Our annual Top Social Justice Memes considers memes used or created by our movements to challenge the status quo and shape politics and pop culture.

Memes spread meaning through story, via symbols and practices. More than just internet graphics, memes are transmitted through writing, speech, gestures, images, rituals, and other phenomena. Anything that can be a container for meaning of a larger story can be a meme.

Rooted in nominations from the CSS community, to be considered for the list a meme must meet these criteria: it must challenge the status quo, shape politics and culture (small “p” and small “c”), and have a viral “it” factor, reaching significant scale. Where a meme lands on the list is more art than science. Further, this year we are highlighting how each of these interventions exhibits key principles of Story-based Strategy.

With this list, our goal is to build the capacity of change agents, ourselves included, for understanding what memes travel far and wide with the most impact. If we know our work is to #changethestory, how do we deploy increasingly-effective memes that shape politics and culture towards the justice we all so desperately need?

Without further ado, the Center for Story-based Strategy’s Top Social Justice Memes of 2019:

#10. Jews against I.C.E.

Best Intervention at the Point of Destruction

By lifting Jews up as heroes in this story, organizers cast a community with deep experience in confronting, combatting, and surviving fascism and genocide as the hero of the conflict with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — transforming offices and plain-looking detention centers with their presence. With Jewish activists chanting “Never Again is Now” and “Close the Camps” these plain-looking locations are laid bare for what they are, pieces of a violent apparatus that must be dismantled. This immediately raises the stakes — and makes clear in the fewest words possible which side ICE is on. While using an “against” frame repeats our enemies’ messages, #JewsAgainstICE wins Best Intervention at the Point of Destruction for transforming the meaning of other-wise prosaic urban ICE offices with the battle of the story.

#9. Black forgiveness

Best Use of Making the Invisible Visible

Botham Jean was killed in his own home by his neighbor, Amber Guyger, an off-duty police officer — one of hundreds of people of color killed every year by white Police officers. Guyger’s trial made headlines as first Jean’s brother, and then the (Black) judge presiding over the case, chose to hug Guyger and offer forgiveness in public. For many watching the trial, this obfuscation and absolution in the midst of an ongoing crisis of police murder and violence focused on singular white healing over collective black pain. Folks seized the moment, making the invisible, visible, calling out the way in which #BlackForgiveness shapes these public narratives.

The ritual of forgiveness offers an exit ramp for anyone in danger of seeing racialized patterns of violence and exoneration for what they are. Forgiveness asks us to forget context and patterns — like whiteness and structural racism. These moments and headlines display one of the many counternarratives to the ones pushed by Black Lives Matter organizers for the last 5 years — that forgiveness is something that a killer in this situation can hope for, and even receive. Absolution. “...an act of unrequited love from a Black victim to the white perpetrator.” as one commenter put it. #BlackForgiveness wins Best Use of Making the Invisible Visible by naming this pervasive dynamic, and disrupting a key underlying assumption in the maintenance of racial capitalism: that individual Black folks have the power to magically absolve white folks for participation and benefit from structural racism.

#8. A rapist in your path

Most Viral Intervention

Chile, Mexico, Germany, Turkey, Kenya. An unrelenting bass line underscores the voices singing in unison, as the song ends with “The Rapist is You.” Rooted in Argentinian theorist Rita Segato’s argument that sexual violence is a political problem. This viral choreography started as a theater performance and was adopted by LasTesis, Chilean women organizing street theater, before it was picked up all around the world by women in many different contexts taking action against sexual violence. Incorporating music and choreography, and painting a striking scene with blindfolded performers, this intervention had that special mix of meaning and universality that made it possible to rapidly jump borders and languages. By creating a shared visual — and shared experience for performers — this piece of street theater wins Most Viral Intervention for it’s rapid spread and powerful message.

#7. Me too. Voter.

Best Intervention at the Point of Decision

“#MeTooVoter is a call to all political leaders to recognize the power of survivors as constituents and their responsibility to prioritize ending sexual violence.”

