“We are in an imagination battle,” writes adrienne maree brown in her book “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.” “Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.” Brown has teamed up with spoken word artist Walidah Imarisha to lead “visionary fiction” workshops to create strategies for activism and social change, and to compile an anthology of fantastical stories that imagine new, freer worlds without reinforcing dominant narratives of power. (See “Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.”) Their goal is to engage more people, particularly marginalized people, in the imaginative work of creating social change. “One of the ways we perpetuate individualism is by ideating alone, literally coming up with ideas in solitude and then competing to bring them to life. Our workshops are designed to encourage collaborative ideation.”
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