Changing the story about park and green space equity: A messaging guide for advocates

Introduction

Take a deep breath, and imagine: outdoor space that belongs to everyone, where all people — no matter their race or income — can breathe freely and safely. Communities across the country are working toward that vision, building their power to literally transform the landscape and ensure that the distribution of parks and green space is equitable, that structures are in place so they remain so, and that community members are the ones leading this work.

How we talk about parks and green spaces can help — or hinder — that progress. To bring park equity to scale, we need to center narratives led by those who are rooted in communities where park inequities are profound. But what is the dominant narrative about parks and green space? And how different is that dominant narrative from the narrative we want to see?

Currently, dominant narratives minimize the importance of parks and green space for health and well-being. As we will see, while people think that parks are “universally good” and “nice to have,” they do not consider them essential.¹ Furthermore, when people think of the word “park,” grass and vegetation come to mind — but not people or wildlife.² When people’s conceptualizations of parks and green spaces are “empty” of people and wildlife, it is harder for them to see the connection and value of parks to the well being of individuals and communities — and why park and green space equity matters.

In short, we need a new narrative: one that centers community and connects park and green space to health, joy, and liberation.

It won’t be enough to counter these harmful narratives merely by insisting that parks and green space are essential because, oddly enough, simply refuting an argument can reinforce it if the language does not evoke a different understanding of the problem. To transform the dominant narrative, communities need to tell their own stories, clearly connect their solutions to their values, and deliver those messages with confidence in many different venues.

The narrative should be flexible so that people coming from different issue areas can see themselves in the story of park equity, elevate and articulate the intersections with their work, and support each other in building power and achieving the necessary changes to bring about park and green space equity. Our new narrative must also adapt to hold a number of policy solutions that cross different issue areas so that advocates can use it to respond to immediate needs and to build support for our long-term vision. In other words, this new narrative will need to encompass the joy of the world we want to see, not just the harms we need to rectify in the short term.

That’s what this guide is for. In this resource, you will find frames, language, and communication tools that racial justice and public health advocates can use to shape a new narrative that helps decision-makers see park equity as the result of an inclusive process that can bring more green space into communities, along with the joy and liberation that parks and green space promise. To construct this tool, Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG) used an iterative, inclusive process that centers the experiences of those working to advance park equity, health equity, and racial justice — advocates and organizers who know that green space equity happens when processes are in place that recognize the right of residents to determine how land is used, and that mechanisms exist to make those decisions lasting and fair.

As part of this work, BMSG participated in the P3 (People, Parks, and Power) initiative, which leverages community power building in different locales around the country to transform how decisions are made about parks and green spaces. Throughout every phase of our analysis, we listened closely to P3 participants as they worked to build power to create park and green space equity, putting into practice Prevention Institute’s three-part framework of procedural, distributional, and structural equity.

How we wrote this guide

BMSG’s Yellow Books are comprehensive guides, each based on research and deep listening, that provide advocates with consistent, strong messages, taking into account the specific policy context in which the message will be heard, the target audience, the messenger who will deliver the message, and the media context (such as in pitching stories to reporters or answering difficult questions from decision-makers). We call them Yellow Books because they are modeled after an early guide in tobacco control, known as the Yellow Book, that helped the field understand the importance of framing and media advocacy. Many of the concepts we apply to this park equity yellow book are adapted from Berkeley Media Studies Group’s (BMSG) prior work, which includes message guides on sexual violence, assault, and harassment;³ early care and education;⁴ tobacco;⁵ and preventing gun violence and firearm suicide.⁶

We used multiple research methods, including news analysis, textual analysis, and in-depth interviews and listening sessions to investigate how problems and solutions about parks and green space are discussed, including who is part of the story about park equity and who is missing. We also partnered with Real Language, a linguistics strategy firm, to refine our message recommendations and explore what metaphors could help make communication around parks and green space relatable, powerful, and effective. We found that a key metaphor — breathing — brings together elements that connect disparate local policy actions and help advance a more unified narrative about parks and green spaces that centers equity and liberation.

