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We join our friends and comrades in mourning the passing of Brandi Collins-Dexter, a visionary scholar who embedded her values and principles in her studies of race, history, and social justice, providing accessible and digestible calls to action that spanned public policy, technology and media studies.
While we never got the privilege to work closely with Brandi, we shared collective space at the Disinfo Defense League, where she served as a recurring guest speaker, facilitator and collaborator. Through her leadership and guidance, we learned how to research disinformation and media manipulation, watched her dig into billionaire CEOs during Media Justice’s #BigTechOnBlast campaign, dissected and discussed her case studies about policing and copaganda narratives, studied her work on the role of racialized disinformation during the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election cycle, and laughed at the back-and-forth banter she brought to Bring Receipts, a podcast she co-hosted with long-time friend Steven Renderos. In many ways, Brandi inspired and encouraged us to continue bringing rigor to our disinformation work and to prioritize uncovering anti-Black racism where it shows up across the narrative landscape.
She was a brilliant thinker, researcher, student and mentor. She was funny, smart and courageous. We join the chorus across the social justice movement sector in paying homage to her. Brandi will receive the United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry’s Parker Award posthumously. The Shorenstein Center, one of Brandi’s home bases, has committed to renaming its annual community award in her honor. Her critiques and analyses were as sharp as steel.
“Brandi was interested in change, not in the aspirational kind but in the concrete. The kind of change that sees giant corporations crumble, and where people get to make their own way.
I decided to share something now as I continue to make sense of what grief is teaching me. With Brandi, it’s taught me a lot about the importance of celebrating our ancestors in the present. Like a true ancestor, she laid a path that others who are Black and nerdy enough to care about media and technology’s role in our lives, can see themselves as part of. It’s not hyperbole to say that many people inside of the media justice movement are here because of Brandi.”
- Steven Renderos, Executive Director at Media Justice
“Brandi was a warrior and now she is a warrior spirit. I wish there had been more time. I wish so many things. But instead of wishing, I will work. To be more accountable, trustworthy and loving. May Brandi’s sarcasm, love, brilliance and heart fill the ecosphere. May it birthmark the day. May she bring us closer to each other, to victory, to love.”
- Malkia Devich Cyril, Founding Director of MediaJustice and ReFrame board member
Team ReFrame sends love and warmth to Brandi’s family, friends, and colleagues. We welcome all to dig into the treasure trove of work she imparted to us, understanding that her legacy will live on as she transitions into our ancestor.
Order your copy of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future, her book that combines pop culture analysis, digital ethnography and investigative journalism to understand the trajectory of Black political, economic and social power in the United States.
Listen to Black Skinhead: A Conversation between Brandi Collins-Dexter and Justin Hendrix for Tech Policy Press
Read the beautiful memorials written by Brandi’s colleagues and friends at Media Justice and Free Press
Watch or listen to Deepfakes, parody, and disinformation with Brandi Collins-Dexter, Jane Lytvynenko and Karen Hao
Watch or listen to Meme Wars: Disinformation, Media Manipulation, and Political Futures, a VAST: Visiting Artist & Scholar Talk between Brandi and Dr. Joan Donovan at the University of Colorado Boulder
Watch or listen to Brandi’s Impact of Anti-Black Radicalization & Disinformation discussion at Aspen Digital
With love and solidarity from all of us,
ReFrame Board & Staff
Malkia Devich-Cyril doesn’t mince words. From the opening moments of NPS 25, Malkia helped us name what time it is — and what narrative power demands of us in this moment. “Authoritarians win through the politics of isolation. Our job is to build belonging.”
On May 8, 2025, as the doors opened at Narrative Power Summit 2025 in New Orleans, writer, strategist, and ReFrame board member Malkia Devich-Cyril opened our first plenary with deep fire and clarity.
In a time of disinformation, fear, and growing repression, Malkia invited us to see narrative not only as a defense against authoritarianism — but as a pathway forward. Their remarks grounded us in the urgency of the moment and the ancestral wisdom needed to navigate it. They reminded us that grief is not weakness — it’s a unifier. It’s power.
📖 To see how this speech shaped the rest of the gathering, read the full recap blog here.
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Welcome radical communicators
Welcome narrative strategists
Welcome power builders and cultural workers
Welcome
It's your moment
It's your time.
I was thinking about one of our teachers of cultural strategy, the anti-colonial psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who wrote in Wretched of the Earth:
“Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.”
