constructing the world we envision, one story at a time.
What is
LIBERATION STORIES?
Liberation Stories is the first anthology created by and for social justice communicators.
Across 29 chapters, movement participants dissect how progressive campaigns between 2000 and 2024 have generated power for revolutionary and radical concepts, such as defunding the police and implementing Medicare for All, with the potential to transform people's everyday lives.
Edited by Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska and the Radical Communicators Network, these case studies combine academic theory, historical examples, and best practices to provide a candid, forward-looking analysis of how real-world narratives evolve and are challenged through social justice communications.
why now?
The 21st century has seen a profound shift in the global socio-political and economic landscape, shaped by seismic interventions ranging from the War on Terror to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, climate justice, the Fight for $15, Palestine liberation, healthcare for all, and queer and trans resistance have illuminated a new narrative—one rooted in an inclusive vision of society, driven by a newly politicized and radicalized generation. This shift did not happen by chance. Movement workers have meticulously crafted communications and narrative strategies, honing their political messaging and storytelling to seize narrative power in today’s struggles.
As far-right and conservative movements continue to gain traction worldwide, we need cutting-edge narrative, storytelling and political education tools now more than ever.
WHO IS IT FOR?
Liberation Stories is accessible to a range of audiences.
First, it provides social-movement workers with a capstone text that deconstructs how organizers, activists, and advocates have harnessed narrative power and communication strategies to advance the vision of a multiracial, multinational, radical democracy across diverse movements, geographies, and regimes. Secondly, it offers everyday people, parents, scholars, and those invested in a more just future an insider's perspective on how narratives are used to wield immense power.
The anthology aims to equip all readers with the tools to collectively develop counter-hegemonic strategies and a proactive vision for a society that benefits the many rather than a privileged few.
read LIBERATION STORIES
To enhance the toolkit available for building progressive and left-leaning narrative power, the Radical Communicators Network is developing a 30-chapter anthology. This anthology analyzes how social justice communicators challenged and dismantled oppressive narratives while advancing radical ideas between 2000 and 2024. It also demystifies 21st-century movement communication strategies and their relationship to organizing and power-building. Additionally, it offers insights from the authors and editors about their experiences in social justice communications.
ABOUT THE RADICAL COMMUNICATORS NETWORK
A Decentralized Network for Narrative Power
The Radical Communicators Network is a community of practice for emerging and experienced movement and communications workers. RadComms builds narrative power for a just and liberatory future.
testimonials
“This is a perfectly timed gift for our movements...inspirational, strategic, tactical and expansive. Through the words and experiences of futurist activists, we are able to envision not just the world we want but also what we need to get there. These are not the master's tools...they are the dream devices that help us create the future we all deserve.”
“Telling better, truer, more liberatory stories about our collective struggle for justice is the critical mandate for our times. In order for stories to move us forward, we have to see ourselves and the ways we have made a way, can make a way, will make a way. Liberation Stories is filled with some of the best thinking about freedom movements for these times, and it is a necessary roadmap for the freer futures to come.”
“In a moment where so much of the public discourse is about the chaos and confusion being unleashed, amplifying the narrative interventions that have worked and are working is critical. Folks who are trying to understand what to make of this moment need a reminder of what and how others have laid the groundwork. Movements don’t happen miraculously and they aren’t sustained without new energy and new commitment and evolving, broad strategy. It’s exciting to add Liberation Stories to the canon of knowledge building materials necessary to keep our work alive.”