Our comms director plans to apply what she’s learned at People Powered to her next chapter
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Pam teaching storytelling at the member convening
Our first communications director Pam Bailey has laid a strong foundation for powerful and human-centered communications at People Powered. She is moving on to focus her creative energies full time on the nonprofit organization she founded three years ago, More Than Our Crimes. Before she transitions out of People Powered, we asked her to reflect on what she’s learned and what’s next.
What are your proudest accomplishments from your time at People Powered?
When I first joined People Powered, there were few people-centered stories and interviews featured on our website and other channels. In addition, our collective voice can sound a bit academic. And yet, the “beating heart” of our work is the empowerment of everyday people who are impacted by the actions taken by their government. Thus, I have enjoyed researching and developing stories and interviews that center both the people we benefit and the changemakers who work so hard to engage them. Perhaps the content that I found both the most challenging and rewarding to research and write were the stories on the revolutionary impact of digital participation platforms. I also really enjoyed teaching the art of storytelling at the member convening in Mexico!
What is one of your most valuable learnings from your work with the global participatory democracy community?
I knew about participatory democracy before I joined People Powered, but I have to admit that I didn’t really see it as something that could be applied in the diversity of situations I now know it can be. And I certainly didn’t know about the variety of tactics available, like legislative theater, which I so enjoyed learning deeply about when interviewing Katy Rubin and Nyasha “Frank” Mphalo for their Climate Democracy Accelerator work in Zimbabwe. In fact, now I see opportunities to advocate for participatory democracy in so many aspects of my own community, Washington, D.C.! I plan to team up with Marjan Ehsassi to lay the groundwork for a citizens’ assembly in the American capital to tackle one of the many contentious public debates we face there.
What advice do you have for advocates of participatory democracy?
Tell stories! In particular, if you’re talking to someone who has mostly advocated for better democracy as a street protester (like me, before People Powered), the concept of participatory democracy often sounds too esoteric unless you couple it with a real story about how it has been used to help “ordinary” people change life in their country or community. Trust me, once you start looking for stories in your life and work, you see them everywhere.
Tell us about More Than Our Crimes, the organization that you founded and will now focus on.
Pam speaks during a podcast she just launched, called Voices Unlocked
More Than Our Crimes harnesses the power of storytelling (of course!) to advocate for second chances — in this case, for persons confined for decades in American prisons. We use stories of real people to push for reform of a criminal-legal system that can’t see past people’s worst mistakes, expose the abuse occurring in the prisons that hold them, and build support for their return as productive members of society. (Watch Redemption for an example of two of these stories.) Oh, and guess what one of my goals is now? To get D.C. to use participatory budgeting to allow formerly incarcerated people to decide how to allocate the money that’s budgeted for their support services. After all, who knows better what they need?
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