To discover our mission, right, I think we have to begin with an accurate assessment of conditions.
I've been thinking about how we are living inside the largest global shift since World War II.
The drivers are many — from healthcare and housing to education and employment — our people's needs are just not being met.
We see identities of belonging being forged by racial and ethnic nationalist movements rather than democratic, reconstructive freedom movements.
We see the interconnected rise of gender essentialism and religious fundamentalism as vehicles for conservatism and control.
And we see the failure of bourgeois democracy increasing the appetite for autocracy and monarchy.
In this context, our movements are under attack. Faith in democracy has weakened. Base building has all but been abandoned.
In this context, narrative strategies and power seem rudderless, weak, almost ineffectual.
Authoritarianism is rising — but so are we.
A way is ending, and a way is being born.
It’s inside of this dialectic between history and future that our present narrative moment is being shaped.
Italian communist and philosopher Antonio Gramsci spoke of that dangerous time between stable governments when many things are possible — from mass loss to mass liberation, from authoritarianism to agency and action, from fascism to new forms of freedom.
This period of collapse and rebirth is characteristic of late-stage capitalism.
But while change is inevitable, the vector and velocity of change will be defined by our actions.
We will determine the direction of the future.
My friend and comrade Jen Soriano just spoke of the need for solidarity narratives — for bridges strong enough to bind, strong enough to block fascism, strong enough to build a new freedom.
James Baldwin has something to say about that in his book No Name in the Street:
“All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie — the lie of their pretended humanism… this means that their history has no moral justification… and that the West has no moral authority.”
Baldwin said America prospered. This prosperity cost millions of people their lives. Now, Baldwin says, even the people who are the most spectacular recipients of the benefits of this prosperity are unable to endure these benefits.
He said they can neither understand them nor do without them. Baldwin said:
“Above all, they cannot imagine the price paid by their victims or subjects for this way of life. And so they cannot afford to know why their victims are revolting.”
This is the formula for a nation or kingdom in decline.
No kingdom can maintain itself by force alone.
Force does not work the way its advocates think it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of the adversary. On the contrary — it reveals the weakness, even the panic, of the adversary.
And this revelation invests the victim with passion.
They want us to be afraid.
They want to invest in us weakness.
They think their actions will paralyze us.
Instead, their violence invests us with passion.
The neo-reactionaries, the neo-conservatives, the oligarchs — they are all consolidating under the MAGA banner to force a national decline and insurrection, a corporate kingdom.
They are using nationalism, including Black nationalism, to wedge Black communities from immigrant communities. This increases right-wing power to roll back civil rights enforcement and redefine citizenship back to pre-1850s definitions of citizen and slave.
But we know something too.
Black people in America have always been — and continue to be — a conjunctive motive force for democracy, peace and justice.
We must counter the nationalism and isolationism that has narrowed Black self-interest. We must build a new belonging for Black people in 21st-century social movements and democracies.
The narrative question is:
How do we re-inspire Black people to believe in — and engage in — organized liberation fights in this time, after neoliberalism has mainlined individualism for decades?
The organizing question is:
What infrastructure can actually absorb these hundreds of thousands of disaffected and disenfranchised people?
How can Black communities understand deportation in the context of the Fugitive Slave Act, rather than as a solution to the limits of Black citizenship?
The right is rising — but so are we.
They are wedging transgender and cisgender people.
Able-bodied and disabled people.
They’re targeting our bodies — through bathroom bans, abortion bans, sports bans, book bans.
But while they are playing their games, we know this: they have no narrative plan for climate disaster.
This is their narrative weakness — and our opportunity.
We can build belonging through our shared experience of loss.
Our narrative strategies must persuade a divestment from patriarchy and an investment in economic redistribution.
What narrative strategies connect these issues — and shift us from a moral argument about sex and gender to a moral argument about wealth and fairness?
The right is rising — but so are we.
They’re trying to wedge the Left from the Liberal. They’re criminalizing the movement for Palestinian sovereignty. Decimating our nonprofit infrastructure. Recalling our elected officials. Withholding resources from our tributaries and higher education.
But we know this moment is an interregnum. It is not full fascist capture.
There is room for our victory.
We understand that the narrative strategy gap is actually a capacity gap. And it’s one we can close.
That the cultural gap is actually an organizing gap. And it’s one we can close.
