Reparations Narrative Tools and Resources

Introduction

Reparations narrative tools and resources by Liberation Ventures and BLIS Collective to support organizers, researchers & artists to build narrative power & increase public support for reparations and the land back movement.

Here is a summary and links to their resources below including:

• The Narrative House
• Reports –
  • There Are New Suns: Building a Transformative Narrative for the Black Reparations Movement
  • Fabric of Repair: The Impact of Braiding Narratives of Reparations and Land Back on Black and Indigenous Audiences
• Worksheets and
• a Timeline about the history of reparations.

Narrative House

The Narrative House is a co-created narrative tool built in coordination with organizers and advocates across the reparations movement.

‍Inspired by other frameworks, platforms, and processes such as the Story Platform, the Waves framework, the Narrative Pyramid, and Narrative Systems, the Narrative House is both an invitation and instrument for future organizing and storytelling that can expand both the conception of and the movement for reparations for Black people.

The Narrative House is not a talking point document that seeks to explain how to communicate about reparations or how we repel our opposition. While that work is important, the Narrative House should be considered a schema. 

‍Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to interpret and understand the world.

While frameworks tend to lean more rigid, schemas are dynamic and subject to revision. Like our physical houses, the Narrative House can be modified, built upon, and expanded. It does not attempt to define reparations, as numerous frameworks already exist for that purpose.

This schema seeks to help anyone who cares about liberation, racial justice, repair, and Black people to orient themselves to the overarching worldview and mental models in which reparations are situated, inspire stories and action that propel this movement forward, and provide a worldview that we believe will both uproot anti-Blackness and increase support for reparations. 

The Narrative House, much like the reparations conversation, is in active construction, and we know we will iterate on it as narratives expand, shift, and change. In the same way that we sleep in the bedroom, read in the living room, eat in the kitchen, and play in the backyard, we invite you to sit with the different levels of the Narrative House and see what resonates with your own personal or organizational story and mission.

Narrative change and the Narrative House, while rooted in a qualitative methodology, lean more toward art than science. There is no magic pill or words that we can say to accelerate the reparations movement—only organizing will fulfill that. 

What we hope to do with this tool is offer an invitation to tell interconnected stories and construct a transformative narrative that can help facilitate organizing and creative action and, in turn, build the power necessary to change the world. 

What the Narrative House Is:

• The Narrative House is an invitation to build narrative power across movements, issues, and spaces.
• The Narrative House is a tool to be used for storytelling, individual and organizational meaning-making, strategic planning, content creation, organizing, grantmaking, and workshopping.
• The Narrative House is oriented toward shifting narratives and culture at the societal level—while there is harm to be repaired between individuals and the information included in the Narrative House may support work at that level, it is primarily geared toward societal narratives baked into U.S. culture

What the Narrative House is Not:

• The Narrative House and the framework itself is not owned by any one organization or entity—any and all who are interested in repairing the harms of white supremacy and colonialism are welcomed.
• The Narrative House is not a talking-points document—it does not assert itself as the way to discuss or articulate arguments for reparations, but is simply one way.
• The Narrative House is not prescriptive—simply repeating the words described throughout the house will not lead to our liberation, only organizing will do that.
• The Narrative House is not definitive—just like a physical house, it will need repairs, adjustments, and additions as the months and years go by.

Core Narratives

The Core Narrative section of the Narrative House is what we hope to see plastered on billboards and protest signs, mentioned in quotes to press, and repeated in conversations and dialogues on reparations. They are an on-ramp to the ideas and themes that undergird the stories that we hope can spread throughout society.

These core narratives can help organizations and individuals make inferences about an understanding of reparations that appropriately places it within an adequate social, economic, psychological, and political context and helps the public think beyond just the financial aspect of reparations.

The Core Narratives are:

Core Narrative 1: More than a check 
The call for reparations must include financial payments but must also go beyond monetary compensation. Reparations that fit into capitalism without also seeking to dismantle it and uproot the anti-black narratives upon which our capitalist system was built will not lead to the liberation of Black people. 

Core Narrative 2: Harm wasn’t linear, repair isn’t linear 
Slavery as an institution was so complex and multifaceted that its tentacles and vestiges touch many aspects of our modern-day society. Therefore, reparations can’t be drawn in a direct line backward. There are multiple culpable parties, including federal and state governments, universities, corporations, and banks, among others.  

Core Narrative 3: Black people are the experts of their own repair
Black people must lead in the conversation on reparations from both an emotional and policy perspective.

Core Narrative 4: Reparations Now! 
The longer we wait to repair the trauma of slavery and its legacy, the longer we deny and evade the dignity, integrity, and belonging that is birthed from repair.

Core Narrative 5: History itself is a reparations issue
The erasure of Black history must also be taken into account for repair in any comprehensive reparations effort.

Core Narrative 6: The past is not yet the past; it is with us today
The sins of our past still impact Black people today in a significant and systematic way. 

Core Narrative 7: You can’t heal what hasn’t been revealed
There is immense emancipatory power in truth-telling. Excavating the truths of our nation will set us free.

Core Narrative 8: Reparations will grow from the ground
The power being grown at the local level on reparations will build momentum toward the national call for reparations. Reparations at the local, institutional, and national levels are all needed. 

