Anna Stormer- Program Officer, Communications & Resource Development
Over the past year, and in wake of the murders of Walter Wallace Jr., Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and countless others, LISC Philadelphia dedicated our work and ourselves to doing better, digging deeper, and becoming actively anti-racist. Part of these commitmentsalso requires examining how we share this work. If we’re serious about dismantling racist systems, the process of deciding which stories to tell and which images of our neighbors to post, necessitates the same level of scrutiny and commitment.
While elevating those we work alongside, we need to take critical, intentional and (in some cases) radical measures to unlearn storytelling and narrative tactics rooted in white supremacy, classism, misogyny, etc. With the LISC’s DEIJ Subcommittee on Language, staff across #OneLISC are tackling these complex issues.
Here are some questions that we should be asking ourselves:
By committing to anti-racist communication strategies, we become more cognizant of the larger historical contexts of what we’re sharing, and to what extent that sharing upholds pre-existing racial formulas. In this evolution, our storytelling is able to more fully reflect and celebrate vibrant differences.
Here are some concrete steps that everyone can take:
With the power of storytelling, comes great responsibility. For our work to be sustainable, and move towards racial justice, we must fully and consistently embrace the autonomy of the partners we work alongside. This means making the process of how we share our work more inclusive to the people represented in the stories we’ve been entrusted to share.