwined systems of repression, and that embracing prison abolition is the only way to fully achieve justice for immigrants.
- [Facing Race: A National Conference 2022](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/facing-race-a-national-conference-2022/): Two weeks ago, Narrative Initiative took our goodies to the Facing Race conference in Phoenix. The conference is sponsored by my former organization, Race Forward, so this was my first chance to see old friends in person since 2020. As always, this conference crowd is multi-everything kind, loving, joyful and determined. There’s no better place to be after an election than with 2500 people who are all about racial justice. Here are three of my highlights.
- [We Have Always Existed](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/we-have-always-existed/): Emily Ramirez is a queer Dominican woman, born and raised in NYCHA housing in Brooklyn, and is currently contracting with the United Nations as a social media specialist. She holds a Bachelor’s in creative writing and comparative literature, and has published works in Huizache, Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories From Young Female Voices, and the literary journal, Wizards in Space. Her writing project is a novel about a 12-year-old Dominican American girl named Ellie who discovers her queer identity and her voice after falling in love with a girl.
- [Living with Desire & Bipolar Disorder](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/living-with-desire-bipolar-disorder/): Adam Nyang is a Gambian who recently completed her Bachelor’s degree in English Studies. She has always been passionate about storytelling and reading, and recently published a romance novel called Betting on Love under the pen-name Kani Sey with Love Africa Press. Her short story, Faroh, was longlisted for the 2021 K & L Prize. Adam’s project with the Changemaker Authors Cohort is a psychological realism novel that will depict youth, sexual awakening, desire, friendship and family. 
- [Busting the “Post-Patriarchy” Myth](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/busting-the-post-patriarchy-myth/): Ellen Bravo is a long-time activist and author who’s spent decades organizing among low-wage women from a social justice feminist framework. She’s the Co-Founder of Family Values At Work, a network of state coalitions that advocate for paid sick days and paid family medical leave. Previously, Ellen served as the longtime director of 9to5. She’s written several non-fiction books, including Taking on the Big Boys. Her first novel, Again and Again, dealt with date rape and politics. Her second, Standing Up, written with her husband and released on March 8, highlights moments when workers band together to stand up to oppression.
- [A Survivor’s Story](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/a-survivors-story/): The Changemaker Authors Cohort, a partnership with the Unicorn Authors Club, is a new, yearlong intensive coaching program supporting full-time movement activists and social justice practitioners to complete books that create deep, durable narrative change, restructuring the way people feel, think, and respond to the world. This interview series features participants in the inaugural cohort.
- [Organizing: A Love Story](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/organizing-a-love-story/): Beth Howard is the Appalachia Organizing Director for Showing Up for Racial Justice where she is directing transformational basebuilding campaigns in her beloved home state. She is from a working class family in rural Eastern Kentucky and has more than 16 years of experience in grassroots community organizing and leadership development. She is committed to organizing her people in Appalachia to build a multiracial working class people’s movement. She’s also the writer and the creator of the narrative campaign Rednecks for Black Lives. She lives in Lexington, KY, with her husband Andrew and their defiant cat, Tadpole.
- [Mapping the Beaches of Black America](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/mapping-the-beaches-of-black-america/): The Changemaker Authors Cohort, a partnership with the Unicorn Authors Club, is a new, yearlong intensive coaching program supporting full-time movement activists and social justice practitioners to complete books that create deep, durable narrative change, restructuring the way people feel, think, and respond to the world. This interview series features participants in the inaugural cohort.
- [Wielding Grief to Enact Change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/wielding-grief-to-enact-change/): Malkia Devich Cyril, is a writer, public speaker and award winning activist on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation and collective grief. Their book, Radical Loss: Black Grief Can Change the World, combines personal storytelling and political essays to reframe grief as a powerful driver for movements, rather than a private experience.
- [More Than Words: Trevor Smith Connects Anti-Black Stereotypes to Lethal Violence](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/more-than-words-trevor-smith-connects-anti-black-stereotypes-to-lethal-violence/): Trevor Smith, Director of Narrative Change at Liberation Venture, is focused on fueling the movement for reparations through the Reparations Narrative Lab, which launched this month. In addition to his movement work, Trevor is the editor of the newsletter, Reparations Daily (ish) where he both writes and curates articles related to reparations. This work inspired his project for the cohort, Lethal Stereotypes – a nonfiction novel that looks at the impact of racial stereotypes on Black life and death.
- [Worlds of Possibility](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/worlds-of-possibility/): I’m Hans. I’ve been working in the space of the US intersex movement for almost even 10 years, at least, if you count having started as a teenager. Most recently, I was the former Communications Director for interAct Advocates for Intersex Youth, which is a national  law and policy organization. It works within the legal realm to expand choice for intersex people, particularly on the issues of invasive genital surgeries and hormone treatments. Although people often think these medical interventions are pushed on trans youth, they are actually forced upon very young, intersex infants and adolescents, whose bodies, in terms of sex diversity, are just different. Through that experience, I learned a lot about different medical and policy narratives and how issues of bodily autonomy intersect with other issues here in the U.S. and globally. While doing all of that work, I also have been very dedicated to storytelling. I have a YouTube channel where I try to make some of this knowledge accessible, promoting non-medical narratives of understanding sex diversity and intersex movements in the U.S. I also produced storytelling projects with community members talking about their experiences, their visions for a world — one where intersex people are free from medical interventions that they don’t opt into and everyone has choices about genital surgeries. So, coming from that lens and coming from having had the privilege of growing up in intersex community from a very young age, even as a teenager – which is quite rare – I’m much more interested in narrative than law and policy, at least as it concerns my ability to make an impact. This particular graphic novel starts with my own story. I think that’s going to be a great place to start for an author. And I’m really excited the project is picking up a lot of momentum. I received grants to start working on a manuscript and have signed with an agent. So I’m excited.