Unless otherwise specified, in this guide “we” refers to a collective “we” — all of us who are involved in advancing park and green space equity whether we are community organizers on the ground, park and green space advocates, media public health researchers and advocates like ourselves, or decision makers working to create equitable processes.

What do we mean by “parks and green space equity?”

To be specific about what it takes to change processes, transform systems, and establish equity, we drew on Prevention Institute’s green space equity framework.⁷ That framework explains how advocates can intentionally change systemic barriers rooted in government policies and practices to establish equitable parks and green spaces. Prevention Institute identifies three types of equity: procedural, distributional, and structural. Each one addresses different questions, such as:

• Who makes decisions about parks and green spaces (procedural equity)? While doing research for this message guide, BMSG heard from advocates frustrated that discussions about green spaces were, “mostly out the mouth of white people who were already connected to different developers and power.” Procedural equity seeks to remedy that problem by centering “the most powerful voices in the fights against environmental and climate injustices … the communities most directly affected.” In other words, procedural equity hinges on processes to center “those communities, their leadership, and their priorities” to ensures that decision making is equitable and engages the people most affected.⁸
  
• Who benefits from parks and green space equity, and who experiences costs (distributional equity)? Distributional equity is about location and amount: where are parks, and who has access to them? Distributional equity is what many people think of when they think of equity in the context of green spaces: when BMSG studied how park and green spaces appeared in news coverage, for example, we learned that if park equity appeared at all it was about the distribution of parks. News coverage rarely addressed other facets of equity, such as whether there was equitable decision making around park and green space development.
  
• How do parks and green spaces redress historical injustice and inequities (structural equity)? Parks and green spaces represent opportunities to, as the Land Trust Alliance put it, “address inequities regarding access to land … [and ensure] the permanence of land conservation.”⁹ For example, many Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) residents have been wary of new green space developments in their communities because they are worried about gentrification: they want to live in neighborhoods lush with parks where their families can enjoy all the benefits to health and well-being, but they are worried that “improv[ing] the neighborhood by someone else’s standards [would] push them out.” A process rooted in structural equity would mean that BIPOC community members are fully included and their pride of place and belonging considered first in decision making — and that improvements in their neighborhoods would not push them out.

In the Developing strategy and Crafting your message sections of this guide, we provide examples of procedural, distributional, and structural equity from actual campaigns to illustrate what these concepts mean in real life and demonstrate how to talk about them in plain language.

In summary

This guide is a tool to help communities, organizers, and advocates build narrative power: the ability for a group to have its story be the story. Building narrative power is a long-term goal created in the present, campaign by campaign, organizer by organizer, community by community. We will know we have narrative power when our ideas, values, and norms about parks and green space are replicated, reproduced, and reified over decades.¹⁰ Groups like the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, which seeks to educate the public about and preserve California Indian history and cultures, for example, are building narrative power by retelling “California Indian history and culture from an Indian perspective.”¹¹ The California Indian Museum and Cultural Center holds goals of fostering a “renaissance of California Indian culture” and “enshrining the leadership of California native people, as it establishes park and green space equity.” This is just one example of building narrative power that will be reinforced by others as our voices get louder.

This kind of work is long-term. The good news is that the change we are seeking today sets us up for the next issue we want to win and the narratives that will help us get there. As each campaign or policy action unfolds, the story we tell about park and green space equity will become the story that dominates the narrative.

Let’s get started.

Developing strategy

Naturally this communication guide, like any, will have a lot to say about messages. But underlying any strategic message about green space and park equity is the reason we want a message in the first place: we want a world where every community can breathe free and enjoy parks and green space. That means that before crafting a message, you need to have an overall strategy that specifies the immediate issue you want to address, clarifies the solution that you will advocate for, identifies who has the power to make the change, and names the allies who will help make your case.

What’s our entry point?

