A Wrinkle in Time: Using Pop Culture Stories to Mobilize and Organize Communities
Session Type(s): Training
Training Tag(s): Communications
Starts: Friday, Aug. 3 2:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Aug. 3 3:15 PM (Eastern)
Trump tapped into stories like “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Birth of a Nation” and rode them to victory. Our side has better stories; we just need to be more strategic about using them. Progressive stories like “Coco” or “Black Panther” fill movie screens and the popular fiction the public devours. We must understand how stories work and learn to use them in our strategy. Stories should not be an afterthought to get a few more clicks on a cute graphic. The creative strategies we teach will help you identify stories in popular culture and story archetypes that the people you seek to mobilize respond to. We’ll identify where and how those stories are best told and map out how to integrate them into your organizing work and use them to win.
Trainers
Elana Levin
Elana is Program Director at New Media Mentors, the official trainings partner of Netroots Nation. Through NMM progressive organizations can access training in social media skills any time online.
Elana joins New Media Mentors after serving as digital director for labor unions and community based organizations and has lead trainings for over 4,000 progressives as co-founder of the Organizing 2.0 conference.
Listen to Elana’s podcast about the intersection of comics, nerd culture and social change, Graphic Policy Radio, on any podcast platform.
Elana tweets about the labor movement, New York politics, online organizing and superhero comics at @Elana_Brooklyn.
Other sessions: The Future of Progressive Pop Culture Organizing, Pop Culture Caucus, Live Tweet Your Way to Success
Felicia Perez
Felicia T. Perez is the Innovation Director at the Center for Story-based Strategy. Her previous organizing experience includes work for United Workers Congress, GetEqual, the ACLU of Southern California, No on Proposition 21 campaign, and Californians for Justice. Felicia holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction. She is a published author and co-author of social studies curriculum and in anthologies on teaching and performance. Prior to her work in strategic communications, she taught social studies for twelve years in Los Angeles and was a union chapter chair for UTLA.