- [What We Learned in Minnesota](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/what-we-learned-in-minnesota/): Read the Full Report: Building Narrative Infrastructure in Minnesota, August 2019
- [Messaging vs. Narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/messaging-vs-narrative/): What is the difference between narrative and messaging and how does that impact the way you plan and write your op-ed?
- [Navigating 2022: Ideas, reports, and resources for narrative changemakers](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/navigating-2022-ideas-reports-and-resources-for-narrative-changemakers/): If you’re navigating narrative change you know that everything is, well <waves hands>, messy in the world. Every day is noisy and chaotic. It can be tough to judge what’s working and what’s not, whose voice is trustworthy and whose isn’t reputable. People may retreat towards the familiarity and security of dominant, if oppressive, narratives. We go to the known, even if we know it’s not right.
- [Aishah Shahidah Simmons writes herself whole in memoir on sexual violence and healing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/aishah-shahidah-simmons-writes-herself-whole-in-memoir-on-sexual-violence-and-healing/): Narrative Initiative is committed to supporting storytellers whose work challenges harmful narratives on complex topics, such as disability, reparations, and sexual violence. That is why we have partnered with the Unicorn Authors Club to help members of the 2022 Changemaker Authors Cohort, tell their own stories while also broadening their access to the publishing industry.
- [Gender is a Story We Tell Ourselves](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/gender-is-a-story-we-tell-ourselves/): The first time I read Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit, I was captivated by the worldbuilding and the story’s overarching military conflict. Ninefox Gambit is a space opera about a female soldier and the undead male general whose spirit possesses her and, although the author is trans, the story has no explicitly nonbinary or trans characters. While I was enthralled by the main characters’ dynamic, I didn’t think much of the role that gender played in those interactions.
- [Moving Beyond “Making The Case”: How We Build Narrative Power For Reparations](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/moving-beyond-making-the-case-how-we-build-narrative-power-for-reparations/): “The world has never seen any people turned loose to such destitution as were the four million slaves of the South. They were free without roofs to cover them, or bread to eat, or land to cultivate, and as a consequence died in such numbers as to awaken the hopes of their enemies that they would soon disappear.” -Frederick Douglass 
- [Building Relationships: How to capitalize on the momentum of your op-ed](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/building-relationships-how-to-capitalize-on-the-momentum-of-your-op-ed/): You have your argument, you’ve identified your audience, and you’ve pitched your op-ed with successful results. Now what? How do you keep the momentum going? How do you continue the conversation with your audience? How do you consistently access large platforms where your audience gathers without the possibility of being blocked by gate keepers? The answer to all of these questions is: build relationships.
- [Recognition and invisibility: A conversation with Panthea Lee about AAPI narratives](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/recognition-and-invisibility-a-conversation-with-panthea-lee-about-aapi-narratives/): May is AAPI Heritage Month and we are speaking with women who live, see and share the narrative power of Asian Americans. Last week we shared a conversation with Jeana Nam, a Korean-American woman in Texas who has shared her abortion story through We Testify and supports women seeking medical abortions in the Houston area.
- [The Voices Missing from the Abortion Debate](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-voices-missing-from-the-abortion-debate/): The imminent repeal of Roe v. Wade has brought public narratives of motherhood and reproductive justice to the forefront. Each side has weaponized race to change public perception and influence policy. While poor people and birthing people of color face the most severe impacts of anti-abortion laws, including criminalization, the public face of reproductive care in America is still that of a non-religious, well-educated, cisgender white woman.
- [Pitch Perfect: How to place your op-ed and get it published](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/pitch-perfect-how-to-place-your-op-ed-and-get-it-published/): To harness narrative power to activate change you must have an argument to make and an audience to whom you can make it. Once you have identified those elements the next step is to figure out where you want to place your story for publication. The idea here is to choose an outlet with the maximum impact to reach your audience. When you can reach your audience you can speak to their beliefs, motivate them to take action, and mobilize them in an effort to bring about lasting change. That is the power of narrative. But before you can get to your audience, you must first get through the gatekeepers.
- [Who are You Talking to? The Audience of an Op-Ed](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/who-are-you-talking-to-the-audience-of-an-op-ed/): The communications used for any narrative change project must have an audience. You need an audience who is open to change and willing to drive a narrative out to other people. Your base, including activists and members, may be part of your audience. Op-eds typically try to find an audience beyond your base.
- [We All Have Narrative Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/we-all-have-narrative-power/): Some of the most interesting and revelatory conversations I’ve had about politics and life have been in the back of a cab. This is a story about how one of those conversations forever changed my identity.
- [What Listening to Rusty Mae Moore Taught Me about Narrative Change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/what-listening-to-rusty-mae-moore-taught-me-about-narrative-change/): From 2015-2018, I was an interviewer with the New York Trans Oral History Project (NYTOP). A friend had convinced me to join because I love doing interviews and wanted to do something meaningful and concrete to support trans people. He reasoned that my inability to extricate myself from conversations made me naturally predisposed towards oral history. He wasn’t wrong, but that isn’t why I joined.
