Shanelle Mathews
I collaborate with social justice activists, organizations, and campaigns to inspire action and build narrative power. I recently completed a tenure as the Movement for Black Lives communications director.
In 2016, I founded the Radical Communicators Network (RadComms) to strengthen the field of narrative power. I also train leftist and progressive spokespeople to make critical, real-time interventions through the media.
In 2017, I joined The New School as its inaugural Activist-in-Residence. I spent ten semesters on faculty teaching Black Resistance 1960 — Present, Critical Theory and Social Justice, and Resistance Narratives from 21st Century Social Movements.
In the fall of 2023, I joined City College at the City University of New York as their incoming Distinguished Lecturer, where I teach Narrative Power in the Black Radical Tradition, Rhetoric of Liberation: The Role of Narrative Power in Contemporary Movements, and Black Women's Resistance: Narratives of Safety and Survival.
I am co-authoring a forthcoming anthology detailing world-building narrative campaigns and strategies led by progressive and leftist social movement communications workers in the 21st century.
Radical Communicators Network
The Radical Communicators Network is a community of practice for emerging and experienced movement and communications workers. We strengthen and radically politicize the ecosystem of social change communications, cross-pollinate ideas across movements, and incubate strategies to build narrative power for a just and liberatory future.
RadComms envisions a world where powerful narratives serve collective care, mutual aid, and self-determination for all people and where radical imagination creates conditions for people to meet their communal and material needs.
The Radical Communicators Network (RadComms) is a community of practice for social justice communicators to cross-pollinate discussions across various movements, organizations, levels of experience, geographies, languages, and political associations. This network incubates transnational connections, visionary narrative strategy, and collaboratively developed frameworks and best practices.
Media Training
The role of the narrative practitioner in combatting oppressive forces is to advance counter-hegemonic values, frameworks, and practices across the domains of power that structure the organization of society and influence the experiences of individuals within it. Narrative power goes beyond storytelling; it’s about who gets to frame the conversation, who is heard, and whose experiences are validated. Dominant narratives often serve to maintain the status quo, privileging voices and perspectives that uphold systems of power, whether it’s white supremacy, colonialism, or corporate capitalism. But there’s power in the margins—especially among those who are resisting these systems and crafting stories of liberation, resilience, and solidarity.