“Climate justice” is a phrase that is often thrown around in advocacy spaces, but it can sometimes feel detached from the language that community members use in their everyday lives to describe their most immediate experiences. Powerful storytelling can bridge that understanding gap through storytelling that elevates the tangible impact climate change has on real people.
Resource Media partnered with GreenLatinos (a founding partner through our La Madre Tierra initiative) to elevate storytelling featuring examples of the real impacts that climate change has on Latine communities to advance – and humanize – a narrative around their Latino Climate Justice Framework. We zeroed in on a video and digital strategy project to show how extreme heat affects migrant workers, centering our ethical storytelling practice on respect, cultural sensitivity, and empowerment.
White-led environmental organizations and other progressive advocates sometimes frame Latine communities as ‘victims’ in their storytelling; waiting for a ‘white savior’ to come to the rescue. Even organizations led by people of color can sometimes unintentionally reinforce a victimhood storyline – further perpetuating and even re-traumatizing marginalized people.
Through Resource Media’s ethical storytelling practices, we flip the script. In this case, we worked closely with GreenLatinos to co-craft a story that reflected the full spectrum of what farmworkers experience in Arizona under extreme heat conditions. We rejected the one-dimensional storyline of being victimized by what happens unjustly by presenting a more holistic picture of farmworkers speaking up for their rights in the face of terrible conditions – and the community around them rallying in support to take action.
At Resource Media, we are not just implementers. We are long-term strategists who work arm-in-arm with our advocacy partners to design winning campaigns that generate direct impact on the ground. For this project, our team collaborated to design a digital strategy that translated into an organizing opportunity. Through online promotion on Meta, LinkedIn, and StackAdapt, we generated over 145,000 impressions, over 1,000 email sign ups in support of the Latino Climate Justice Framework, and nearly 4,000 website page views, which represented a 49% engagement rate.
The GreenLatinos team leveraged this surge in online support to grow momentum ahead of their annual D.C. fly-in advocacy week. They brought Latine community leader advocates from across the country to visit the Capitol and talk to their Congressional representatives. The GreenLatinos team also hosted a screening of the farmworker video to raise awareness of not just this issue, but of how the community is leading the way – pointing to concrete actions that can be taken to address the impacts that Latine communities face with climate change.