- [The Argument: How an op-ed can shift the narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-argument-how-an-op-ed-can-shift-the-narrative/): An op-ed case study showing the why, when and how of turning a story into an argument that successfully advocates for change.
- [Five Films We’re Watching at Sundance Film Festival](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/five-films-were-watching-at-sundance-film-festival/): The iconic Sundance Film Festival is coming up next week, from January 20th to the 30th, in a virtual format. As always, we’re looking for insights into culture, narrative and storytelling.
- [A 2021 Narrative Reading List to Launch Your 2022](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/a-2021-narrative-reading-list-to-launch-your-2022/): In Mindset Shifts: What Are They? Why Do They Matter? How Do They Happen? Frameworks Institute explores how people hold onto their fundamental beliefs and best practices for moving mindsets.
- [Narrative Organizing: How we shift power towards justice](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-organizing-how-we-shift-power-towards-justice/): Narrative organizing is the act of building, creating and using narrative to shift power towards justice, equity and democracy. Narrative without organizing is a collection of observations and stories. Narrative without organizing leaves narrative power to others. When we bring alignment, polyvocality, and community leadership to narrative work we are organizing people to hold and exert narrative power.
- [Terms of Abuse: White Supremacy, Structural Racism and White Nationalism](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/terms-of-abuse-white-supremacy-structural-racism-and-white-nationalism/): Scot Nakagawa is a Senior Partner at ChangeLab. Scot has spent more than four decades exploring questions of structural racism, white supremacy, and social justice. Here, Scot takes us on a journey through the cultural and legal systems of white supremacy, structural racism and white nationalism. Scot defines the terms, offers us language, and guides us towards tools for new narratives.
- [Systems Language for Narrative Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/systems-language-for-narrative-power/): Science fiction is full of all-knowing villains. They can’t be understood or defeated. The unknown, as storytellers from H. G. Wells to N. K. Jemisen recognized, is confusing and unsettling. The unknown is full of wonder but also fear.
- [How to do Intersectionality](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/how-to-do-intersectionality/): Over the last five years, intersectionality has become a buzzword and an accountability standard for social change organizations and leaders. It is so commonly used that a recent look at #intersectionality results on Twitter reveals everyone from the United Nations Development Programme to IBM claiming it. But there’s also much confusion about what it means and how to practice it. Two patterns especially trouble me – conflating the word “intersectional” with the word “identity,” and applying intersectional analysis inconsistently. There are lots of great examples of intersectional organizing for us to learn from, and the pay off can be profound when we get it right.
- [Turning Collective Grief into Collective Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/turning-collective-grief-into-collective-power/): Grief, Love, Action: Transforming collective sorrow into collective power was co-hosted by Narrative Initiative and Women’s March Network. You can watch a video of the event here and find out more about our guests below. We look forward to carrying this conversation forward as we turn collective grief into new, stronger narratives that celebrate mutual support and community action.
- [Feminist Political Organizing Offers Lessons in Narrative Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/feminist-political-organizing-offers-lessons-in-narrative-power/): Feminist narratives are powering some of the most important movements of the 21st century by turning anger to joy, creating care in spaces of insecurity, and looking to the future.
- [Narrative Change Happens Fast](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-change-happens-fast/): Narrative change happens fast in times of crisis and national trauma. Let’s look at how the “terrorist” stories of this past week (and the weeks and months after 9/11) shift American life. It’s also helpful to see how Arnold Schwarzenegger is using the moment to help us focus on and use a more hopeful and inclusive narrative.
- [Rinku Sen named Executive Director of Narrative Initiative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/rinku-sen-named-executive-director-of-narrative-initiative/): Rinku Sen succeeds founding Executive Director Jee Kim to help the social sector harness the power of narrative to make progress towards a more equitable and socially just world.
- [Polyvocal Narrative Strategy: Turning many voices into durable change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/polyvocal-narrative-strategy-turning-many-voices-into-durable-change/): Polyvocality is the power of many voices to shift and sustain narrative change.
- [Thinking with Our Eyes: Understanding the power of visual narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/thinking-with-our-eyes-understanding-the-power-of-visual-narrative/): Visual narrative includes the photos and video we see in front of us every day. It’s also the fuzzy scenes stored in our memory. These images shape stories, narratives and even deeply held values. How do we put images to work in our narrative practice? Resource Media’s Liz Banse recently wrote a series of articles about imagery and narrative for the Visual Story Lab. We asked Liz to share a version of those insights here.
- [Our Futures Now: Turning imagination into narrative power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/our-futures-now-turning-imagination-into-narrative-power/): Narrative Initiative connects futures and narrative to create power. Futures work gives people space and tools to imagine a world free from the boundaries of historical narratives and the limits of today’s policies and politics. This work identifies the new narratives that make potential futures possible. Here we discuss why futures are important to narrative projects and how to use futures in your work.
- [Four Baskets: Necessary capacities for narrative change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/four-baskets-necessary-capacities-for-narrative-change/): The Four Baskets hold capacities and processes needed to create, implement and continually strengthen narrative change projects. As they are filled, the Four Baskets (Create, Translate, Deploy and Observe Together) provide campaigners, communicators and leaders with a framework for doing narrative change. These capacities and processes will help you identify and fill gaps, learn and iterate, and ultimately craft more durable and powerful narrative change.
- [Waves: A model for deep narrative change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/waves-a-model-for-deep-narrative-change/): Waves is a simple illustration that begins to unpack the complex relationship between values, narratives and stories. The model borrows from the work of Grassroots Policy Project, Perception Institute and others working at the intersection of advocacy, strategic communications, and the operation of ideology.