There are many compelling answers to the question “what needs to happen to make parks and green spaces equitable, and why does it matter?” Just as people might enter a park for different reasons, advocates have many different motivations for seeking park and green space equity, including health concerns, violence prevention, the mitigation of climate breakdown,¹² or establishing housing stability or community cohesion. These starting points may be interconnected: the same group might champion park and green space equity because its members are committed to conservation for its own sake and because they value the health benefits and community connections a park can foster. In short, parks and green space can be linked to many other efforts to create and maintain communities that transform the legacies of slavery and colonialism and ensure equity, justice, and liberation for everyone.

_{Table 1: Examples of different entry points to park and green space equity}

Whatever our starting point, knowing what we want to change and why we want to change it, from broad structural transformation to incremental policy shifts, is the anchor for changing the narrative about parks and green space and, even more importantly, for building narrative power as we do the work.

What’s our policy approach?

Naming the changes we want to see so parks and green spaces are fairly distributed, and subject to equitable decision making processes, is the foundation of changing narratives about parks and green space; the change can be big and visionary about the world we want to see and, at times, narrow and precise about the immediate next step. Different communities are pursuing green space equity in different ways (see Table 2). Some are working on equitable land use policies, anti-displacement measures, documenting needs and inequities, or instituting public finance measures for park improvement. Others are working towards prioritizing equity internally through organizational policies like increasing community engagement in decision making. Ultimately, how each community will arrive at their change will differ depending on the circumstances and goals, so “how” we achieve will likely be a combination of organizing and advocacy to pressure decision makers to enact equitable policies.

Table 2: Approaches for achieving park and green space equity

What do we need to know?

Whatever policy approach we take, some basic questions can help us refine our overall strategy by defining what we want to happen, and specifying what needs to happen in the near term to achieve that. These questions will influence all the subsequent decisions about messages and other communication tactics, and will help connect incremental policy changes to our long term vision for parks and green spaces that invite and engage every community.

We can establish our overall strategy by asking five questions:

1. What is the problem?

Park and green space inequities are big problems with deep roots. Groups seeking to advance solutions and change narratives about park and green space equity will need to name the precise part of the problem they are trying to address in their current campaign. It can be challenging to think about how to prioritize what to work on first, but remember:

In other words, think big, but remember that even the most transformative changes tend to happen one step at a time. While many solutions can make a message appealing to many people, when there are too many different options at the same time, your audience might become torn about what solutions to prioritize — or worse, they might choose something you would not put at the top of your list.

2. What is the solution?

In campaigns, solutions must match the specific part of the problem the campaign is addressing — which will likely be narrower than the overall transformative change we want to see. That’s okay: as we build power over time, the incremental changes will combine to transform the way parks and green spaces are created, distributed, and sustained.

3. Who has the power to make change?

The answer to this question might change over time, as we make progress and move to our next goal. Remember, too, that one person might have the power to make change, or it might be a committee or other group.

4. Who are our partners?

Creating and maintaining equitable parks and green spaces can intersect with many other issues, each of which presents an opportunity to identify allies. And as we consider who our allies are, we can also ask equity-rooted questions like:

• Whose perspectives need to be part of the strategy from the beginning?
• Whose voices are usually not part of the conversation we want to have? Do they need to be? How can we include them?
• How can we elevate the voices of people most affected by the lack of thriving parks and green space, including those who have been left out of the conversation?

5. What will it take to influence those who have the power to make change?

Some groups will go directly to their audience one-on-one, some will use mass media, and many will combine different approaches to reach their audience.

Example: The Water Collaborative’s overall strategy

In a campaign to address flooding in New Orleans, The Water Collaborative — a network dedicated to water and sustainability — urged the city to address many of the challenges New Orleans faces by creating steady funding for infrastructure upgrades, reforestation, and new parks while ensuring transparency and equitable implementation. Specifically, The Water Collaborative’s overall strategy (see Table 3) focused on imposing a stormwater fee (a fee that real estate owners pay based on the amount of impervious surface on their property) and a new stormwater management utility.

