Earlier this summer our organising team and friends across the Solidarity Knows No Borders network flew to New Orleans to join the Narrative Power Summit. It was an energising gathering of over 700 creatives, organisers and narrative and communications.
In this blog our Housing Justice Organiser, Jawad Anjum, and Access to Justice organiser, Frances Timberlake, reflect on what was powerful gathering and how share narrative power strategies and tactics to support us in our work for migrant justice in Britain.
Photography by Green Tangerine Photography.
When we fight, we win!
“Authoritarians win through the politics of isolation, and our job is to build belonging.” — Malkia Devich-Cyril, ReFrame board member
The Narrative Power Summit, organised by US based Reframe and The RadComms Network, brought together nearly 700 organisers, artists, cultural strategists, funders, and communicators from across movements and geographies for a 3 day summit in New Orleans and online.
Migrants Organise, with the support of Paul Hamlyn Foundation, coordinated a cohort of 12 organisers from the UK and EU – including Migrants Organise, POMOC, Migrant Democracy Project– to attend the summit with the aim of connecting with comrades across the globe at a time of increased global political divide.
RADICAL COMMUNICATIONS AND SOLIDARITY– Reflections by Jawad Anjum, Housing Justice Organiser
The Summit was an incredible experience of hundreds of organisers, narrative workers, communications workers, storytellers, activists and more working towards a better world.
The importance of collective joy and celebration was instilled in us from the very start with singing, dancing, music and art.
” It felt powerful to be among so many living and breathing the values of solidarity and resilience we practice at Migrants Organise. ”
The “Introduction to Rad School’– a primer narrative power curriculum – run by the Radical Communicators Network- covered things like dominant vs. emergent narratives, principles, flashpoint moments, narrative possibilities and opportunities.
One thing that stood out to me in this was the importance of drawing on organising traditions. It helped us to see ourselves as part of a long history of progressive movements, learn from the past, appreciate those who had come before us and draw inspiration from their stories and tactics.
OUR ‘HOME AWAY FROM HOME” – OUR PANEL
I was proud to represent Migrants Organise on a panel called ‘Our Home Away from Home’ with POMOC and Migrant Democracy Project covering our work on migrant justice in the UK where I shared some of our housing justice work at Migrants Organise.
This led to many fruitful discussions with US based organisers and narrative workers on their strategies and tactics and what we could learn from each other around deportation resistance, tackling the fear of speaking out and tackling the ‘good immigrant’ narrative, the importance of intersectionality e.g. where in the US there have been transphobic ads in Spanish targeting the Latin-American communities.
ACCOUNTABILITY, DECOLONISING MEDIA AND POLITCIAL LINES
In one session, I remember vividly how one neighbourhood organiser introduced themselves with their name and the phrase “I’m accountable to…”. I found this a refreshing way to ground our roles in the people we organise with and recognise where power lies in the work we do.
The session on ‘Decolonising Media’, focused on Puerto Rico and the lack of coverage showing the people there with agency and how they were using their own media to retell their own stories centering the voices of those usually ignored by mainstream media. This was coupled with the importance of community mapping and building the infrastructure for this kind of work.
One of my favourite sessions was about developing a ‘political line’ i.e. a set of principles and ideas that we agree on and which guide us towards action.
Our facilitator covered how the US right wing did this through investment in institutions such as think tanks, using the Republican Party and mainstreaming their ideas through popular media. Some of the challenges for the left were highlighted as lacking a pole (that pulls) i.e. a counterweight to the liberal centre, a coherent theory of power to help people feel powerful so we’re not seen to rearranging the deck-chairs on the titanic and the credibility gap where we haven’t been able to govern nor tell a story of what it’s like when we do.
One of the quotes I remember best from this is “The right is good at saying what they won’t allow to happen to their people”.
Lastly, one of the most inspiring things about the summit was the people of New Orleans themselves and how they are living in the legacy of segregation and white supremacy in the United States and still resisting as their parents and grandparents did before them.
In a chance encounter on a tour, we got to meet Dr. Leona Tate, one of the first black women (then a girl) to attend a desegregated school in the US. She very kindly spoke to us about her experiences in the very school she attended, showed us her classroom where protestors stood chanting outside the windows and under the tiny stairs she and her two classmates used to play to provide protection against the protestors outside.
LIBERATION AND HOPE: Reflections Frances Timberlake, Access to Justice Organiser
” With the recent re-election of Trump, the summit could easily have felt like a daunting and hopeless political context for the summit to take place in, however, the spirit of it was one of fierce joy, resistance and power.
” With the recent re-election of Trump, the summit could easily have felt like a daunting and hopeless political context for the summit to take place in, however, the spirit of it was one of fierce joy, resistance and power.
Each day featured moments of celebration – whether through music, dance or singing – as well as a rich variety of workshops focused less on the challenges facing our movements than on the solutions being fought for.
SOLIDARITY AS A POLITICAL ACT
The most memorable workshop I went to was called ‘Solidarity as a political act’ and was run by the BLIS Collective (Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty). The collective was set up to cultivate solidarity between the indigenous ‘Land Back’ movement and the slavery reparations movement, as well as other transformative and reparative social movements in the US by weaving together the narratives of these movements as a way to build their collective power.
They had tested their theory of change by creating and disseminating a series of messaging videos about the ‘Land Back’ movement alone, the reparations movement alone, and about both of them together with a narrative of their shared problems and shared vision. They found that when people identifying with either movement watched the joint video, they were much more likely to express support for the other movement afterwards than when they watched the video featuring the other movement alone.
Their definition of ‘solidarity’ – as the practice of aligning across differences and seeking out shared interest in the pursuit of shared goal – embraces divergent views as a strength and pits the act of solidarity as one of finding common ground despite factors that may pit groups apart.
This felt like a helpful and hopeful definition for migrant justice work in the UK, where we increasingly need to unite with other communities impacted by state hostility – with movements for racial justice and Black liberation, for climate justice, workers’ movements, with disabled people, trans people, communities hit by austerity cuts.
As the BLIS Collective workshop showed, this will not happen with words alone but with acts that strengthen our relationships, build trust between groups, and create space for dialogue despite differences.
The opening and defining line of the summit, to me, was not about the shared challenges we face but a rallying call to action: “When we fight, we win”.
Let’s keep up the energy- we can’t wait to get our hands on Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements written by Marzena Zukowska and Shanelle Matthews co-organisers of the summit. Order now.
