This is the Year

The Center for Story-based Strategy closed their Advanced Training 2025 with a collective ritual. Participants documented personal commitments about what they would carry forward and what they would leave behind—to build a future where justice and liberation are inevitable.

The following poem was written collectively by the 2025 Advanced Training cohort, inspired by Martín Espada’s poem “This Year.”

This is the Year

This is the year we stop apologizing for taking up space.
This is the year we grieve together, out loud and in public.
This is the year we dismantle the myths of white supremacy and capitalism that live in our bodies.
This is the year we build the communities we need—ones that hold us, not just tolerate us.
This is the year we hold schools accountable for what they teach and what they erase.
This is the year we rest without guilt.
This is the year we listen to our ancestors.
This is the year we wake up from the colonial dream.
This is the year we build the bridges and burn what needs to burn.
This is the year we demand our dignity at work, at home, in every system that touches our lives.
This is the year we stand with Palestine, with Sudan, with Congo, with Kashmir.
This is the year we find each other across class and geography and learn what we share.
This is the year we remember that we are the story, not just the storytellers.