There is no narrative strategy without organizing — and vice versa.
We can recapture higher education, federal institutions, public schools, civil infrastructure.
Because while we’re being called to protect aspects of bourgeois democracy — we can meet that charge by transforming our base from audiences into agents of change.
Invested with passion.
Guided by strategy.
Grounded in solidarity.
The right is rising — but so are we.
Theirs is a death cult. We believe in living.
They invest in our mass loss.
We radicalize our people at the site of loss.
They dismiss and disenfranchise our grief.
We know collective grief is a powerful unifier — that grief itself is a narrative path to power. A strategy of mutual interest and common benefit.
Grief is a solidarity strategy.
Our mission, family — if we choose to accept it — is to rebuild the narrative strategy of solidarity out of our collective grief.
We know no faction can go it alone.
Solidarity narratives are the ones that will help us win.
Wherever there’s a wedge, we will build a bridge.
Wherever the right has built a bridge, we will build a wedge.
Our message:
There is enough.
There is room.
We can win.
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📺 Watch the full video on Vimeo
📖 Read the full recap blog here
Building Narrative Bridges, Defying Wedges Opening Remarks from Jen Soriano at Narrative Power Summit 2025 On May 8, 2025, in the opening plenary of the Narrative Power Summit, writer, organizer, and ReFrame co-founder and board member Jen Soriano issued a powerful call: build bridges wherever the right tries to drive wedges.
Building Narrative Bridges, Defying Wedges
Opening Remarks from Jen Soriano at Narrative Power Summit 2025
Watch the video
On May 8, 2025, in the opening plenary of the Narrative Power Summit, writer, organizer, and ReFrame co-founder and board member Jen Soriano issued a powerful call: build bridges wherever the right tries to drive wedges.
Jen is a longtime movement strategist and a core voice in the lineage of justice communications — her work spans public health, investigative journalism, narrative strategy, and cross-racial solidarity building. Her recent book Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing was named a best nonfiction book of 2023 by Electric Lit and Kirkus Reviews.
In this opening, she grounded the Summit in what it means to move from narrative advocacy to narrative movement building, anchoring our work in collective identity, shared struggle, and transformational solidarity.
📖 To see how this charge shaped the rest of the Summit, read the full recap blog here.
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Mabuhay.
Some of you know that that means welcome, and it also means long live. And it also is an imperative — it means you better live. Mabuhay.
That's a Tagalog expression that many organizers use to invite people in. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you all about today as a way to set up everything that’s to come — inviting people in, and using our work as a tool for building narrative solidarity.
Some of y’all are familiar with the block and build strategy. It’s a framework to meet this moment that’s been developed by Convergence, Rising Majority, Working Families Party and some other organizations.
And essentially, the idea is: we have to both block fascism at every moment and in every form. And we have to build. We have to build, particularly deeply among different communities, to be able to have the power to move beyond this moment.
So narrative has a role — it has an imperative — in both of those pieces of the strategy.
In blocking fascism, we need to amplify all the stories of resistance. We need to get better at propaganda.
But also in building — and that’s the part I want to lean into. And you’re going to hear some examples of this type of narrative solidarity building, I think, after Malkia and I talk.
We are radical communicators. We’re narrative workers. We’re ReFramers. We’re orators, griots, futurists.
And we’re also, in this moment, called to be bricklayers.
Because we’ve seen what happens when narratives are used as weapons. Narratives can be murder.
But they can also be mortar — to bring communities and issues together.
And we need this, because while Trump takes a chisel to wedge everyone who is not a billionaire, we must take our tools to lay bricks.
To build bridges. And to defy every wedge.
Rather than helping Trump with our own little chisels — we do this too often — and we wedge against ourselves.
We can use our tools to transcend every wedge. And we must, if we hope to build the power to resist fascism — but come out the other side with the foundations of transformation.
And I think this is what it means to live in this moment. And to go beyond narrative advocacy to narrative movement building.
And a key component of narrative movement building is narrative solidarity building.
So on top of our advocacy narratives that are issue-specific, we can build another layer of movement narratives that bridge audiences and communities and issues that might otherwise be left on opposite shores or in separate silos.
So that we can have our narratives meet the reality that Audre Lorde has talked about — which is that none of us lives single-issue lives.
And the measurement of change here is not the language people use to talk about a specific issue.
The measurement of change is: how much closer do we get to mass solidarity?
