Reframe Collective · Culture Change
CULTURE SHAPES
WHAT'S POSSIBLE.
Below every law is a story people already believe. Culture writes that story; policy only ratifies it. Reframe Collective is where storytellers, artists, athletes, and creators build narrative power, the most upstream organizing there is, inside the work they already do.
JOIN REFRAME COLLECTIVE
The Infinity Loop of Power™
NARRATIVE IS POWER.
Politics is ideology made law. Ideas become narratives, narratives become policy, policy becomes lived experience, and lived experience feeds the next ideology. Culture and narrative sit near the top of that loop, which is why whoever shapes the story shapes everything downstream. This is where culture changes the country.
It repeats
How the loop turns: what a society values becomes the story that makes it feel normal → the story sets the agenda media and parties debate → that becomes legislation → agencies and police implement it → courts uphold or strike it → people livethe result and the data records it → which hardens the next set of values.
Culture sits at the top. Change the story near the source, and everything downstream bends. That is why this is the most upstream organizing there is.
The cycle, step by step
↺ Step 7 loops back to Step 1. We organize at Step 2 — the story, because it bends every step that follows.
The Oppression Loop
Law + Enforcement + Precedent + Narrative Control
The Liberation Loop
Policy Reform + Community Power + Narrative Shift + Repair → Equality → Equity → Justice → Freedom → Norm Change
★ WHY NARRATIVE
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE IS OWNED.
Six companies, Comcast, Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony, and Amazon, control most of what America watches, and the same handful of asset managers sit atop nearly all of them. In 2025 one family took control of CBS and Paramount. That same year Paramount paid the President sixteen million dollars to settle a lawsuit over a single news edit, and the network lost its news president and the executive producer of its flagship program. When this few people own the megaphone, the dominant narrative is not neutral. It is owned.
Reframe Collective builds the counter-infrastructure: trusted voices who tell the truth where culture is actually made, long before it reaches a courtroom or a floor vote.
0
media firms control most of what America watches
0
asset managers sit atop nearly all of them
$0M
paid to settle a single news edit
NARRATIVE HAS ALWAYS CUT BOTH WAYS.
USED FOR HARM
Story, weaponized against us
Race was a story written to justify bondage — and it had a 400-year head start.
Race as caste
Papal decrees (1450s) → Virginia law (1662) made slavery hereditary by design.
The Birth of a Nation · 1915
Recast the Klan as heroes and fueled its national revival.
The “welfare queen” · the “superpredator”
Manufactured consent for the war on drugs and mass incarceration.
The Central Park Five · 1989
Convicted in the press — and a full-page ad calling for their deaths — before any court ruled. Exonerated years later.
Minstrelsy & blackface · 1830s
The “happy slave” and “coon” caricatures sold dehumanization as entertainment for a century.
The Lost Cause on screen · Gone with the Wind, 1939
Romanticized the plantation and the “faithful slave,” rewriting slavery as nostalgia.
The Willie Horton ad · 1988
A Black man’s mugshot weaponized in a presidential ad to sell fear and the war on crime.
Mugshot vs. yearbook
The Black suspect framed one way, the white one another. The quiet work never stopped.
USED FOR LIBERATION
Story, as power
The same tool, in the right hands, has moved the whole country.
Within Our Gates · 1920 · Oscar Micheaux
The oldest surviving feature by a Black director — a direct answer to Birth of a Nation.
Paul Robeson
Stage and screen for Black dignity; blacklisted for refusing to stop.
Roots · 1977
Made slavery undeniable to a mass audience.
The Cosby Show · Will & Grace
Reframed the Black family; credited with opening the door to marriage equality.
13th · Ava DuVernay
Named the prison system modern slavery.
Get Out · Jordan Peele
Made everyday racism impossible to unsee.
Black Panther · Sinners · Ryan Coogler
Put Black stories on the biggest screens and the deepest imagination.
THE SAME TOOL THAT BUILT THE CAGE CAN UNBUILD IT.
So you are not lending your name. You are narrative infrastructure. A creator who flips a dominant story into a liberating one moves the country before a single bill is filed. That makes you not a bystander to this fight, but one of its heroes.
From the Founder
"The story always comes before the statute. I built Reframe Collective so the people who shape the story shape the country, and I do that work inside the industry, not just about it."
Hannah Naomi Jones is a Culture Change Leader and Narrative Power Storyteller. She is Executive Producer of Vingwengwe: Rhythm of the Fipa, Creative Producer of the POUR'Ddocuseries, and a TEDx speaker, who has pitched to Shondaland, Get Lifted, State Street Pictures, G-Unit Film & TV, and more.
★ THE PATTERN
WHY THE EMBRACE NEVER LASTS.
When a belief becomes profitable or safe, institutions embrace it. When the wind shifts, they retreat. The support was never conviction — it was a market. That is not a reason to quit. It is the window to convert a cultural moment into permanent power before the culture turns again.
HOW THE MOMENT GETS MADE — AND SOLD.
Enough people want it — and believe they can win it.
Justice, repair, and honest storytelling start to feel both necessary and possible at the same time. That belief compounds into momentum.
It builds to a tipping point.
