Storytellers Needed: Fire this world up

Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood

Did you just go to Power Shift 2011? If so, you probably participated in the largest grassroots organizing training in our movement’s history. Hopefully, you learned how to tell your story of what motivates you to do this work and rise to the climate challenge. Perhaps you learned how to tell the story of your community, the struggles, hopes, and challenges of your friends, neighbors, dorm-mates, or co-workers.

I think you might have learned how to the story of now, why now is the time to get involved, to make the change needed to head off the climate crisis and build a clean energy economy strong enough to pull us out of the financial wreckage our out-of-control Wall street banks left us.

Guess what? Those stories can move people, motivate your friends and family to join the fight, and fire up a nationwide movement. However, you don’t have to always tell those stories one at a time. You can tell them to thousands of our friends, to our movement. I want to read these stories and learn about you, why you get up to take on climate change, your struggles, your victories.

So, consider It’s Getting Hot in Here an extension of your voice. The megaphone you need to tell the world, your movement, and your new friends all about you. We just broke two million views, so somebody out here is paying attention. Once you tell your story, stick around. You are going to learn from people, from all over the country, who just like you, care a whole hell of lot.

They may be nearby or clear across the country, organizing at an Ivy League or in the hollers of Appalachia, but if you read their stories, hear their heartbreak, their tears of joy, and their brilliant, beautiful ideas, you will slowly change.

They will become your new friends, your allies, those whose work keeps you going during the tough times and those who celebrate with you in the best of times. We need you and you will grow to find you need them too.

So, if you are that storyteller, email me: richard[at]firedupmedia.com and let’s get you started telling your stories right here on It’s Getting Hot in Here. All my love and in solidarity for a future worth fighting for.

Filed under: Online Organizing, Political Participation, Power Shift, Visioning, Youth Leaders It’s Getting Hot in Here is the voice of a growing movement. A community media project, it features the student and youth leaders from the movement to stop global warming and to build a more just and sustainable future.

Read more at ItsGettingHotInHere.org