Because, as Malkia is going to talk more about, solidarity is not an idea.
It’s an action that emerges from:
But we need to build those collective pieces.
And narrative can help contribute to that.
So before I pass it off to Malkia, I’m going to leave you all with a few questions.
To build bridges toward narrative solidarity — which can then lead to solidarity power:
All of this helps build protagonism among those who may feel powerless.
And Makani Themba has said that, in this moment, our narratives maybe should be less about enacting persuasion, and more about building protagonism — to combat the victimization, fear, isolation, and paralysis of fascism.
So meeting this moment is something I think we all can do as narrative strategists — so that we can play a role in moving from “there is no alternative to this fascist slide” to:
We are the alternatives.
So I want to wish everybody a very productive — a very disruptive to fascism — conference.
A very generative and building few days.
And I want to wish everybody:
Mabuhay at Isulong.
Onward.
📺 Watch Jen’s full remarks here
📖 Read the full NPS 25 recap
Nearly 700 movement leaders gathered for Narrative Power Summit 2025 — in New Orleans and online — to build narrative infrastructure, sharpen strategy, and hold space for joy, rage, and resistance. This is what we built together, and where we’re going next.
Nearly 700 movement leaders, organizers, strategists, artists, cultural workers and storytellers came together for Narrative Power Summit 2025, co-hosted by ReFrame and the Radical Communicators Network, in Tremé, New Orleans and online across the globe. Together, we wrestled with the questions we’ve all been carrying: Not just what if we win, but how do we prepare when we win? What if narrative isn’t just reactive, but revolutionary? What does it take to build narrative infrastructure that holds under pressure, especially in the face of rising authoritarianism?
From the big screen of the main ballroom, ReFrame board members and longtime movement leaders Malkia Devich-Cyril and Jen Soriano grounded us in the work ahead. As Malkia reminded us:
“Authoritarians win through the politics of isolation, and our job is to build belonging.” — Malkia Devich-Cyril
Jen followed with the charge:
“The right wins by driving wedges between us. Our task is to build the bridges that keep us connected — through story, through strategy, through struggle.” — Jen Soriano
Their reflections draw from a deep lineage of justice communications — one that recognizes narrative not as a tactic but as infrastructure for organizing, campaigning and cultural transformation.
We showed up with open hearts and sharpened minds. From the first drumbeat to the final mic drop, it was clear: this wasn’t just another conference. This was a pulse check for our movements.
We began with a cultural grounding from the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans, a living tradition of resistance, beauty and survival. Local historian Cierra Chenier reminded us that, "Black New Orleans will be free." Wendi Moore O’Neal and local frontline organizers including Sara Gozalo, Tamia Cenance, Renée Slajda and Amber Walker shared narrative interventions rooted in deep practice of community organizing and cultural resistance. Hermelinda Cortés closed the opening with a charge to the room:
"Narrative power must be principled, strategic and collective. The charge at hand is not just resisting power but preparing to win it. Narrative is a team sport. It’s time for us to coalesce, to be greater than the sum of our parts.” — hermelinda cortès, ReFrame
To read her full opening remarks, click here.
Over the next three days, we moved through dozens of sessions, from narrative design labs to strategy clinics on climate, abortion, AI and antifascism. Some spaces held stillness. Others sparked action. But three themes came up again and again:
“Each session felt like an intervention in the best way. Powerful, clear and rooted in movement.” — Samy Nemir Olivares, Narrative Power Summit 2025 Attendee, In Person
The virtual summit brought the same energy. Attendees built the vibe with playlists, chat love, screen takeovers and real-time organizing. Film screenings, keynotes and workshops came alive onscreen. Many called it the best virtual convening they had ever attended.
“It felt like a family reunion. I laughed, I cried, I built strategy. The virtual space made me feel just as seen and heard as if I were in the room.” — Lourdes Rivas, Narrative Power Summit 2025 Attendee, Virtual
Even folks tuning in from their kitchens or phones felt the NPS-heat. Our virtual fam didn’t just log on, they showed up, dropped wisdom and built community. If you think a chat box can’t be lit, you are mistaken.
Friday night, we turned up. ReFrame’s 10-Year Turn Up kicked off our yearlong anniversary celebration for ten years of building narrative power. We packed Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club in the Tremé with movement family and DJ Rakimbeau kept the dance floor moving. The Original Pinettes, New Orleans’ legendary all-women brass band, lit it up.