- [Constructing Gravity: Frameworks and tools for narrative change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/constructing-gravity-frameworks-and-tools-for-narrative-change/): The Constructing Gravity series will share skills, strategies and frameworks to guide narrative change work. These articles present Narrative Initiative’s present understanding of narrative projects. It is an approach that has evolved as we’ve learned, listened and practiced narrative change.
- [Reclaiming Native Truth: Narrative research and making Native Americans visible](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/reclaiming-native-truth-narrative-research-and-making-native-americans-visible/): Reclaiming Native Truth is an extensive community-led narrative research project. It provides IllumiNative and others in the Native American community with data and insights showing the extent of Native American erasure from the national conversation. We spoke to Leah Salgado, Deputy Director of IllumiNative, to learn how Reclaiming Native Truth shapes narrative change strategy and the ability of Native communities to address COVID-19.
- [Narrative and COVID-19: Resources and reading lists](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-and-covid-19-resources-and-reading-lists/): The Coronavirus pandemic is shaping (and being shaped by) narratives. These articles, essays, research and resources offer insights into narrative change strategy in the context of COVID-19.
- [Making meaning in a global pandemic](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/making-meaning-in-a-global-pandemic/): Today, tens of millions of Americans are losing their jobs, worried about the health of their families and friends, and feeling fear and uncertainty about what the future holds for themselves and society. Deep narratives are breaking down and being rebuilt. Here are four ideas for approaching narrative strategy now so that together we may weave together an equitable, healthy and just fabric – one strong enough to hold all of us.
- [Transition at Narrative Initiative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/transition-at-narrative-initiative/): Dear Partners:
- [Building a Narrative Justice League: Learning from a nimble and powerful narrative coalition](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/building-a-narrative-justice-league-learning-from-a-nimble-and-powerful-narrative-coalition/): Narrative change practice cuts across issues and coalitions. In January, we joined a roundtable of communicators and organizers to learn about the practices, skills and training that make narrative change in coalition not just possible but powerful.
- [How platforms and visuals shape narrative: A conversation with Cayden Mak](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/how-platforms-and-visuals-shape-narrative-a-conversation-with-cayden-mak/): Cayden Mak, executive director of 18 Million Rising, joined us last September at Start Making Sense: A working convening on Technologies for Narrative Change. We caught up with Cayden later in the fall to dig into ideas around defining how technology shapes audience interaction with narrative and what 18 Million Rising is learning about visual narrative.
- [Narrative change in 2019](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-change-in-2019/): Our work sits alongside the continued expansion of narrative change work in the broader field as more and more organizations not only recognize the crucial importance of narrative work to social change, but are finding new and exciting ways of putting it into practice.
- [Narrative Tech: Categories, needs and what’s next](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-tech-categories-needs-and-whats-next/): Technology has always had a role in shaping how narratives are created, distributed, tracked and absorbed into society. Today, technology moves the words, pictures and meaning of narrative around the world in seconds. Technology helps us track the movement of narrative and research how narrative shifts behavior. The work of narrative change now asks progressive groups and movements to expand access to, learn to use, and continually test narrative technology and tools.
- [Explanation and the “How” of a Narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/explanation-and-the-how-of-a-narrative/): We recently spoke with Julie Sweetland, Senior Advisor at FrameWorks Institute, about Unleashing the Power of How: An Explanation Declaration. Released in March as part of FrameWorks Institute’s 20th anniversary, the Explanation Declaration asks communicators to help people understand the “how” behind issues and see that how as a critical part of engaging and empowering people to take action.
- [Flooding the channels: Information abundance and narrative change](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/flooding-the-channels-information-abundance-and-narrative-change/): Historically, social movements have gathered in physical spaces around strong leaders to build the collective courage to overcome individual fear. But the #MeToo movement was able to amplify stories and change the narrative by the plurality of thousands of dispersed voices in many different communities. Search for #RiceBunny if you want to see how Chinese women are circumventing censorship of the original #MeToo hashtag.
- [Narrative research: Access, methods and pathways to a stronger field](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/narrative-research-access-methods-and-pathways-to-a-stronger-field/): Successful narrative change projects require practitioners to know what strategies work. When to use them. Who their audience is. That takes research and data analysis, message testing and training. It means sharing what we learn with partners both old and new. It also means breaking down silos and pushing the capacity to test, analyze and report into the hands of frontline communities and people of color.
- [The state of narrative change research methodology](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/the-state-of-narrative-change-research-methodology/): We are excited to share recent findings of investigation into narrative research by partners at Spitfire Strategies. We sought to explore traditional and emergent research methods used to determine openings and trends in narrative change. Our goal was to develop an accessible and useful resource for the field.

## Pages
- [Rural Urban Unity Working Group](https://narrativeinitiative.org/working-groups/rural-urban-unity-working-group/): Rural communities have often been excluded from the conversation on multiracial democracy building. In collaboration with the 22nd Century Initiative, we are building power with rural democracy organizers nationwide, whose work includes cultural strategy and community organizing. As frontline defenders against the rise of authoritarian populism, rural democracy organizers are critical to our long-term goal of building a true, multiracial democracy.
- [Working Groups](https://narrativeinitiative.org/working-groups/): Bridging the gap between everyday communications work and longterm narrative strategy can be challenging. We build skilled, well-resourced narrative power centers, starting in social movement spaces, as close to community leaders as possible, to run meaningful narrative interventions. Working groups are the building blocks of our narrative organizing work.