Core Narrative 9: Reparations is an issue of now
Today’s harm, particularly the violence wrought on Black communities through the carceral system, must be included in the reparations conversation.  

Core Narrative 10: The debt exceeds slavery 
Reparations is a modern-day issue and the demand for reparations is not just about slavery. 

Core Narrative 11: The future is Black, the future is free
If we center Black people in our advocacy, the future will be free for all of us. 

Core Narrative 12: Reparations are the seed where all Black life can thrive
Reparations, as a process and a lens, create the opportunity for freedom and liberation for all Black people everywhere. 

Core Narrative 13: We need unity, not uniformity
Black people are not a monolith and will never be 100 percent aligned on any topic—though there is potential and opportunity for collaboration toward a shared vision. 

More core narratives may emerge, particularly within specific cities and states across the country, in deeper exploration of the Narrative Areas of Opportunity. Emergence, according to writer and organizer adrienne marie brown, “notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies.”

As more connections are made within the reparations movement, we envision, both at the narrative and interpersonal levels, more core narratives will emerge and spread across spaces.

Questions for Organizations to Consider

Organizers and communications/narrative staff within organizations may answer the following questions:

• Are there any current campaigns or storytelling initiatives that you are currently involved in and/or leading that already focus on reparations or employ a reparative lens? (ie: baby bonds, guaranteed income pilots, bail funds, etc)
  • If so, are there any core narratives in the Narrative House that can be used or modified that support that work?
  • If not, are there core narratives that you currently use or would like to use that would push forward narratives surrounding repair and/or reparations?
• Do your campaigns or storytelling initiatives uplift any core narrative (or one close to it) identified in the Narrative House?
  • If so, what are they, and how do they show up in your communications, advocacy, and/or policy materials and initiatives?
• Do your campaigns or storytelling initiatives face any of the narrative roadblocks identified in this report? If so, what are the ways in which we are currently working to counter these narratives?
• Are there any core narratives that are listed in the Narrative House that can be infused within your campaigns?

How to Use the Narrative House

Use this worksheet to delve deeper into how you can utilize the different parts of the Narrative House.

Access Resources

Websites

• Narrative House by the The Reparations Narrative Lab
• BLIS Collective
• Liberation Ventures

Reports

There Are New Suns: Building a Transformative Narrative for the Black Reparations Movement, Liberation Ventures (PDF 78 pgs)
This report, titled after a quote from science-fiction writer Octavia Butler, is for advocates, organizers, strategists, writers, researchers, artists, cultural makers, funders, and anyone else interested in diving deeper into the essence of reparations and developing strategies that can forward this movement. Throughout the report, you’ll find activities, poems, and stories that we hope activate your imagination and inspire you to join us as we tell new stories in service of building a new world. 

The reparations movement, in coordination with other liberatory and decolonial movements across the globe, has the potential to transform the world—to give rise to a new sun. Source pg. 13

Fabric of Repair: The Impact of Braiding Narratives of Reparations and Land Back on Black and
Indigenous Audiences, BLIS Collective (PDF 45 pgs)

To build and expand this narrative, visible and vocal solidarity between Black and Indigenous movements and communities is essential, as it sets the foundation for a united movement that the broader public can rally behind. True collective action toward reparative justice would lead to the transformation of a state built on the racial division and subjugation of Indigenous and Black people, making it essential to replace narratives of division with those that promote solidarity. – p. 12

“The United States’ economic foundation rests upon two interlinked systems of oppression: the enslavement of African people and the systematic dispossession and genocide of Indigenous people, land, and waters.

This report examines how narratives of solidarity between Black and Indigenous communities might strengthen movements for reparative policies…Our findings reveal substantial baseline support for both movements among primary stakeholders (Black and Indigenous populations), with the braided narrative proving most effective at increasing overall support…

…This research provides practical insights for strengthening transformative movements through strategic narrative alignment, while emphasizing the need to address the gap between support and perceived achievability.” – p. 3

Worksheets

Worksheets from the Narrative House by Liberation Ventures. The worksheets will help you explore each of the narrative areas of opportunity listed in the narrative house, in order to support your storytelling on reparations.

• How to use Narrative House
• Cycle-Breaking, World-Making
• Becoming Reparationists
• Black History In Your Face!
• Reparations Unlocking Democracy
• Repair in Practice
• Radical Solidarity

Timeline

• History of reparations: A timeline of the movement for Black Liberation

Explore Further

• To Build Narrative Power for Reparations, We Need Infrastructure
• Solidarity by Design, Decolonizing Wealth Project
• Self-care For Storytellers
• Putting Systems In Your Stories
• Storytelling with Community: Applying Co-design Principles in Collaborative Storytelling for Advocacy Campaigns
• The Power of Story: The Story of Self, Us and Now, Marshall Ganz
• Storytelling for Systems Change by Centre for Public Impact
• Transformational Ethical Story Telling (TEST) Framework
• Narrative and Storytelling: Training and Planning Tools
• Narrative, Storytelling and Messaging Directories and Libraries
• Narrative & Storytelling: A Democracy Resource Hub Guide
• Storytelling, Narrative and Messaging Courses
• Narrative Change: Start Here