Building Narrative Power With Community Organizers
“What I hope for in the future for young people and youth just like me is for these shameful systems, incarceration, juvenile halls to be abolished. ”
This week in Los Angeles, Represent Justice, alongside community partners Homeboy Industries, LA Youth Uprising (LAYUP), and LA Regional Reentry Partnership (LARRP), premiered Diverted—a youth justice film that challenges fear-based narratives and centers what system-impacted young people have long known to be true: healing, diversion, and community care do what punishment never can.
The premiere marked the culmination of Represent Justice’s LA Community Storytelling initiative—a multi-year effort to build narrative power by equipping organizers working directly with system-impacted communities with the tools, training, and resources to tell their own stories—and use them to drive systems change.
At Represent Justice, we know that narrative shapes policy, and we know it is narrative that will need to reshape the policies of youth punishment. One story alone can be powerful, but it isn’t enough to change the system; that’s why, when we design programs to build narrative power, we focus on creating narrative infrastructure.
Our Community Storytelling initiative is an example of this work. Diverted was co-created in partnership with Homeboy Industries, LA Youth Uprising (LAYUP), and LA Regional Reentry Partnership (LARRP)—organizations deeply embedded in youth justice, diversion, and reentry work across Los Angeles County. These partners were not advisors or subjects. They were collaborators.
From the outset, this initiative was designed to reverse a common dynamic in advocacy storytelling: stories about communities being extracted, shaped externally, and then circulated without building lasting capacity. Instead, this initiative focused on placing narrative tools directly in the hands of organizers doing the work on the ground. We shared Represent Justice trainings, insights, and impact campaign strategies, and engaged in a braintrust to guide and shape the process.
Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles County’s ongoing youth justice failures, and told through the voices of three young Angelenos Daniel, Mora and Edin, Diverted refuses sensational framing. Instead, it offers a clear indictment of policies that criminalize childhood—and a compelling vision of what works when communities are resourced to support young people’s growth and healing.
As the film enters the world, we look forward to partners showcasing it at community screenings, viewers engaging in conversations about the concepts captured via this film, and continued partnership with youth justice organizations across Los Angeles. We invite educators, organizers, policymakers, and community members to engage with this story and join us in reimagining what youth justice can be.
Our final Community Storytelling project, a result of our work with Louisiana-based community partners, is set to premiere in 2026.
The Community Storytelling project is part of Represent Justice’s Original Storytelling program, which equips formerly incarcerated leaders and community partners directly serving system-impacted communities with the skills to advance advocacy initiatives through narrative work.
