New Year, Narrative Shift

While the New Year ritual of forward-facing goal setting is important, this time of year is also an opportunity to reflect and practice gratitude. It’s in that spirit that I share my gratitude for how CHOOSE 180 inspires so many of us to speak and think differently – about our communities, about young people, and about the work we’re engaged in to transform systems.

When I joined the CHOOSE 180 board in 2018, I sat down with the wonderful Mr. Doug Wheeler, Jr.; my good friend and CHOOSE 180’s Executive Director at the time, Sean Goode; and founding Board Member and lovely human Jimmy Hung. We met about a mile from the house I grew up in in Rainier Valley in the 80s and 90s. Mr. Wheeler asked me why I was interested in joining the board.

I thought about how inspired I was by something unique I’d seen CHOOSE 180 do at a recent workshop I’d attended, and at the Evening Of Choice celebration I’d been to. At both events it felt like young people were seen, celebrated, and spoken into in uniquely affirming and powerful ways. Growing up I often heard my community and my cohort generally described with phrases like “at-risk” and “disadvantaged”, and any of our strengths or assets were described as “exceptional” rather than expected. Decades later in my work with youth in school and community settings, I saw the not-so-subtle messages embedded in those phrases shape the way young people were labeled and treated in harmful ways.

CHOOSE 180 said the quiet part out loud. No, young people aren’t problems to solve, they embody possibility. Our neighborhoods aren’t at-risk or disadvantaged, they are communities with inherent beauty despite historic policies of exclusion and oppression. We don’t want a version of public safety that centers around arresting and incarcerating, we want solutions that build community well-being and foster healing.

During a time when words and phrases are quickly pushed out, churned up, co-opted, and then discarded, it can almost feel beyond the point to focus on the nuance of the words we use. Rather than nit-pick on semantics, shouldn’t we focus on the bigger picture, what really matters?

But in fact, words and ideas really do matter. Not only do they describe what we currently see and experience, but they can also be used to transform how we think and see, and in turn can push us to re-shape our reality. CHOOSE 180 embraces this truth by providing a space and a community that is committed to exploring, examining, and then shifting the way we talk about what we’re collectively building together. (Check out this post and this post as great examples.) It provides an opportunity to think differently, see differently, and build differently.

Many years since first joining the board, today I see a CHOOSE 180 that has doubled-down on its commitment to forward-movement, evolution, and narrative shifting. And while words matter, it’s about so much more than simply finding and replacing one word or phrase for another. It’s about unearthing what we really mean by what we say, so that we can move toward what serves us and not just away from what doesn’t. 

And in fact, actually there is room for a New Year’s-style, forward-facing resolution. Let us resolve to do the hard work, the heart-work, of building connections, of addressing the root causes of harm, and of centering healing over punishment. So here’s to a new year of transformation, possibility, and hope.

-Kia Franklin, CHOOSE 180 Board Member