Raquel Jesse

Tell us briefly who you are and what you do!

Raquel Jesse is an organizer working with race and class narratives in political communication. Her work focuses on how narratives around race and class can be used to build broader support, and how these approaches can be adapted to different political contexts, including Europe.

Raquel, your session Race-Class Narrative – a proven strategy to combat racism offers a messaging framework designed to counter racism. Can you give us an example of where the Race-Class Narrative as a messaging framework is best used successfully and by who? (Is it designed for large-scale campaigns or can it be used in one-to-one conversations with voters – or something else?)  
The Race-Class Narrative has been widely used and tested in the US. We adapted and tested it for the UK context and proved it works. It is currently used by organizations including NEON and the UK Tax Justice Network. While large-scale campaigns make it easiest to test empirically, RCN is a strategic framework, not just a messaging toolkit, that can be adapted to any context, from national campaigns to one-to-one doorstep conversations. At its core it's about understanding how right-wing actors divide and distract communities, and how to respond effectively.

Can you give us an example that has been or is inspiring to you in how RCN has been successfully used? By yourself or someone else – a personal or organizational win. This question always makes me pause, because RCN is ultimately nothing new. People have always found ways to come together across their differences. The examples that motivate me most: Fred Hampton's Rainbow Coalition in the US, which brought the Black Panthers, the Young Lords and the Young Patriots together to fight police brutality. The Grunwick dispute in the UK, where thousands of workers, Black and white, men and women, united to defend the rights of migrant women workers who had initially been ignored by the union movement. And more recently, Kenmure Street in Glasgow, where neighbours blocked an immigration van and refused to move until two migrant men were released, chanting "let our neighbours go." In most parts of the world, across history and right now, ordinary people have come together across differences, for strangers, to fight for justice. That's not the exception. That's how we've always won.