_{Table 3: Overall strategy used by The Water Collaborative}

The Water Collaborative’s overall strategy incorporated all three dimensions of equity.

The Collaborative brought “resident voices to the forefront”³² (procedural equity) through deep community listening and education with residents: a 10-part workshop series to educate community members, focus groups, canvassing, town hall meetings, public events including panel discussions, and a press event. The Collaborative then presented a polished policy package that embedded ongoing community oversight via the creation of an advisory committee and a website to keep the public informed on how revenue will be managed.

The Collaborative considered different options for increasing revenue but decided to advocate for a fee like those used in Baltimore and Philadelphia, since it would be more equitable than raising property taxes. The fee would apply to all properties, including tax-exempt business properties like the Superdome, and would ensure that low-income homeowners would not foot the whole bill (distributional equity).

The outcome they sought would address long-term inequities (structural equity) by protecting New Orleans’ “most vulnerable residents through affordability and infrastructure investments”³² and establishing governance changes. Additionally, if New Orleans abides by The Water Collaborative’s recommendations, the city would enable “restorative justice by ameliorating the unequal burden residents and taxable businesses have borne to pay for drainage in New Orleans.”³²

In summary

Messages will be delivered in political and cultural contexts that affect how people hear and receive them, so articulating your overall strategy will enable you to more precisely determine the audience you want to influence. Your communication strategy is always filled with “moving parts” developed from strategy (which changes), delivered by messengers (who change) to a target audience (which might also change) against a political or cultural backdrop (which is also constantly changing). Ultimately, overall strategy questions apply to campaigns on the ground in specific places, sometimes local and sometimes regional or national. We can also use these questions to help us think strategically about building a robust infrastructure for changing the narrative on parks and green space across campaigns by building narrative power.¹⁰

Understanding narratives about green spaces and parks

Even the most thoughtfully crafted strategy — or message — won’t inform people, let alone accelerate change, unless it reaches your audience. Building narrative power is a complex process that involves significant and sustained work across many sectors and institutions. One place where stories are shared — and narratives are reinforced — is news coverage.

Why use the news?

News about parks and green spaces represents only one part of our shared narrative, but it’s an important part. News coverage remains a primary source of information for policymakers, a key audience in the movement to build and maintain equitable parks and green spaces.

Other media strategies, including digital and social media, can also be powerful tools for getting your message about park and green space equity to both community members and decision makers. For example, Springfield nonprofit The Conscious Connect — an organization that redevelops underutilized spaces for the purpose of education, culture, and health — knows that the demographic they want to reach (25-34 year olds) uses Facebook, so they use the platform to share upcoming events with their community, request support, uplift their allies, and showcase their media coverage. Similarly, Las Vegas non-profit Make the Road Nevada — known in the community for building the power of Latinx and working class people of color — uses the news in conjunction with social media tactics to create multiple points of contact for engagement with different audiences. They use Instagram to share community resources, highlight authentic voices in their community, and activate the community on park and green space issues they are working on in the moment.

As the work of Make the Road Nevada illustrates, using traditional media does not have to be an “either-or” decision. Advocates can use a combination of media types to reach their intended audiences. To guide this decision, consider your overall strategy and ask: Is news media the best way to reach our audience? If yes, see the section on Getting attention below. If not, ask yourself: What might work better? In some situations — for instance, delivering remarks at a meeting — base-building or organizing an email campaign may be more effective. Whichever direction you choose, think about how you will know when you’ve been successful — or when you need to change course.

Whether or not this moment in your strategy calls for getting news attention, news will often be the starting point for how audiences understand equity issues relating to parks and green space. Therefore, we describe in this section the gaps in news coverage we have found in our research — and how you can use that information to anticipate potential roadblocks, plan for how to correct misinformation, and identify strategic communication opportunities.

