Who is an American?
Millions of immigrants make this country their home, contribute to its well being— it's political, social, and civic fabric. However, our policies tend to criminalize and demonize immigrant communities, separate families and exploit labor. To build a country that values all Americans, we need to change the narrative and policies to protect immigrants rather than attack them.
Race Forward’s Butterfly Lab, a three-year initiative launched in 2020, brought together an incredibly diverse group of leaders with vast experience and expertise in advocacy, the law, human rights, policy, organizing, and popular culture to build power for effective pro-immigrant narratives that honor the humanity of migrants, refugees, and immigrants.
Our Work
The work within the Butterfly Lab consisted of 2 Phases:
- Phase 1: A cohort of 16 immigrant narrative leaders developed, tested, and scaled immigration narratives that met our political moment and advanced the vision for the world we want to build.
- Phase 2: We shared our learnings through narrative strategy and design training and webinars, resulting in a community of thousands of narrative practitioners and movement leaders ready to carry on pro-immigrant narrative work in the future.
During these phases, we launched the Chrysalis Lab, a grant program that awarded four grantees $80,000 each to test pro-immigrant narratives at scale, supported by coaching and technical assistance. We also partnered with The Opportunity Agenda and Worthy Strategy Group on research to uncover narrative opportunities to significantly expand public support and investment in a pro-immigrant future.
The Butterfly Lab was funded by Unbound Philanthropy, Luminate, the Open Society Foundations and the Oak Foundation.
Reports and Toolkits
