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.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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
- Disrupt - dominant narratives of fear, scarcity and division
- Delegitimize - authoritarian actors, billionaire technocrats, and corporate control
- Defect -compel moderate and skeptical audiences away from reactionary alignment
- Disseminate - content that is bold, joyful and unapologetically rooted in radical, progressive, liberatory values and visions
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!
_______________________________________________________________________________________
.jpeg)
.png)
%20(1).png)
