By Naomi Bromberg Bar-Yam, PhD
In a recent blog, I wrote about how personal stories become public change. When enough people share similar experiences, patterns emerge. Those patterns become evidence. Evidence informs advocacy. Advocacy can lead to changes in laws, policies, healthcare practices, and social norms.
Stories are powerful, raising the question: Whose stories are we not hearing?
Recently, an advocate shared a story with me about someone who wanted to speak publicly about a workplace issue. The individual’s experience had nothing to do with immigration status, but they were in the middle of citizenship proceedings and were understandably cautious about attracting public attention.
Though the person approved using only her first name, the advocacy organization ultimately decided to fully anonymize the person’s story, removing identifying details and using a pseudonym. Their reasoning was simple: even if the risk was small, the potential consequences for that individual were too great.
This highlights an important challenge for advocacy organizations. Not everyone has the same opportunity, or the same ability, to share their experiences publicly.
Language Access is More Than Translation
The United States is a nation of immigrants. For millions of people English is not their native, most comfortable, language. Language can create barriers to participation in advocacy. It is important for us to hear their experiences with pregnancy, breastfeeding, work, childcare, and healthcare.
When calls for stories, surveys, action alerts, and testimony opportunities are available only in English, many voices are left out. Access to advocacy opportunities in multiple languages is an important first step, but is not, on its own, sufficient.
Organizations often build these relationships through partnerships with trusted community groups, such as community health centers, faith communities, immigrant-serving organizations, WIC programs, peer counselor networks, and organizations such as MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Action Coalition), Health Care for All MA, HealthConnect One, and MomsRising, to name a few. People are understandably more willing to share their experiences with a group based in the community that they know and trust than with an unfamiliar advocacy organization.
When It Isn’t Safe to Tell Your Story
The barriers are deeper than language.
As my advocate colleague shared, some people hesitate to share their stories because they worry about immigration status for themselves or their loved ones, discrimination, employment consequences, harassment, or unwanted public attention. The question is not whether they have a story to tell. It is whether it is safe to tell it.
This creates an important responsibility for advocacy organizations. We must ask ourselves:
- What barriers are preventing people from participating?
- How can we reduce those barriers?
- How can we hear from people without exposing them to unnecessary risks?
Anonymity is an important tool. Blending multiple stories into a verbal collage or combining narratives protects individuals even more. Their experiences can inform advocacy and public policy while protecting the people who lived them.
The goal is not simply to collect more stories. It is to create opportunities for people to participate safely and on their own terms.
Building Advocacy That Includes Everyone
Building inclusive advocacy means providing language access, partnering with trusted community organizations, offering options for anonymity, and honoring what and how each person wishes to share.
When people remain silent because they fear consequences for themselves or their families, that absence is itself information. It tells us that there are voices missing from the conversation. It tells us that some people do not feel safe participating in the very systems that are supposed to serve and represent them. It is our role to acknowledge publicly that the stories we do not hear are just as important as the stories we do.
As advocates, we have a responsibility to acknowledge those missing voices and to consider how their experiences can be represented and respected.
Only then can we begin to hear the full story, and build advocacy that truly reflects the needs of all families.
Naomi Bromberg Bar-Yam, PhD, has been working in maternal and child health for over 35 years as an educator, researcher, advocate, and writer. In addition to serving on the board of Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition, she is past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) and is the founding director emerita of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, which provides safe donor milk to hospitals and families throughout the northeastern US. Learn more about her on her LactSpeak profile.
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