The Drama Triangle is everywhere, once you start seeing it. Here, combining characters forms a new Hero, not just survivors, but survivors who vote, who have a large community and a clear perspective on the value of holding power accountable. Survivors used #MeToo to recast themselves from “Victim” to “Hero; #MeTooVoter further sharpens the vision by claiming electoral power and foreshadowing accountability. Most importantly, #MeTooVoter disrupts the assumption that sexual violence is a private matter, rather than one of community concern — placing the survivor in the voting booth and at the center of a sacred public institution, making this 2019’s Best Intervention at the Point of Decision.

#6. The Crowd: Hong kong protests & global uprisings

Best Show Don’t Tell

Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, England, Haiti, Hong Kong, Lebanon and Puerto Rico. All around the world people are rising up, ignoring the rules, demanding to depose corrupt leaders, defending democratic systems, and demanding change to a global system of wealth inequality that is crushing the vast majority of humanity under its boot. The container of meaning is the pulsing crowd of thousands. This isn’t the neoliberal “wisdom of the crowd” where we each tend to our self-interest and we get the supposedly best outcome. Nope, this is the transformative crowd, the “we”, the irresistible force. One that conveys a strong message by its mere existence, signs and messages being obviated by the sheer scale of the intervention. The crowd stretches to the horizon, obliterating “normalcy” by occupying all the space that “normal” might keep going on in public — millions of people putting their bodies on the line, stirring up a message: this “normal” isn’t normal, the future is ours, we have power together. The Crowd — is this a timeless meme? — wins Best Show Don’t Tell.

#5. AOC & the squad

Best Use of Foreshadowing

Honest, we didn’t put this on the list simply for the schadenfreude. The right loses their shit about The Squad, and AOC in particular, on a nearly daily basis. So something must be going right, right? These four powerful women of color have created an opportunity for people to have representatives that look like themselves and their communities, and who share the life experiences of their constituencies. Practicing Muslim, bartender, refugee, survivor of sexual violence, the child of working class Palestinian immigrants — these are new characters on the national political leadership scene! For supporters, The Squad means speaking truth to power, within the halls of power, bringing the hard-earned wisdom and insight that can only come from the battle scars of reaching those seats in a misogynistic and racist society. It means literally foreshadowing a brighter future. Most importantly, supporters and opposition alike understand the deep and thrilling foreshadowing — of a representative body that is truly representative, one where accountability in government shifts away from allegiance to capital and white supremacy, and towards the grassroots of a multiracial society — winning AOC & The Squad the award for Best Use of Foreshadowing.

#4. Greta & Co.

Best Action Logic

How do we get our society to think long term? How do we think about the future in a culture so focused on the experience of now, the next quarter, only the part of the world that is right in front of our faces?

Pivoting away from well-intentioned missives like “she’s someone’s daughter/sister/mother”, “think of the children” and “think of future generations” youth leaders reminds us that these platitudes entirely miss the point. If young folks’ – or someone’s daughter – is being impacted by an issue, the appropriate next-step is to look to the leadership of those impacted. Center them. Support them moving to the Hero corner of the Drama Triangle. Young folks around the world are doing that, rising up and leading against a rising climate crisis. Greta Thunberg may be the most well-known of these living hero-memes — unsurprising given the dynamics of white supremacy in shaping our change narratives and choosing heroes for our most widely-shared stories. But the bigger story is about leveraging Greta-the-meme to highlight indigenous climate activists and the leadership of young people of color. We know there are too many to mention, heroes like Autumn Peltier, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Sophia Mathur, Isra Hirsi, Jamie Margolin and Veronica Fuentes. Greta and company win Best Action Logic, because you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, when one of these leaders takes the stage.

#3. 1619

Best Intervention in a Control Mythology

1776, 1968, 2001. They’re nothing but four-digit numbers, meaning nothing in and of themselves. But for folks in the US, each of these are powerful memes that contain specific and multi-layered meanings, associated with hundreds of stories related to each. Whether it’s the beginning of a revolution, a year of violent confrontation over civil rights, or the logic of imperial violence finding its way home — each serves as an intersection of the mythologies that we share about history.