A word about news and story frames

Stories are important because together they add up to larger narratives that become the basis for how people understand issues. When groups have narrative power, they have “the ability to make the foundation[al] stories we tell — the stories about how things work, our sense of history, who and what matters, and our relationship to one another and the planet — the main stories people use to make sense of the world over time.”¹⁰

Stories can be told — or “framed” — from different perspectives that emphasize some points of view and ignore others. Framing influences how we interpret information. For example, stories focused on the tragedies or triumphs of specific people emphasize personal responsibility which can make it harder to see why structural and systemic solutions are important (at BMSG, we think of these as “portrait” stories). Conversely, stories that include more context can help audiences see the role government, industry, or community can play in solving problems (we call these “landscape” stories). Ultimately, we want to see stories where portraits are embedded in landscapes so the context for our solutions is clear.

At BMSG, we pay close attention to how news stories are framed because news affects not only what issues policymakers are thinking about, but also how they think about those issues — for example, which solutions are elevated or ignored, or whose perspectives are seen as legitimate.

What do audiences think about parks, equity, and green space?

From research, we know that people tend to think that parks are “universally good” and “nice to have,” but not essential.¹ That narrative could reinforce the idea that there are not enough resources to invest in everything communities need to thrive. That mindset, in turn, can make it harder to call on the government to repair past harms and change policies to prevent future inequities, and easier for those who oppose expending resources to make their case against investing in parks and green space.

We also know that when people often think of the word “park,” they tend to think of trees, vegetation, grass, benches, walking paths, picnic areas, playgrounds, and gazebos — but not about people.² When people aren’t part of the story of green space and why it matters, it becomes harder to show how important parks are to the well being of individuals and communities. As a representative from Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) observed during an interview, “Conservation groups have struggled to incorporate racial and economic equity in their work, including the mindset shift away from viewing people and green spaces as separate.” To address this problem, CAUSE focuses on “break[ing] the divide between conserving land and working it through land trusts and agricultural cooperatives that steward the land as caretakers that sustain people and communities.”

What does the news say about parks, green space, and equity issues?

How do issues of park and green space equity appear in the news? To find out, BMSG researchers examined coverage to learn whose voices were included in stories about parks and greenspace equity, which solutions appeared, and how parks — and why they matter — were characterized (to learn more about our methods, see the Appendix ). In general, we found that:

In summary

People interpret messages about parks and green spaces against the “backdrop” of what they already know. We know that, in general, people:

• Think parks and green spaces are nice, but not essential;
• Tend to think about green spaces as being divorced from the people who use them

News stories about park and green space equity can shape what the public and policymakers believe about parks and the policies that surround them. We found that:

• News coverage regularly acknowledges government responsibility and solutions, but fails to highlight solutions that address different dimensions of equity;
• News stories seldom depict the root causes that underlie inequities in parks and green spaces

How might these frames influence your campaign work and how you engage with your audience? What will you want to build on, correct, or learn more about as you work to build your own messages and strategies to support the goal of equitable parks and green spaces in your community?

Crafting your message

Whatever our overall strategy, and however media frames shape our audience’s “starting point,” we’ll need to consider our message strategy. A message strategy helps shape what is said — the message), who says it (messengers), and to whom (audiences). Both messengers and audiences may change over time, depending on where you are in your overall strategy.

A word about messengers: Narratives have narrators, and building the narrators’ message muscle is one way local groups can build power to shape how people understand parks and greenspace equity. That’s why we at BMSG emphasize the importance of working with authentic voices,⁴⁶ people with direct experience in the issue.

This section reviews components of effective messages that can help audiences understand why parks and green spaces are a “need to have,” not just a “nice to have,” and illustrate the solutions that can help us achieve park and green space equity — including procedural, structural, and distributional equity. Based on our research (including in-depth conversations and interviews with equity advocates from around the country), and decades of experience supporting advocates in crafting and delivering strategic messages, we know that there are several core components to effective messages about park and green space equity.

How to create effective messages about park and green space equity

Evoke values

Values motivate and inspire others to take action. Though data can help people see the extent or gravity of a problem, people will mobilize and act based on the core values they hold deeply, not because of statistics. For example, advocates interested in mobilizing their community to fight for equitable green spaces might evoke values like public health, nature, stewardship, community connection, and even liberation. To be sure your message evokes values, check to see that it answers the question “Why does this matter?”

