Liberation Stories Shows The Narrative Power Of Social Justice Movements
Liberation Stories Shows The Narrative Power Of Social Justice Movements
By Tia Carol Jones
An anthology of narratives about social justice movements for organizers, activists and social justice communicators was released last month with the goal of serving as a practitioners guide. “Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements,” was edited by Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska and the Radical Communications Network (RadComms). At a recent event at the University of Illinois Chicago Social Justice Gallery, Matthews, Zukowska, along with contributing authors Rachel Jacoby, Tre Bosley and Zaineb Mohammed participated in a discussion, moderated by Cathy J. Cohen.
“We felt this need to create a space for radical communicators to be able to analyze the most powerful social movements of our time; to be able to serve as a blueprint for future generations,” Zukowska said.
The Social Justice Initiative (SJI) at the UIC is a collective of scholar activists who use their knowledge and academic infrastructure to ensure the stories of marginalized people are told in the classrooms and beyond. Matthews said that RadComms values the work of the Social Justice Initiative – the thinking and the activism, which is why RadComms wanted to partner with SJI. She said RadComms thought it was important to collaborate with people who are aligned with their values and shared their vision of society.
Matthews is a scholar activist, who teaches full-time in the department of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies at the City College of New York and also teaches a class that explores the Liberation Stories text. Zukowska is an organizer and coordinator of Liberation Stories’ Narrative Power Curriculum known as RadSchool. Liberation Stories has been a six-year journey. The support and enthusiasm they received around what started out as a booklet, morphed into a larger anthology with more than 60 contributors, whose work spans climate justice, Black liberation, abolition and reparations movements, as well as Indigenous sovereignty and trans rights.
Zukowska said the chapters are co-authored and grounded in real work and practical examples. They said the authors focused on a sober analysis of what worked and what didn’t, with the intent that something that is usable. They said they want Liberation Stories to be a manual people come back to time and time again. Matthews said all of the chapters name systems and not just the symptoms of oppression.
“Many of the authors will help audiences understand the structures behind the stories they’re telling, structures like capitalism and white supremacy, and patriarchy, because oftentimes the mainstream media will just talk about surface level events, this is what we call the battle of the stories versus the story of the battle,” Matthew said. She added that it was important for the editors and the authors to help people understand how dominant narratives impact our lives in very material ways.
Those dominant narratives reflect the beliefs of the most powerful people in society and often obscure the beliefs, desires, wishes and experiences of everyone else, which can lead to a very narrow understanding of reality. Matthews said the job that social movement workers have taken is to interpret and unobscure the demands of working class people so they can have what they need to live – affordable housing, dignified wages, affordable healthcare and a government system that works for everyone. The chapters highlight the agency of everyday working class people and not just their victimhood.
Zukowska said the stories show that another world is possible and is being built, through stories of everyday people who have driven social movements. Matthews said she wants readers to take away that there are people who are committed to fighting for a free and just future for everybody.
“We’re hoping that people are able to take away from this book tools to be able to tell stories of their communities, what they believe in, what they want for their lives, what they believe they deserve, how they want to see their children live, their futures,” Matthews said. She added that she hopes people take away some imagination for how people envision their future, what they want their future to look like.
To purchase Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements, visit www.bookshop.org, or other independent booksellers. For more information about RadComms, visit www.radcommsnetwork.org. For more information about Liberation Stories, visit www.liberationstories.com.
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