Photo by Bill Dickinson on flickr

No matter how well planned your narrative and communications strategies, you may encounter challenges, particularly during times of crisis (such as a local shooting) or change (such as a change in leadership at an organization, partner, or jurisdiction). But there are ways to counter those challenges. Here are some tips:

• Hold fast to your commitment to leading with racial justice. Racial justice is not something to be layered on top of your safety and violence prevention work, nor is it something additive to do. You should embed it in your policies, programs, and narratives from the start. 
• Recognize that past and present-day policies continue to produce racial inequities, perpetuate disparities, and will result in future consequences if not addressed.
• Make sure that your external communications are an extension and reflection of your internal organizational practice. This will facilitate you being able to navigate challenges as a team.
• Make sure you are not tokenizing or overburdening team members who have experienced violence.
• Engage in difficult conversations. Change is not easy, and likely some of our narrative work is about just that. Countering long-held norms will generate resistance. View them as an opportunity to dialogue and change minds.
• Don’t see things as either/or. Change it to a both/and. Advancing racial justice and working toward safety are rarely straightforward paths. Make sure you’ve got a strong vision for the future, and be flexible in the path that gets you there.
• Prioritize and communicate the needs of communities so that decision makers have them top of mind and can address them. Make sure you are making space for community members to feel comfortable and not tokenized so that they can share their authentic stories, and validate and support community members and advocates in their journey to be spokespeople. Don’t shy away from critical or dissenting voices, even if it may make the work more challenging.