Story Threads: Narrative Priorities
Every person has a right to art, to creative expression, and to access and learn about the stories of their people. Let’s bring that art to our people, let’s learn from the ways our people are already making life-affirming culture today. We need to challenge the dangerous, conservative ideas that are already taking hold in our communities.
Narrative or story threads are powerful storytelling tools for two reasons:
- Narrative threads are expansive enough for an artist to make it their own and specific enough to hold multiple stories together.
- As artists, we are constantly weaving stories about who we are, the ways we are connected, and how we build a future where we’re all celebrated and invested in.
We hold each other up and keep us safe.
In NYC, we face systems that criminalize and deport our people, tear our families apart, and leave us in a state of fear. Survivors of both state and interpersonal violence are left isolated and hurting.
Together, we weave networks of people invested in the well-being of one another. Safety, to our communities, looks like full bellies and adequate housing. When our needs are met, we are able to show up and stand up for one another. We keep ourselves safe by cultivating loving relationships with each other. When our people are caged, we fight for their freedom. We challenge the courts and district attorneys who call us guilty without sufficient proof. We stand up to the crooked cops who cover up evidence and threaten us with impunity.
It is our duty and honor to keep us safe because we believe that we are more powerful when we come together.
We are rooted in freedom, and together, we are destined to thrive.
New York City grew from the idea of freedom, but increased systemic inequities have hindered the city from being in full bloom.
Living in a constant state of survival ensures that we never have the capacity to think beyond the next day. It is impossible to think outside of the status quo when that reality is actively killing you. Only without the constant stress of how we survive, can we imagine how we thrive.
We are human, and we all have the birthright of pursuing life with joy. We were born to be free from a culture of austerity and build a community with a foundation of abundance, love, and mutual support.
We build intergenerational success.
NYC has a legacy of Intergenerational success, a promise and commitment linking generations and ideologies. It is our responsibility to collectively shape our liberated futures, acknowledging that the work done by those before us is carried on, uplifted, and ushered forward by those who will come after us. As revolutionaries, this is critical to our why.
Why do we continue to fight for the tomorrow we dream of while knowing we may not experience the fruit of this labor? It grounds us, pulls the scope of our existence out wide, and shows us that we are not working in service to one another but rather in tandem. The ways in which we exist are dependent on our love and faith in one another.
We are committed to tending our gardens.
We are both the gardens and the gardeners. We are the legacy of gentle, nurturing hands and the planters of the next crop. We cannot forget how far our work has come or let the weight of what still remains stifle our spirits. With connections to deep roots of the past, we have the agency to cultivate our sprouting selves and till the earth to prepare for what will come next — because it will come.
Yes, there is a struggle. Droughts of inspiration, overwrought soil of burnout, and floods of expectations. And there is song and dancing and art. There are community meals and bear hugs and laughter. And there is victory.
We must choose to practice hope so that the fruit we bear is sweet rather than bitter. It is about shaping our understanding of the present and being grounded in reality without letting it weigh us down.
