Introducing Just Community: Narratives That Build Community Power
Over the past five years, Community Spring has grown from an initial concept into a robust organization built on two fundamental pillars: Income and Power. Each pillar represents a distinct approach to creating systemic change: Just Income provides guaranteed income to formerly incarcerated people, supporting them through the challenges of re-entering society after experiencing the social isolation, emotional trauma, and financial devastation of incarceration. While the criminal justice system often sets people up for failure, Just Income creates pathways for success.
Just Power ensures that impacted individuals directly influence the decisions affecting their communities. Through the fellowship, participants have leveraged their lived experience to drive policy changes around issues like housing, mental health first aid, court fines and fees, and guaranteed income.
The Need for Cultural and Narrative Transformation
Despite these successes, Community Spring and its supporters recognized a crucial gap: without broader cultural and narrative change, our ability to create lasting systemic change remains limited. Too many people still believe that only some are worthy of economic security and social power. We need to change the culture that informs these pernicious perspectives by changing the perspectives themselves. This, we believe, is accomplished through building narrative power.
Narrative power is the ability to shape the stories our society tells about who belongs, who deserves resources, and what justice looks like. When communities control their own narratives, they can challenge harmful assumptions, redefine public understanding, and create new possibilities for systemic change. This power extends beyond individual stories to reshape the fundamental beliefs that influence policy, culture, and collective action.
Introducing Just Community
Narrative change work can only be done in community. Just Community brings people together to build community and change exclusionary narratives around poverty and incarceration. We build narrative power by centering the wisdom and lived experience of our community members. Through collaborative workshops and creative spaces, we develop shared frameworks for understanding how false narratives have limited access to opportunity. Together, we craft powerful counter-narratives that assert everyone's right to participate fully in society, to access resources, and to contribute their unique gifts to our community's wellbeing.
We approach this work through three key strategies.
Communications: Collaborating with local artists and cultural practitioners to develop and share compelling counter-narratives through various communications channels
Network: Fostering connections with affinity groups working on decarceration, social support for justice-impacted people, and artists and racial justice workers addressing anti-black racism through intersectional approaches
Workshops: Developing community learning and public pedagogy with people impacted by racial and economic injustice, creating spaces for small groups to learn, heal, and grow together as we reshape harmful narratives, tell more complex, inclusive and compelling stories, and build a culture that normalizes difference, belonging and community as a form of wealth.
Join Us in Creating Change
We believe that all people deserve safety, economic stability, and freedom from punitive approaches to change. We’re committed to designing systems that prioritize collective benefit and liberation, recognizing that this transformation happens gradually and must be led by impacted communities and individuals.
We invite you to join us by following our social media, participating in our events and activities where possible, and offering financial support if you are able. For questions or to learn more, please contact Wolf (Anne Wolf) at awolf@csgnv.org.