- [Changemaker Authors Cohort Participants](https://narrativeinitiative.org/changemaker-authors-cohort-participants/): Changemaker Authors Cohorts 2023 2024 2025 2026 All
- [Action and Organizing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/action-and-organizing/): Narrative power is central to deep, lasting social change. But building narrative power in the world means building narrative capacity within your community. Our Action and Organizing work focuses on creating and supporting networks and empowering movement partners to build–and act on–a long-term vision for change. We have several working groups that are grapple with challenges to equity within their respective fields and collaborate to create big narrative interventions. We organize strategy labs to provide a space for experimentation and content testing. We hold regional and global convenings to build a network of narrators and drive deeper collaboration.
- [Changemaker Authors Cohort](https://narrativeinitiative.org/changemaker-authors-cohort/): Our first Changemaker Authors Cohort launched in early-2022; the 2023-2024 Cohort began on November 2023.
- [Landscape and Assessment](https://narrativeinitiative.org/landscape-and-assessment/): Narrative landscaping allows us to identify the harmful narratives that hold back our vision for a better, world and to name the helpful narratives that advance our vision.
- [Case Studies](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-studies/): Stories of communities coming together and organizing towards shared solutions.
- [Trainings & Webinars](https://narrativeinitiative.org/trainings-webinars/): Narrative research, practical recommendations, and guidelines for narrative organizers.
- [Projects](https://narrativeinitiative.org/projects/): Community doulas are trusted, culturally rooted birth workers who provide emotional, physical, and informational support to mothers throughout pregnancy, birth, and the early postpartum period. Grounded in the communities they serve, they play a vital role in improving outcomes for parents and babies, particularly in communities impacted by systemic inequities. The “Courage in Care” highlights the essential role that community doulas play in maternal and infant health, and emphasizes the urgent need for better support and recognition within the healthcare system.
- [Privacy Policy](https://narrativeinitiative.org/privacy-policy/): Table of Contents
- [Careers](https://narrativeinitiative.org/careers/)
- [Opportunities](https://narrativeinitiative.org/opportunities/): Fellowships, workshops, and conferences for those working at the intersection of narrative and organizing.
- [Blog](https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/): Here you will find case studies, interviews, insights, and reflections from staff.
- [Events & Announcements](https://narrativeinitiative.org/events-announcements/): Events + Announcements
- [Resource Library](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource-library/): Below is a curated collection of guides, worksheets, webinars and trainings offered as a resource for the field of narrative change practitioners. While Narrative Initiative created some of these resources, others are generated by our partners. If you’re new to the idea of narrative change, check out our where to start section below. This collection is evolving and we will add to it as we are able.
- [Field Notes](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-notes/): Field Notes celebrates the creativity, perspectives, and strategies of everyday organizers who are pushing us toward a world where a truly just, multiracial democracy is possible. 
- [Programs](https://narrativeinitiative.org/programs/): We collaborate with organizations and coalitions to help them understand the broader narrative landscape affecting their capacity to enact long-lasting change.
- [Our Approach](https://narrativeinitiative.org/our-approach/): We partner with movements to build narrative power.
- [What Is Narrative?](https://narrativeinitiative.org/what-is-narrative/): Narratives are the ideas and themes that are carried through collections of stories.
- [Who We Are](https://narrativeinitiative.org/who-we-are/): From 2017-2020, we embarked on a period of learning and listening to understand the challenges, facing practitioners across the narrative field. We held a convening on the rise of authoritarian populism to drive transnational collaboration. We explored the impact of tech on narrative, and we laid the ground and we commissioned landscape assessments and research on narrative strategies and infrastructure.
- [Home](https://narrativeinitiative.org/): Develop practitioner leadership, our own included, by studying current and historic narrative change efforts, and how they were generated by or embedded in social movements.

## Case Studies
- [Transit for All PA!](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-study/transit-for-all-pa/): Transit for All PA! has built a grassroots movement to win the policy solutions that fund critical transportation in rural and urban communities. It draws on the individual expertise of local activists and brings them together for statewide campaigns to win statewide solutions to local transit issues. Nearly 100 community organizations and businesses, 17 labor unions and labor councils, including eight different Pennsylvania locals of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents bus drivers in the state, and over 60 elected leaders have signed on to support Transit for All PA!’s platform.
- [Virginia Organizing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-study/virginia-organizing/): How a grassroots, statewide organization is pushing to expand healthcare access for low-income communities
- [Communities for Our Colleges](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-study/communities-for-our-colleges/): How a multiracial student-centered campaign changed the conversation on access to higher public education
- [Arkansas Public Policy Panel](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-study/arkansas-public-policy-panel/): How a multi-issue advocacy coalition is mobilizing voters to fight for Arkansas public schools
- [Missouri Workers Center](https://narrativeinitiative.org/case-study/missouri-workers-center/): How low wage workers mobilized voters to stop a tax increase when negotiations for a community-benefits agreement failed to deliver.

## Field Notes
- [Europe’s Last Indigenous People Forge Bond with Palestine](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/europes-last-indigenous-people-forge-bond-with-palestine/): In this Field Note, Shafi Musaddique shows us the complexities of transnational indigenous solidarity.
- [Librada Gonzalez’s search for Cuban queer history sparks an archival project](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/librada-gonzalezs-search-for-queer-cuban-history-sparks-an-archival-project/): In this Field Note, Eileen Sosin Martínez shows us how a community archivist is bringing queer Cuban history to the public.
