Top row, left to right: Bob Dylan, Vednita Carter, Dolores Huerta, Trevor Noah. Bottom row: Rosa Parks, Dorothy Allison, Sister Fa, Martin Luther King, Jr.

What can these change creators teach us about meeting people where they are? Everything.

Changing minds and hearts on social justice issues is challenging, even during the best of times. And these are not the best of times.

Today, Americans are more divided, and less willing to listen to one another, than at any point in the last half century. But there are effective strategies for meeting people where they are in order to move them closer to justice. And time-tested ways to break through barriers in order to make sure that your message is heard and acted on.

In The Movement is the Message: Meeting people where they are & breaking through ideological barriers, a January 14th Now & Next Speakers Series presentation, author, activist and Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream will consider new strategies for using our personal stories to create political change … explore ways that language and word choice can open audiences up — or shut them down — in our politically polarized era … make the case for discovering your own, truly unique “change style” … and remind us that the fight for joy is a critical element of the fight for justice.

She’ll also speak to lessons we can learn from iconic movement leaders and opinion shapers (Bob Dylan, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr.), contemporary change creators (novelist Dorothy Allison, comedian Trevor Noah, global hip hop star Sister Fa), and the international community of gender based violence activists Anne has collaborated with through her work with The Voices and Faces Project.

Join us as we kick off World Without Exploitation’s 2021 Now & Next Speakers Series with a presentation that will be timely, necessary and thought-provoking.

The Movement is the Message
A World Without Exploitation Now & Next Speakers Presentation (a virtual program)
Thursday, January 14th, 2021
12 - 1 EST

About The Movement Is the Message presenter Anne K. Ream.

Anne K. Ream is an author, activist and founder of The Voices and Faces Project, an award-winning storytelling initiative and testimonial writing program. The author of Lived Through This, her memoir of a global journey spent listening to gender based violence survivors, Anne’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, the Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, and NewCity Chicago, where she writes regularly on the intersection between music, gender and social justice. A founding co-chair at World Without Exploitation, board president at Justice for Migrant Women, and advisory board member at RAINN — the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization — Anne has been named one of People Magazine’s “Heroes Among Us,” was recognized by the Chicago Tribune as one of “Chicago’s Top 40,” and has received numerous awards for her work, including the National Sexual Violence Resource Council’s Visionary Voice Award, which was presented to Anne at a 2012 Clinton Presidential Center ceremony. A former Group Creative Director at Leo Burnett Worldwide, a global media company, Anne is guided by her belief in the power of story to alter understanding and call the culture to action.