It wasn’t just a party. It was a declaration. Joy is strategy. Culture is infrastructure. The room smelled like sweat and sequins. We danced to our own beat, laughed too loud and remembered why we fight for narrative power. The joy was earned. The rhythm was resistance.
Our people are worth celebrating. Since 2015, ReFrame has trained, supported and collaborated with thousands of organizers, creatives and communications strategists. We’re proud of the work and we’re just getting started.
“The sessions were deeply transformative. Every element felt crafted with political care.” — Rukia Lumumba, Narrative Power Summit 2025 Attendee, In Person
Saturday closed with a rapid-fire block of Ignite Talks. Movement builders offered bold, urgent reflections on trans liberation, worker power, reproductive justice, housing, abolition and economic transformation. The format moved fast. Every speaker brought clarity and imagination.
“At some point I forgot I was attending from my laptop. The energy, the facilitation, the culture — everything made me feel like I was right there.” — Sarah Soto, Narrative Power Summit 2025 Attendee, Virtual
After the round of impressive ignite talks, RadComms’ Shanelle Matthews took the mic and brought us home with the kind of clarity that cuts through the noise. She reminded us that narrative isn’t just a tool we use when things fall apart. It’s how we shape what comes next.
“The future isn’t just something that’s happening to us. It’s something we are narrating into existence. The empire will try to write the ending — and why we are here is to make sure they do not get the last word.” — Shanelle Matthews, RadComms
You could feel the shift in the room. Heads nodding. People grabbing their notebooks. That wasn’t just a closing line. It was a charge. For us to pick up the pen, claim the story and build narrative power to win.
This summit launched the next chapter of our work, alongside Radical Communicators and other power builders. In June, we’ll kick off 100 Days of Narrative in Atlanta, a coordinated space for narrative strategy, networked infrastructure and campaign support aimed at what our movements need now to push back the authoritarian threats facing all of us.
100 days of Narrative is part of a larger push – a cross-movement effort to build coherence and drive strategic narrative action. Want in? Sign up here: bit.ly/100daysofnarrative
We closed the space knowing the terrain is shifting but so are we. We’ve got imagination and vision, compelling strategies, a decade of movement narrative power building, and we’ve got each other - a robust network of leaders positioned and ready to answer the charge of this time.
To the facilitators, co-dreamers, tech wizards, cultural workers, funders who get it, and every single person who helped hold this thing down — you have our unending gratitude.
To the people of the 64 parishes of Bulbancha, or what we call New Orleans: thank you for hosting us with deep hospitality and stewardship. We thank you.
Endless gratitude to our movement partners at the Radical Communicators Network for your radness, your throw-down spirit, and for co-holding this powerful space with us. Here's to continuing to build the bench, the infrastructure, and everything our movements need — today and until we all win. We left recharged and recommitted to this work, and we hope you will join us for our next sets of offerings, including the Narrative Nerve Center, ReFrame’s virtual Academy October 20th - 24th, Spanish-language narrative training, and more.
Nos Vemos
— Team ReFrame
Special thank you to Red Feather Films and Green Tangerine Photography
On the final day of the Summit, as the ballroom buzzed with the new tools and connections for the road ahead, RadComms Founder Shanelle Matthews delivered a closing speech that serves as both a battle cry and a strategic blueprint for progressive organizers, strategists and communicators.
The Narrative Power Summit was a call to move ourselves into community and engage in a collective reckoning with the terrain we must navigate and win, together. On the final day of the Summit, as the ballroom buzzed with the new tools and connections for the road ahead, RadComms Founder Shanelle Matthews delivered a closing speech that serves as both a battle cry and a strategic blueprint for progressive organizers, strategists and communicators. What follows are Shanelle’s full closing remarks. Her words remind us of what is at stake and the charge we must take to move forward with courage, purpose, and tenacity for the work ahead.
To see how this charge shaped the rest of the Summit, read the full recap blog here.
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Communicators, we are here because the social movement left has an opportunity. An opportunity to define a compelling and materially grounded story that moves beyond resistance and sets the terms of what comes next and distinguishes us from the Democratic Party and the broader political establishment. Yet we must confront the sober reality. The Left has suffered a significant defeat. We have been outmaneuvered and outresourced. We have been forced into a defensive position as oppositional forces often rapidly and unconstitutionally advance a fascist agenda. The consequence is political loss and material harm to millions of people. In this crisis, we must ask ourselves, what story does the social movement left need to tell right now?