- [A Battle Against Forgetting: Archiving Oral Heritage as Resistance in Myanmar](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/a-battle-against-forgetting-archiving-oral-heritage-as-resistance-in-myanmar/): In this Field Note, Bikash K. Bhattacharya shows us how oral history is a tool of language and cultural preservation for the Kachin community of Myanmar.
- [Maternal healing as a path to community wellness for Black mothers](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/maternal-healing-as-a-path-to-community-wellness-for-black-mothers/): In this Field Note, A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez offers a powerful personal reflection on mothering as a mode of resistance and healing.
- [How a Durham-based Crisis Response Team is Reimagining Public Safety](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/how-a-durham-based-crisis-response-team-is-reimagining-public-safety/): In this Field Note, Yewande Addie shows us an alternative crisis model in Durham, North Carolina, is changing how communities approach mental health and public safety.
- [In a Cafe in the Philippines, Families of Drug War Victims Call for Justice](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/in-a-cafe-in-the-philippines-families-of-drug-war-victims-call-for-justice/): In this Field Note, Tristan James Biglete introduces us to Silingan Cafe, a space for healing, artistic expression, and resistance to Duterte's brutal war against drugs.
- [Disability Justice and the Movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/disability-justice-and-the-movement-to-stop-cop-city-in-atlanta-georgia/): In this Field Note, Marianne Dhenin shows us why police violence and militarization are disability justice issues.
- [The Jiyan Archives: Archiving Histories of Kurdish Women](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/the-jiyan-archives-archiving-histories-of-kurdish-women/): In this Field Note, Matthew Braunginn shows us how, for a community of Kurdish women, creating an archive is an act of cultural resistance.
- [Countering Christian Nationalism With Jesus’ Love](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/countering-christian-nationalism-with-jesus-love/): In this Field Note, Wendi Gordon shares her personal story as a pastor who organizes with faith communities to resist white nationalism.
- [Two Paths Merge: From Captivity to Compassion](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/two-paths-merge-from-captivity-to-compassion/): In this Field Note, Martina Castellanos reflects on the internal journey of a man held captive for six years.
- [What Does Birth Equity Look Like for Younger Parents?](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/what-does-birth-equity-look-like-for-younger-parents/): In this Field Note, Tonya Abari shows us how harmful narratives about "teen pregnancy" impact younger parents' access to care. Community-based care models, which broaden access to doulas, collective prenatal care, and midwives, affirm the needs and agency of younger parents.
- [Providing Disability Justice Advocates with Media Tools Changes The Game](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/providing-disability-justice-advocates-with-media-tools-changes-the-game/): Disability justice is rooted in the knowledge that people with disabilities have agency, power, is a world-wide progressive frontline across borders and political contexts. In this Note, Jody Santos profiles the life and work of 2021 Disability Justice Project Fellow Esther Suubi, who lives and works in Uganda.
- [The Moorat March: Amid Setbacks, Trans Activists March on](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/the-moorat-march-amid-setbacks-trans-activists-march-on/): Amidst a global rise in anti-trans legislation, trans activists and their allies worldwide are digging their heels in. In this Field Note, Arslan Athar shows us what resilience looks like on the ground in Pakistan.
- [When Rhodes Fell: The Many Freedom Struggles of Trans South Africans](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/when-rhodes-fell-the-many-freedom-struggles-of-trans-south-africans/): Following a period of democratization after decades of anti-apartheid struggle, South Africa’s youth continue to reconcile with its impact on the present. In 2015, political science student Chumani Maxwele hurled a bucket of excrement onto a statue of apartheid architect Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, igniting a campaign against statues of Rhodes across South Africa and in Oxford, which houses the prestigious Rhodes Scholars program. In this Field Note, Saif interviews members of The Trans Collective on their work during this campaign and the past decade.
- [On Record: The Rise of Citizen Journalism in the United States](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/on-record-the-rise-of-citizen-journalism-in-the-united-states/): The 2010s saw the beginning of recurring waves of mass media layoffs at major news corporations, while local news struggled to bring in revenue in the digital age. As a result, fewer journalists are around to cover local government closely, creating an information gap between officials and the general public. Lauren Slagter brings us the story of how Documenters network has emerged in the Midwest to fill in that gap.
- [How Language Preservation is Key to Indigenous Resistance](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/how-language-preservation-is-key-to-indigenous-resistance/): Before the Portuguese colonized what we now know as Brazil in the 1500’s, the land was home to over 2,000 tribes for thousands of years. Today, members of surviving tribes are at the forefront of leading political and cultural efforts for Indigenous rights in the country. In this Field Note, Nicole Froio shares a vignette of one teacher’s commitment to the Tupi-Guarani language.
- [Life on the Inside: Building Community and Connection Across Prison Walls](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/life-on-the-inside-building-community-and-connection-across-prison-walls/): The U.S. prison system leads the world in incarceration rates, with the growth of private prisons providing an economic incentive to see these numbers climb. One challenge facing activists is how narratives of incarceration dehumanize people who go through the system. In this Field Note, Ryan M. Moser shows how one visitation program has seen success across multiple states in changing preconceived notions about incarcerated people.
- [Incarcerated Artists Find Success Through Empowerment Avenue](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/incarcerated-artists-find-success-through-empowerment-avenue/): According to the ACLU, nearly two thirds of incarcerated people in the United States hold jobs in state and federal prisons and produce around $11 billion in goods for a pittance, if any compensation at all. In this Field Note, Amelia Arvesen shows how Empowerment Avenue has been successful in providing better paying jobs for writers and artists currently incarcerated.
