Ethical Storytelling

Youth Organizing X

Matt, Gari, and Lam explore the practice of ethical storytelling as an essential set of skills in community organizing. Lam explores how his innovative "community activism lawyering" model for legal aid aims to shift the paradigm around who gets to tell the stories in the legal aid profession. Gari shares how her work with Our Climate Voices uses their seven principles of ethical storytelling to amplify the human stories behind climate organizing and activism. They explore the different types of storytelling and the range of purposes it can serve in organizing. Lam offers his thoughts on the relatability, vulnerability, humility, and authenticity necessary for effective storytelling. Then, Lam, Gari, and Matt drill down beneath the tactical considerations of storytelling like narrative construction and intended audience to examine the power dynamics undergirding who actually gets to tell their stories vulnerably, humbly, and authentically, and how they are expected to share them. They unpack popular expectations around stories of success and prestige in organizing, ultimately offering a model for how to talk about our failures. Finally, Gari lays out OCV's seven principles of ethical storytelling to help listeners think about not only how they can better share their own stories, but also how they can be better listeners and solicitors of other folks' stories in order to democratize the practice of storytelling in organizing.

Note: Transcripts for every podcast episode can be found on the podcast's website under 'Transcripts.'

Resources:

• Marshall Ganz's Public Narrative Storytelling Framework
• Professor Drew Westen's "The Political Brain"
• Beyond Legal Aid
• Our Climate Voices 7 Principles of Ethical Storytelling
• Our Climate Voices Instagram
• Our Climate Voices Twitter

Bios:

Gari De Ramos (she/her) is the Digital Content Director for Our Climate Voices. She is an immigrant dedicated to communicating the climate crisis. Born in the Philippines, raised in Hong Kong and New York, she now studies political science at Clark University. Her international upbringing showed her the borderlessness of climate change and its inequities. In Worcester, Gari worked with the Climate Action Circle to write and pass a Climate Emergency Declaration, where she realized the importance of clear, public communication of climate issues. Outside of Our Climate Voices, Gari is a communications intern at MoveOn and fellow for the Ed Markey for Senate campaign.

Lam Nguyen Ho is the Executive Director of Beyond Legal Aid (Beyond). Its model, “community activism lawyering,” shifts the power of the law into the hands of impacted communities by partnering with them to create community-located, community- operated, and community-directed “activism-law programs.” Beyond’s radical network of community programs unites lawyers and activists to brings free legal services to over 4000 people annually, including undocumented immigrants, sex workers, day laborers, and activists, while impacting thousands more through its support of grassroots organizing, advocacy, and activism. Lam graduated from Harvard Law School and holds additional graduate degrees from Brown University and Oxford University. He was previously Chairperson of the Illinois HIV/AIDS Response Review Panel and served on the boards of the Community Law Project and Vietnamese Association of Illinois.