How do we situate ourselves within this historical moment with clarity and with purpose? How do we mobilize a broad base with messaging that is visionary and materially grounded, one that inspires but also builds power at scale? Fashion offers a clear, emotionally compelling narrative, a return to law and order, a scapegoat for every crisis – a vision of power and domination. As we know, the left, in contrast, often struggles to articulate a bold unified alternative, falling into reactive, defensive, or utopian messaging that fails to connect with the daily struggles of working-class people. We cannot afford to remain on the defensive. Too often, we face a false choice between pragmatism and radicalism, between incremental wins and transformative demands. We must reject this binary. Our task is not to water down our vision, but to make it irresistible.
Since the November elections, the noise has been loud. The left is under the microscope. Some say we are siloed, elitist and navel-gazing. Others argue we should mirror the right, vertically integrated, ideologically aligned. Still, we won't critique our organizing reach, our digital presence, or our lack of ground game. These critiques are not without merit. Honest self-assessment is vital, and we can chew gum and walk at the same time. The two must live alongside strategy. That's why we are here, not just to diagnose, but to build, because the truth is, we have receipts.
For decades, we haven't just resisted, we've reoffered reality. We've exposed the war on terror as a racist machine of surveillance and control, and we've linked it to the occupation of Palestine, building solidarity from Gaza to Guantanamo. We've insisted the violence isn't coming from our communities. It's coming from the state. We've made the case that environmental justice is racial justice, that reparations are not charity, that indigenous sovereignty is law. We've reimagined survivor justice beyond carceral logic. We've fought anti-trans legislation with unapologetic truth-telling. We've said, relief must include all of us or none of us. We've moved the healthcare debate from who deserves care to care is a right. We've made fat liberation, long COVID, and HIV visibility, not just health issues, but rather narrative terrain. We shifted abortion from shame to power, from legality to love. We brought Wall Street to its knees and made the fight for 15 a household phrase. We've redefined what democracy could look like, then pushed policy. We've turned policy, data, and organizing to make it real.
We've turned visuals into weapons, made culture irresistible, turned influencers into organizers, and vice versa. We've occupied streets from Lagos to Liverpool to São Paulo, knowing that fascism is global, and so is our hype. This is not the story of failure. It's the story of strategic, intentional disruption, and it is still unfolding.
But the terrain is shifting fast, communicators. We are living through the end of US unipolar dominance. A multipolar world is emerging, one where China and other BRIC nations are challenging US supremacy. Neoliberalism is hemorrhaging legitimacy, and younger generations are not fulfilled by its promises. We are in a moment of imperial decline, but empire does not fall quietly. It lashes out through book bans, surveillance, censorship, manufacture of cultural worlds, and open repression. This is the terrain of reactionary politics.
Reactionary politics is a political stance that seeks to return society to a previous state often idealized and mythologized as a way to resist or reverse progressive change. It is fundamentally backward-looking, opposing movements that expand rights, democratize power, or challenge existing hierarchies. Reactionaries often support authoritarian leadership to, quote, restore order and preserve traditional structures of dominance, such as white supremacy and patriarchy and nationalism. They frequently use cultural nostalgia, like calls to make things great again, to justify exclusionary oppressive policies. From post-civil rights Jim Crow laws to today's efforts to ban books, restrict gender-affirming care, or criminalize protests, reactionary politics relies on fear, repression, and a romanticized past to maintain power in the face of social transformation.
Because of those reactionary politics, we are living in a time of rupture. For those of us committed to narrative power, that rupture is not unexpected. It is what happens when old myths crack under the weight of their own lies. The stories we were taught about who deserves dignity, about what counts as violence, about whose futures matter, are collapsing. Here's the thing. Collapse alone doesn't guarantee freedom. It just guarantees possibility. What comes next will depend on who is ready to narrate it. That's why narrative power today for a Radical Tomorrow isn't just a conference, it's a mandate. Because the future will be fought for on the terrain of meaning and radical communicators on the front lines of that fight.
Our movements are waiting for permission. We are asking institutions to validate them. We are building new common sense in real time. Palestinian resistance is shaping the global moral horizon, defying corporate media narratives and state-sponsored disinformation. Organizers are taking local struggle and scaling it to global urgency through disciplined narrative escalation. Mutual aid collectives continue to rewrite what public safety and community even mean. Our movements are not just resisting systems. We are rehearsing new worlds. We are decentralized but deeply aligned. We are youth-led, elder-guided, and ancestor-backed. And central to this is something radical communicators have always believed, that narrative is not a byproduct of movement. It is a precondition for it.