“1619” takes the bold approach of driving straight at a control mythology. So many arguments about the existence and need to change systems of power and inequality eventually run afoul of a story of the United States that starts in one particular place, and then proceeds in a progressive manner through history until today. 1619 stops us having to recount the litany of regressive and oppressive policies and actions across our history in order to explain the current moment. And there are probably dozens of legitimate contenders to a starting year for the story of the United States. The entire story is changed by shifting its origin, from a revolution against oppression to the arrival of the first in a wave of people who would build the country up into what it is today: Africans kidnapped and pressed into slavery. 1619 more-accurately locates the origins of our current world in an act of brutal economic transformation, and reframes the “historic experiment” of the United State entirely, making it this year’s Best Intervention in a Control Mythology.

#2. #NoBodyIsDisposable

Best Reframe

The status quo would have us believe that migrants crossing the southern border have made their own choices to be in a tough spot. And that the daily shame, denial of humanity, and restriction from healthcare that fat people in the U.S. endure is the fault of their own choices, and, crucially, completely unrelated to that thing going on in the borderlands. Neoliberalism is a powerful framing force that insists that we focus on the individual not the collective, on choices rather than power. framing the need for explanation — and blame — on individuals for their conditions, steers us away from inquiry about systemic explanations. Collective politics rooted in identity widen this frame, by organizing around common condition and experience, calling attention to patterns of oppression.

Solidarity politics like #NoBodyIsDisposable, #FattiesAgainstFascism and #CripsAgainstTheCamps have the potential to widen the frame even further. They turn the tables on status quo explanations for violence and oppression, offering a powerful psychic break — what the hell does being fat have to do with immigration? — one that asks us to see them as arising from the same root causes. We are called to understand them as arising from the same terrible system and it’s terrible underlying assumptions, among them that an individual’s human value is limited by their economic productivity.

#NoBodyIsDisposable links two places where our economy and society decides that living breathing human beings are without worth — being burdens and threats — disposable, in a word. Fat liberation is interconnected with liberation from imperialist domination. Disability Justice is made more possible in a world without borders. Both struggles must be won in order for people’s lives to be valued beyond their productivity, and instead for their nurturing relationships, caregiving, capacity for joy and creation. #NoBodyIsDisposable wins the award for Best Reframe, for intervening in the deepest assumptions about how human life is valued in our racist and capitalist society, and reaching with inspiring hope at a movement of movements that can move beyond fear and embrace the full spectrum of human dignity.

#1. Blackwomxnfor __________.

Best use of the Drama Triangle

U.S. storytelling about candidates and elections tends to treat candidates like products capable of fulfilling voters’ hopes and dreams. Like a consumer product, candidates are often talked about as if they have features to compare against other products — a packaged deal that’s been designed at the factory, not a living growing human who can be in relation to a constituency. This election storytelling perfectly sets the stage for a government that is distant, delegated power, with nothing in the story about accountability or ongoing relations with voters (at least until the next election cycle). This form of narrative power is the politician-as-hero and it erases “the voter”. The electorate holds voting power but is excluded from narrative power. Instead as voters, we’re told to watch a contest between products on a shelf, our only power the choice amongst them. Biden or Bernie...which hero has the kung-fu action grip?

BlackWomxnFor flips the script, moving a constituency instead of a candidate into the role of hero (and defines that constituency on its own terms with “womxn”, against the dominant culture’s insistent essentialism!) It’s that blank line after the phrase that hints at the transformative power of this meme. This is a story that centers frontline leadership as the rightful heroes, while still engaging in the contest for political power. This is the kind of narrative intervention our political and economic systems urgently need to shift the story of who decides. That blank line makes clear that whose name is placed there, and how long they remain, is a function of continued alignment and accountability to a critical constituency. In the words of the Combahee River Collective Statement: “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” We award #BlackWomxnFor Best Use of the Drama Triangle and the Top Social Justice Meme of 2019.