- [How Oral Histories Bring Justice to Families Separated at the Border](https://narrativeinitiative.org/field-note/how-oral-histories-bring-justice-to-families-separated-at-the-border/): Between 2017 - 2018, the Trump administration separated 5,000 children from their families at the U.S. border without process records on how to reunite them— the so-called “Zero Tolerance Policy.” Today, the Biden administration is still trying to reunite 1,000 children with their families. Last month, a settlement was reached in a class-action lawsuit between the families against the Federal government that would allow them to live and work in the U.S. and apply for asylum. In this Field Note, Fanny Julissa García shows us how oral history practices were used to successfully advocate on behalf of family members.

## Resources
- [Unbuild Walls: A Book Impact Case Study](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/unbuild-walls-a-book-impact-case-study/): We are living in an extraordinary time. The civic institutions that comprise our democracy face unprecedented attacks to their structures, policies, and fundamental mission. Narratives of fear and scarcity have given way to broad policies of criminalization and incarceration, while the current narrative infrastructure — the traditional media landscape and digital media platforms — affords fewer opportunities for narratives promoting belonging, justice, and interdependence.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Virginia Organizing](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-virginia-organizing/): How a grassroots, statewide organization is pushing to expand healthcare access for low-income communities
- [FICGN Narrative Guide](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/ficgn-narrative-guide/): The research grew out of FICGN’s push to shift the name of Second Chance Month, recognized every April, to Fair Chance Month, highlighting the fact that chances are not finite.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Zine: A Resource for Organizers & Advocates](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-zine-for-organizers-advocates/): Throughout history, but particularly during periods of rising authoritarianism, powerful actors and interests have manufactured division to keep communities fighting each other, blame the most vulnerable for social problems, and cast as “dangerous” people and movements who challenge the institutions and systems that keep communities divided. In the United States, “rural-urban divide” is one such narrative. It uses geography as a stand-in for all kinds of difference – replacing the voices, experiences, and visions of communities throughout the country with bland stereotypes: “red” states vs “blue states, “coastal elites,” and so on. Division – and the stories that prop that narrative up – is one of the most powerful tools the opposition can wield.
- [Rural-Urban Unity: A New Narrative Framework](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-a-narrative-framework-for-building-rural-urban-unity/): The election season gives us opportunities to both reflect on the problems our communities face and imagine a better future. But pundits across the political spectrum have used election cycles to promote a harmful, false narrative: the “rural-urban divide.” The "rural-urban divide” myth uses geography as a stand-in for all kinds of difference, replacing the voices, experiences, and visions of communities throughout the country with bland stereotypes: “red” states vs “blue states, “coastal elites,” and so on. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the work of bridging communities across difference, particularly geography, to forge a “more perfect union” has become more urgent than ever.
- [A Tool For Deciding What To Say: Narrating Racial Justice Today](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/a-tool-for-deciding-what-to-say-narrating-racial-justice-today/): This worksheet offers an opportunity to think through writing a narrative statement about racial justice, and highlights decision making points that you may encounter along the way. Where possible, we offer some resources that can help you as you’re considering what to say or how to move forward. Narrating racial justice, especially right now, is very nuanced. You may complete the questions and find that you still need to talk with partners, coalition members, etc. about a final decision - that’s okay!
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Maine People’s Alliance](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-maine-peoples-alliance/): How a values-based approach to advocacy and organizing led to a big win for paid family leave.
- [ICE Detention of Migrant Firefighters: Narrative Landscape Analysis](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/ice-detention-of-migrant-firefighters-report-and-narrative-analysis/): ICE's detention of firefighters responding to the Bear Gulch Fire – the largest wild fire recorded in the Olympic Peninsula – ignites a powerful conversation on immigration enforcement and its cost to all of us.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Transit for All PA!](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-transit-for-all-pa/): How a statewide coalition mobilized communities across geography and ability to push for greater investment in public transit.
- [Funding Narrative Change: How Communities are Shaping and Wielding Narrative Power](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/funding-narrative-change-how-communities-are-shaping-and-wielding-narrative-power/): How community organizations exercise narrative power to advance systemic change.
- [The Courage in Care: Community Doulas and the Joyful Revolution of Birth](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/the-courage-in-care-community-doulas-and-the-joyful-revolution-of-birth/): Can an art exhibit be used as a narrative intervention? The Courage In Care: Community Doulas and the Joyful Revolution of Birth exhibit answered that question and allowed us to test whether engagement in this kind of immersive in-person experience led to deeper learning, reflection, and the potential for action.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Arkansas Public Policy Panel](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-arkansas-public-policy-panel/): Arkansas Public Policy Panel is a statewide organization dedicated to achieving social and economic justice by organizing citizen groups around the state, educating and supporting them to be more effective and powerful, and linking them with one another in coalitions and networks. Perhaps nowhere in the United States has the relationship between access to education and organizing towards multiracial democracy been more starkly connected than Arkansas. Our case study focuses on the education reform fights in Arkansas over the decades, culminating in a current campaign to pass the Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment (ForARKids.org) that does three important things to help Arkansas students thrive: 1) Require any school that receives tax funding to follow the same standards as a public school; 2) Define a minimum quality education in the Arkansas constitution so lawmakers can’t lower standards; and 3) Guarantee access to four of the most effective learning tools that are essential to quality education, such as universal pre-k and support for children in poverty.