Resistance today isn't isolated, it's interwoven, because our conditions are linked. Climate collapse is linked to militarism. Migration is linked to colonialism. Gender violence is linked to racial capitalism. Our responses must be, too. You see it in Black and Palestinian liberation movements, cross-training and messaging in global solidarity. You see it in Indigenous climate defenders, building transnational campaigns that connect land defense to cultural survival. You see it in feminists, abolitionists, movements challenging borders, both physical and ideological. Global resistance today is about more than aligning hashtags. It's about building shared narrative infrastructure so our stories reinforce each other rather than compete for air time. Narrative workers are uniquely positioned to help to weave those stories together, not just to be heard, but to reorient the whole conversation about what freedom actually means.
We are in an ideological contest for the future. The Internet made it easier for us to publish, but also easier for disinformation to spread, for propaganda to flourish, for realities to fragment. While our opponents are building disinformation ecosystems, too often, our movements are still treating comms like an afterthought. But if narrative power is today's battlefield, radical communicators must be today's strategists. Because narrative isn't just how people interpret events, it's how they interpret themselves. If we don't provide a story that makes meaning of this collapse, someone else will. Someone will sell them fear instead of freedom.
Movements that last don't just win headlines, they win hearts, they win history, they win horizons. We know what sustains us. Political education that roots our people in power analysis, not just outreach. Narrative discipline that clarifies rather than flattens our differences. Cultural strategy that moves emotions faster than policy memos ever could. Story arcs that reach beyond the urgency of now and offer a glimpse into a livable tomorrow. From the Maroon communities that defied empire to the activists who reframed public health, to the Movement for Black Lives, redefining Black power in life, movements have taught us that the future belongs to those who narrate it.
Building a radical tomorrow means investing in narrative power today. That means training radical communicators like we train organizers, building independent media and cultural ecosystems, not just reacting to dominant media, and treating narrative work not as messaging, but as movement strategy. The stories we tell today determine what is imaginable tomorrow. That's why we're not here to win the next news cycle. We're here to shape the next century.
But you might ask, what does it mean to be a radical communicator? I'm going to borrow from our brilliant comrades, Malkia Devich-Cyril and Jennifer Soriano, who wrote the foreword for Liberation's stories. And in it, they assert, We are the orators, the griots, the futurists who breathe life into new ways of being, leading, and loving. We recognize polarization as a consequence of widening social and economic inequalities, only made worse by intensifying climate change. We understand that these inequalities can only be addressed by building power to shift conditions towards equality and transformative democracy. We refuse to surrender to policies and practices that shift conditions towards authoritarianism. We grow our ranks, expose dominant power, and engage people through vision and hope.
We build the infrastructure necessary to move narratives from marginal to mass line, which means contending and competing with corporate and elite power in a digital age. We are the meaning makers who promote agency, protagonism, and connection in a time of manufactured isolation and fear. Radical communicators, we are the narrators of this era. We are the architects of new mythologies. We are the stewards of political memory and collective imagination. The future isn't just something that's happening to us. It's something that we are narrating into existence.
Resistance.
The empire will try to write the ending, and we are here to make sure that they do not get the last word. Let's build the radical tomorrow by widening our narrative power today.
Thank you.
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This speech was delivered at the RadComms conference in New Orleans. For more information about RadComms and their work building narrative power for progressive movements, visit their website.
On day one of Narrative Power Summit 2025, ReFrame Executive Director hermelinda cortés opened with a charge to the field — a grounding in grief, strategy, and the responsibility of narrative work in a time of rising authoritarianism.
On May 8, 2025, as the halls of the Royal Sonesta buzzed with comrades reunited and new faces meeting for the first time, ReFrame Executive Director hermelinda cortés prepared to open one of the most vital gatherings our movement holds. The Narrative Power Summit was a calling to move ourselves into community and a collective reckoning with the terrain we must navigate together. What follows are hermelinda’s full opening remarks, grounding us in what is at stake and what it will take to move forward with courage and purpose.
To see how this charge shaped the rest of the Summit, read the full recap blog here.
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Good morning, Narrative Power Summit!
