In the past two decades, progressives have gotten far more savvy at the strategy we call “narrative shift,” learning how to challenge the dominant story and change the common sense on key issues. For example, on same-sex marriage, activists drove a sea change in public sentiment — from 27% support in 1996 to 71% in 2023. And research shows that Occupy Wall Street, which some criticized as a “blip,” was, as one organizer put it, actually a “spark” that ignited mass movements for economic justice, from the Fight for $15 and a Union to the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, and changed how everyday people think about economic inequality. In this episode, we hear from two experts about how to achieve narrative shifts.

As co-founder and former head of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, Cristina Jimenez Moreta, was instrumental in crafting a narrative of immigrant pride, dignity, and belonging that helped bring about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), providing protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants. Cristina is now a Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY and co-chair of Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, where she mentors young and emerging leaders and encourages them to think through hard questions like how to make the most of upsurge moments like the Movement for Black Lives, how to harness the power of new technologies like AI, and how to rethink our organizing models to build a bigger “we.”

Our next guest is Alan Jenkins, a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization devoted to narrative shift strategies. Now a Harvard Law professor, Alan has co-authored the 1/6 comic book series, which imagines what might have happened if the MAGA insurrection had succeeded. Alan unpacks the differences between messaging, framing, and narrative shifts, and gives examples of how conservatives and progressives have succeeded in changing the terms of debates. In a wide-ranging conversation, he considers how far we’ve come since Ronald Reagan suggested we “open the border both ways,” how grassroots activists at the 2008 Heartland Presidential Forum in Iowa steered candidate Obama toward a rhetoric of “community values,” and how comic books and interventions in popular culture can help foster the kinds of conversations our troubled nation needs.

Did Occupy Wall Street Make a Difference?, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, The Nation, October 4/11, 2021

Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, January 2013