- [Texas Floods: Narrative Analysis](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/texas-floods-narrative-analysis/): This analysis is part of Narrative Initiative’s ongoing work to catalyze alignment of climate and immigration movement communicators.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Missouri Workers Center](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-missouri-workers-center/): How low wage workers mobilized voters to stop a tax increase when negotiations for a community-benefits agreement failed to deliver.
- [Harnessing our Power to End Political Violence (HOPE-PV)](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/harnessing-our-power-to-end-political-violence-hope-pv/): Harnessing Our Power to End (HOPE) Political Violence is a guide for communities across the United States to organize to counter political violence.
- [Rural-Urban Unity Project: A Case Study with Communities for Our Colleges](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/rural-urban-unity-project-a-case-study-with-communities-for-our-colleges/): How a multiracial student-centered campaign changed the conversation on access to higher public education
- [Narrative Guide for Immigrant Futures (2025)](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/narrative-guide-for-immigrant-futures-2025/): How To Create Narrative Interventions That Counter Fear and Change Attitudes
- [Funding Narrative Change: An Assessment and Framework](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/funding-narrative-change-an-assessment-and-framework/): The Convergence Partnership just released the first-ever report to focus exclusively on the funding of narrative change work: Funding Narrative Change, An Assessment and Framework.
- [Field Guide: Narrative Research Methodologies](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/field-guide-narrative-research-methodologies/): The field of narrative change offers many approaches to landscape and develop both narratives and messages, and measure impact. Our field guide presents an overview of traditional and emergent research practices in this space.
- [Building Narrative Infrastructure in Minnesota](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/building-narrative-infrastructure-in-minnesota/): In 2017, Narrative Initiative launched a state strategy to support the emergence of narrative change infrastructure at the state level. This report provides an overview of the program as well as lessons and recommendations for narrative change practitioners and funders.
- [Beyond Neoliberalism: A Narrative Approach](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/beyond-neoliberalism-a-narrative-approach/): Neoliberalism has undeniable narrative power. It is also a system in crisis. This report asks: In this moment of crisis, how can narrative strategists advance narratives that center equity and justice and pave the way toward the next economy?
- [Toward New Gravity](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/toward-new-gravity/): During the early years of Narrative Initiative, we interviewed more than 100 thought leaders working on narrative change. This report captures some of what we learned.
- [Four Baskets Field Guide For Narrative Change Practice](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/four-baskets-field-guide-for-narrative-change-practice/): How do we conduct effective narrative change efforts? The Four Baskets Framework lays out four essential elements of successful narrative strategies.
- [Principles for Reframing the National Security Narrative](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/principles-for-reframing-the-national-security-narrative/): Our public discourse is seeded with ideas about security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we are invoking or reinforcing them in our own narration. These principles have been drafted with a view to shine a critical light on those deeply embedded ideas, and equip audiences to envision a different reality, organized around the health and thriving of our human communities and natural world. In particular, we hope to call out and eradicate narratives that sow human division and weaponize fear. We also reject narratives that falsely insist that peace for somecan only be achieved through the deprivation of justice for others. Finally, we wish to call attention to the very poor record of security solutions to political problems: in the medium and long term, the only guaranteed outcomes to security-based solutions are diversion of public resources and postponement of inevitable crises. In contrast, an affirmative emphasis on the values we wish to see at the center of our discourse reveals the possibility for transformative solutions based in human and natural well-being. With these concerns in mind, these are the principles we encourage people to use in framing their communications in debates where “national security” may be invoked.
- [Transforming Narrative Waters: Growing the practice of deep narrative change in the UK](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/transforming-narrative-waters-growing-the-practice-of-deep-narrative-change-in-the-uk/): Transforming Narrative Waters: Growing the practice of deep narrative change in the UK provides background on narrative change practices as well as the opportunities and challenges for narrative work in the UK. The report examines what it takes to design deep narrative change, how to design narrative interventions, and offers recommendations for building more successful narrative change projects in the UK.
- [Four Baskets Self Assessment](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/four-baskets-self-assessment/): The four baskets framework is designed to help practitioners consider different elements of a successful narrative change effort. This self-assessment can be used to reflect on work you’ve already got under way or to start planning a new project.
- [Worksheet for Narrative North Star Readiness](https://narrativeinitiative.org/resource/worksheet-for-narrative-north-star-readiness/): A NNS is a narrative alignment process that pushes us to focus on the big picture. It requires time and resources to synthesize group thinking and hear stories that can situate our narrative direction. We encourage groups to carve out capacity for this type of work.

## Trainings & Workshops
- [Narrative Strategies for Climate Migration](https://narrativeinitiative.org/trainings/narrative-strategies-for-climate-migration/): Narrative Initiative and Ahmed Gaya, Director of The Climate Justice Collaborative at the National Partnership for New Americans for a webinar on Narrative Strategy for Climate Migration: Creating Content to Grow Our Audiences and Our Solutions. As climate disasters intensify globally, millions are forced to leave their homes. Migrant justice and climate justice are interconnected and our movements must be, too. This session explores the current narratives at play, identify needs and opportunities, provides pragmatic guidance for communications and culture projects, and nurtures coordination of our collective power to center human dignity and uplift democracy over disaster capitalism.
- [Narrative Guide for Immigrant Futures](https://narrativeinitiative.org/trainings/narrative-election-guide-for-immigrant-futures/): The Narrative Guide for Immigrant Futures offers new insights on what moves persuadable audiences, and offers tools for designing strategic narrative interventions to advance a pro-immigrant vision.