Whether you’ve been doing narrative work for one week or thirty years, we are so excited to have you here in New Orleans, a place of contending for power and of grief but also great narrative power, resistance and joy.
Thank you to the locals for having us in your hometown.
As you’ve heard all through the morning, we are in times that are asking the most of us and a lot of us are already giving most of what we’ve got.
On behalf of ReFrame and RadComms, we want to thank you all for trusting us with your time and your resources, given all the work that we are holding while caring for our spirits and our communities as we move to combat authoritarianism taking hold for the next 20-30 years.
The authoritarian playbook is in full force. This is not hyperbole. I say this explicitly because there is danger in not clearly understanding the terrain we are on.
We are not living in a moment where we are waiting for authoritarianism to arrive. We are amidst its grasp, and it is moving quickly, attempting to squeeze us for everything we are and have.
Scholars and our international comrades around the world tell us we have 12-18 months to interrupt an authoritarian coup and to prevent the full consolidation of authoritarianism for a generation. The playbook is in full force.
Comrade, Jiva reminded me yesterday that 70 percent of the globe is living under some sort of authoritarianism.
This is not to alarm or panic us, but to center and to ground ourselves. To link arms and to answer the call to the charge at hand. To do everything we can to fully stop the intimidation, violence, defunding, and silencing of millions of people - the ongoing aim to annihilate immigrants, Black people, people with disabilities and trans folks.
The charge at hand is not just resisting power but preparing to win it.
As narrative workers, we are a robust web that ties culture, organizing, policy, litigation, protest, direct action and more.
We make meaning.
And so, we must make meaning of this time for the masses, not just the toiling required and sounding the alarm, but the hope, rigor and care required to build and enact a compelling future. A future where we all have what we need, a future of joy, where our lives are celebrated.
It is part of our work to remind our people not to do the work of those who would prefer we be eliminated from the planet. As Daniel Hunter told us, do not obey in advance.
Here is what we must do: disrupt, delegitimize, defect and disseminate
We must do this with every sector of society, from teachers and nurses to postal workers and grocery clerks, with scriptwriters and musicians, with journalists and academics and the millions of workers who make this country run.
As you can see, I want to ask you to close your eyes or find a focal point. Plant your feet or find your center. Locate your heart - feel it. Drop your shoulders from your ears, as comrade Anna Castro always reminds us, and take a deep breath.
I want you to remember a moment, scan for it, that compelled you to join the call to be in motion for liberation and freedom.
For many of us, there is not just one moment but many - a series of unfortunate events, often traumatic ones, that made a voice inside of us say - something ain’t right.
I want you to remember what gave you permission to stand in your power, your agency and that you could do something about it. Maybe it was a poster, a film, a march, someone knocking on your door, or phone banking you. Maybe it was a mentor or a stranger.
Come back to the room and take another breath.
For me, narrative entry points helped me find my call to do something about the despair around me as a young, angry, country southern queer, child of immigrants, factory workers, farmers and trailer parks – it was a crime think poster, a radio station I DJed with incarcerated folks in rural VA, direct action to stop mountain top removal with poor white Appalachians, deportation defense for my loved ones, an anti-war march, it was Suzanne Pharr and Kai Lumumba Barrow and Paulina helm Hernandez. And it was the thousands of strangers I talked to across the South who fed me and welcomed me into their homes as a young organizer.
Narrative is a team sport. It’s time for us to coalesce. It is time for us to be greater than the sum of our parts. So here is your call to action.
Do not ignore your rage, fear and grief but channel it.
In the 1950s, during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, leaders like MLK went into hiding after white supremacist and police threats. But the southern Black gay organizer Bayard Rustin organized them to channel their fear. They came out of hiding and moved right on down to the police station and demanded to be arrested. They made a spectacle of repression and violence to reclaim their power.
Over the coming weeks and months, RadComms and ReFrame will make another ask and invitation for you to get real with us about building narrative power to channel our rage, grief and fear, to leverage our hope and our joy.
As they say, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Look to your left and right, look around this room, find your comrades and build new ones. We are going to need each other. Remember what Wendi Moore O’Neal called upon us to remember, how far we’ve come and that we believe.
Let us together build a cacophony of joyful resistance, one rooted in narrative power and solidarity, of bridges and wedges, one calling for a future that is irresistible to join.
Let’s do this y’all! The right is rising but so are we!
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