Advocacy stacks until moral leaders, legislators, agencies, and even a president who listens have to move — because the people who put them in power are demanding it.
Then capitalism sells it back to us.
Industries package the look of solidarity with none of the cost. The 2017 Pepsi ad is the warning: a model ends a "protest" by handing a police officer a soda, everyone cheers, the tension dissolves — while real protesters were being tear-gassed and going home to neighborhoods where the fight is not a game.
So in the window, we negotiate for what we actually need — policy, repair, ownership, real power — not a logo, a hashtag, or solidarity in a bottle.
THE BOOM
After George Floyd · 2020
The top 50 U.S. companies pledged nearly $50 billion toward racial equity
Walmart launched a $100 million Center for Racial Equity
Chief diversity officer hiring tripled; equity statements were everywhere
THE RETREAT
2024 – 2025
Walmart retired its Center for Racial Equity; Boeing, Meta, Amazon, McDonald’s, Ford, and Harley-Davidson rolled DEI back
A 2025 executive order moved to end federal DEI programs and equity grants; 1,000+ nonprofits scrubbed "DEI" from their tax filings
Media companies and universities caved; foundations and funders began winding equity money down
Performative support is borrowed power. It lasts only while it pays. George Floyd proved the embrace is real, lucrative, and temporary — a spike, not a shift.
So you use the window to make it permanent. Convert the attention into law, budgets, contracts, and ownership before the culture turns. That is exactly what the 28th Amendment does — it writes repair into the Constitution so the next administration cannot delete it with a memo.
And when the climate turns hostile, the mission does not change — the language adapts. We keep doing the work through what stays fundable and defensible: democracy, civic engagement, leadership development, and narrative power.
Sources: HR Brew / Fox Business (5-year DEI review, 2025); White House EO 14151 (Jan 2025); ProPublica (nonprofit filings, 2025).
★ TAKE ACTION FOR THE CULTURE
MOVE THE CULTURE INSIDE YOUR WORK.
You do not have to leave your lane to fight. The most powerful thing you can do is move one of the Big 12 fights through the work you already make. Here is how, three commitments and the five moves to pull them off.
01
CREATE IT
Put the work inside your work. Write it, direct it, produce it, perform it. Move one of the Big 12 fights through the stories you already tell.
Looks like
A character who votes. A registration drive in the storyline. A plot that names the real harm.
02
AMPLIFY IT
Use your platform and your audience to tell the truth, reframe the narrative, and make justice the dominant story, not the footnote.
Looks like
A post before a vote. A red-carpet moment on the record. Your audience, pointed at the fight.
03
ORGANIZE IT
Bring your industry with you. Host, convene, and move your peers from a single post to coordinated cultural power.
Looks like
A writers-room teach-in. A locker-room pledge. Your peers, off the sidelines.
The toolkit · five moves
CAPTIVATE → TRANSFORM → INFLUENCE
Narrative is what people believe about the world. These are the five moves to shift it — the engine behind every commitment above.
1. Reframe
Change the frame: turn "budget savings" into "the deadly cost of rollbacks."
2. Pivot
Redirect a hostile question back to your message — don’t defend, redirect.
3. Amplify
Boost the truths and voices already winning so they reach further.
4. Counter
Name the dominant lie out loud and dismantle it directly.
5. Attach
Tie your issue to a story or moment people already care about.
★ Culture change in action
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN THE REAL WORLD.
Three ways creators and leaders are already moving the culture — lend your craft, use your platform on repeat, and change the story so the law can change too.
Lend your craft
Ad Council — #AgreeToAgree
The Ad Council’s campaign making Community Violence Intervention (CVI) the story of safety — PSAs by Translation showing CVI workers de-escalate violence and build trust. Hannah is a contributing producer.
Reframes safety from "lock them up" to community-led.
Watch the campaign →Use your platform — again and again
Steve Kerr · W. Kamau Bell
A coach who speaks on gun violence season after season. A storyteller who turns his platform into a classroom on race. The power isn’t one viral post — it’s showing up, substantively, on repeat.
Take a seat, contribute, and keep using your influence. Sustained, not performative.
Change the story, then the law
13th → the 28th
Ava DuVernay’s 13th reframed mass incarceration for millions by naming the 13th Amendment’s "except as punishment" loophole. That is culture moving policy.
13th diagnosed the loophole. The 28th closes it.
Meet the 28th →Credits: #AgreeToAgree campaign © Ad Council / Translation. “13th” © Ava DuVernay / Netflix / Kandoo Films. Steve Kerr and W. Kamau Bell referenced as public examples. Shown for educational and illustrative purposes; all rights belong to their respective owners.
★ WHO THIS IS FOR
EVERY MAKER OF CULTURE
You do not have to be famous. You have to be willing to use what you have. A scene, a song, a post, a locker room, a stage, a following. That is power, and the moment needs it.
COMMIT ONE THING THIS YEAR.
Tell us who you are, the fights you want to move, and how. We will follow up with the ways to plug in, the tools, and the people leading this work.
New to the agenda? Explore the Big 12 fights →SHIFT THE CULTURE. SHIFT WHAT'S POSSIBLE.
Justice has a League. Culture has a movement. Build it with us.