Worker Leaders Inaugural Cohort 2021-2022
Our inaugural Pop Culture Worker Council (2021 to 2022) is comprised of We Dream in Black Chapter and Affiliate Organization member leaders who are housecleaners, nannies, home care workers, and also storytellers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs.
The Pop Culture Worker Council members spent nine months together exploring how we use, create, and develop stories and other immersive narrative experiences to spark profound shifts in how people think, feel, and behave in the world. Throughout history, culture and storytelling have been the backbone of social movements. How stories – through words and visuals – are told often defines whose lives and voices are valued and whose are not.
In the current political climate, we believe that building the cultural and narrative power of domestic workers is more critical than ever. This means recognizing the deep knowledge domestic workers already hold and valuing and investing in members as savvy storytellers, cultural critics, and sharp spokespeople.
The Pop Culture Worker Council has highlighted some of the stereotypes in entertainment and social media and how we, as domestic workers, can change the narrative.
Kara Levy, We Dream in Black Houston
Fifteen member leaders were selected, and more than seven languages are spoken amongst the cohort: Haitian Creole, Garífuna, Nepali, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese and English. We are a multiracial group of Black, Indigenous, Latinx/e, and AAPI leaders with representation from each sector of domestic work: house cleaners, nannies, home care workers for older adults, people with disabilities, and family caregivers. Members are based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Texas (Houston and the Rio Grande Valley border with Mexico), New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Seattle, California (San Bernardino and East Palo Alto), and Atlanta, GA.
In June of 2022, Pop Culture Worker Council members arrived in Atlanta, GA for their final retreat, graduation, and Dorothy Bolden mural tour. Together with We Dream in Black members throughout Georgia, graduates of the training built a collective altar as a group, showcased their final projects as storytellers, and toured Vine City reflecting on the life and legacy of Dorothy Bolden and the thousands of brave, resilient and powerful domestic workers who have come before us.
Through our program, Pop Culture Worker Council members have strengthened their abilities to analyze, critique, create and (re)imagine narrative, media, and cultural outputs that ensure the diverse knowledge and lived experiences of domestic workers are included at every stage of our culture change strategies. Together, we built generative opportunities to create the stories we’d like to see in the world.
Being a Pop Culture Worker Council member has allowed me to deepen my conversations and bring more awareness to how people feel about domestic workers. It has been powerful to see the two worlds come together.
Pamela Grisham, We Dream in Black Georgia Chapter
Take a virtual tour of the Dorothy Bolden murals in Atlanta, GA, led by Pop Culture Council member leaders. The four-part mural tour series is in Atlanta, Georgia, and celebrates Dorothy Bolden. The murals span four buildings — in a five-mile radius within or close to Vine City — that tell different parts of Dorothy Bolden’s story. We honor her contribution to the civil rights movement, her voter registration efforts, and her leadership in the fight for domestic worker dignity and rights. As storytellers, we are building our narrative power from tv and film to murals in our neighborhoods.
Spotlighting Domestic Workers Representation in Film & TV reveals the baseline for domestic worker representation so it can be used as a catalyst to change the narrative and start more conversations in the industry about accurate and authentic portrayals of domestic workers.
We believe in the power of storytelling to bring domestic workers out of the shadows and into the spotlight. NDWA can support writers and entertainment professionals in telling these stories.
