If Fear Built These Systems, Imagination Can Replace Them

December 10, 2025 2 Comments

Notes from Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025

Years ago, in my first nonprofit communications role, a colleague asked me why I was shaping my work around what the system allowed (what I thought was “realistic”), instead of imagining a system that actually served us. That question changed everything for me.

At Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025, it felt like the whole convening was grappling with that same tension: What possibilities are we leaving behind because we’ve accepted the limits we were handed? If harmful systems were imagined into existence, what could happen if imagined something better?

Throughout panels, performances, research sessions, and even late-night conversations, imagination wasn’t framed as a soft skill. It was treated as political power, and one we need to take seriously if we want to build something better.

Imagination is the Starting Point

The opening panel reminded us that pointing out what’s broken is only step one. Movements can’t grow without a shared picture of what comes next. Fear can ignite urgency, but it rarely sustains people. It shrinks our sense of who belongs and narrows what feels achievable.

Hope, on the other hand, builds the kind of community that lasts. It expands our sense of belonging, creates room for collaboration, strengthens trust, and helps people stay in the work through long periods of uncertainty. And choosing hope doesn’t mean we just ignore the compounding crises we’re in – it means recognizing that hope requires action, discipline, and a willingness to stick with the work even when progress is slow.

Monica Roa from Puentes put it plainly: “The world is indeed shit, and we can choose to compost it together.” The circumstances are tough, but we are not powerless. And if harmful systems were imagined into existence, then new systems can also be imagined.

Later, a Palestinian dabke performance from Canaan Wellspring reinforced that imagination can also be embodied. Culture, rhythm, and collective movement are forms of political storytelling.

Nikko Viquiera from Race Forward added a grounding point: imagination without action is just delusion. Naming and posting aren’t enough – dreams require steps.

Infrastructure Shapes What Imagination Can Actually Do

Rinku Sen from Narrative Initiative grounded the conversation by discussing infrastructure – not in an abstract policy sense, but in terms of what allows imagination to become reality. We at IISC wrote about the importance of infrastructure a few months ago here. Infrastructure is not only organizations or reports. It’s people’s stories, their capacity, their confidence, their relationships. It’s whether everyday people (not only professionals) have what they need to share narratives that matter.

Jennifer Ng’andu from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added that infrastructure also includes trust, support for leaders who are under-resourced or targeted, and the relational glue that keeps movements going.

Anna Castro from the Transgender Law Center reminded us that infrastructure isn’t just the bones, it’s the joints. It’s what makes movement possible. And she pointed out that the South has been living with disinvestment long before national headlines caught up. Southern organizers have had to imagine new solutions out of necessity, and there’s a lot to learn from that.

Together, these points made something clear: imagination is powerful, but it needs structure. Without infrastructure, imagination never makes it off the page.

The Hope Gap: When People Support Change but Don’t Believe It’s Possible

One of the clearest connections between imagination and political power came from folks I deeply admire: the BLIS Collective. Their workshop introduced the Hope Gap, the distance between what people support and what they believe is achievable.

Their research shows major gaps in belief:

• 76% of Black Americans support reparations, but only 21.5% believe it can realistically happen.
• 80% of Indigenous people support Land Back, but only 19% believe it’s possible.

This pattern extends across many bold policies. People want transformative solutions, but decades of disinvestment, backlash, and political messaging have convinced many that big changes are unrealistic. When people don’t believe change is possible, they disengage or lower their expectations. The Hope Gap isn’t just a barrier to action, but a crisis in political imagination.

The BLIS research is ongoing, so instead of presenting final answers, their workshop taught us how to identify Hope Gaps in our own issue areas. We worked collectively to explore narratives that invite participation rather than resignation.

My biggest takeaway was this: we don’t have to start from scratch. We can learn from what already exists. We can amplify the wins, from reparations efforts to LandBack victories, so they feel possible, repeatable, and real. When we lift up these examples, we normalize the idea that what we imagine together can take root.

Imagination Grows Through Community

Outside the formal sessions, the theme of imagination showed up again in the way people gathered. I spent time tending to old and new relationships, eating and dancing together, laughing through a spontaneous mini-makeover session. At one point, nearly everyone said some version of, “This is why we come.”

These moments truly were the heart of the gathering. They confirmed that narrative work, hope-building, and movement strategy grow through connection, the kind you build by showing up, sharing space, and remembering that people are the reason this work moves at all.

ALOK’s Call to Choose Humanity Over Convention

ALOK Vaid-Menon’s brilliant keynote tied the theme together. They asked why our sector continues to choose convention over humanity. They reminded the audience that our values come from the people who have held and supported us through our lives.

Their central point was that all justice work is connected. Trans justice, racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, disability justice – these are not separate fights. When we act like they are, we weaken all of them. And there are systems intentionally built to keep them separate.

ALOK also named the funder-industrial complex’s role in encouraging fragmentation, but insisted that collaboration is where our movements gain power. We shouldn’t need to justify why justice movements are linked. We should care because people matter.

What I’m Taking With Me

• Imagination is political power
• Action gives imagination meaning
• Infrastructure makes imagination possible
• Relationships make imagination sustainable
• Hope must be intentionally built, protected, and nurtured

It is not enough to critique the systems we live in. Just like we need better messaging, we also need better imagination to actively build alternatives. And we need the conditions that allow people to believe in what they already want for the world. If fear built the systems we’re fighting, imagination can replace them.

Take a moment to ask yourself and your team:

What possibilities have we dismissed because we assumed they weren’t realistic?

Start naming them, imagining them, and then start building the infrastructure that makes them real.