Use metaphors relating to breath or breathing

Metaphors help people understand complex ideas, and when metaphors are based on experiences we have in our bodies, they become easy to understand. BMSG partnered with Real Language, a linguistics strategy firm, to identify a metaphor that evokes the importance of park equity and can support messages that are both practical and aspirational.

After a deep analysis of the language around parks and green space, Real Language identified metaphors that evoke breathing as a way to make communication around park and green space equity relatable, powerful, and effective. The metaphor can connect to any audience because everybody breathes, and because it can be used in both a literal sense (as in “parks help us breathe fresher air and exhale our stress”) and a metaphorical sense (as in “being kept out of decisions that affect our lives is suffocating”). Further, the breathing metaphor encompasses positive triggers (like exhale, breathe easier, breathe freely) and negative triggers (like stifle, suffocate, choke), and, as we will see in the sample messages, can be applied to solutions that address many dimensions of equity.

State the problem

It’s easy to talk about problems because they are so visible and pressing — but they shouldn’t dominate your message. It is impossible to be comprehensive and strategic at the same time, so don’t name every data point that illustrates the magnitude of the challenge. Instead, include a concise problem statement that aligns with the solution you are working toward as part of your overall strategy. One aspect of the problem for messages about parks and green space equity will likely be inequities (rooted in decision-making power, distribution of benefits and costs, or structural impact) that need to be corrected.

Highlight solutions and show the equity pathway

As we know from our analysis of news about park and green space equity, solutions are at the forefront of the public conversation about this issue — so audiences may be receptive to learning more about your approach. Drawing on your overall strategy, keep your solution focused so the change you want to see is clear, and name the person, group, or entity that needs to act to make this change. The solution should explain how your approach advances equity to solve the problem.

Sample messages

Here we offer sample messages applied to example strategies that are inspired by the real-life work of advocates from around the country. Each sample message is based on the context of a briefly outlined overall strategy that specifies potential audiences and messengers. Each sample message incorporates the breathing metaphor (in bold). Adapt these sample messages — in whole or in part — to help your audience understand what is at stake and why we need all three dimensions of equity. Use your messages to help your audiences see that success is possible.

In summary

There’s no one message — or even a set of messages — that works all the time for everyone, but we know from the research that carefully constructed communication can help audiences see how the solutions we’re working toward advance equity and make communities healthier, safer, and more just. To do that, we need to:

• evoke shared values;
• use metaphors that evoke breath and breathing, and;
• be thoughtful, clear, and concrete about describing the problem and solution.

Getting attention

If our overall strategy points us to using the news media to reach (and put pressure on) our audience, the next step is to think about how, specifically, we can attract news attention. Fortunately, there are many ways for community leaders and park and green space equity advocates to enter and influence the media narrative around parks and green space. Done thoughtfully, attracting news attention can elevate community voices, invite others to the fight to build power, and elevate solutions — especially those we are seeking in the near term to address procedural, distributional, and structural equity around parks and green space. As we have throughout this guide, when it comes to using media, we emphasize being strategic: decisions about where to focus your attention and how to engage with journalists will depend on what you have prioritized in your overall strategy.

It might feel overwhelming to think about how to push through the media din and get news coverage that reflects the story of parks and green space that we want to see — but it can be done, especially if you make it part of your routine. As just one example, South Bronx Unite, a nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting their community to improve and protect the social, environmental, and economic future in New York, has positioned itself as the go-to expert on environmental justice in their community. With a limited staff and no dedicated comms person, South Bronx Unite was able to garner 21 news stories within the first half of 2024, including a piece in the New York Times. According to the staff, they did this by:

1. Cultivating relationships with reporters/journalists
   According to South Bronx Unite executive director Arif Ullah, “We made sure to prioritize journalists by inviting them to our tours and events. By doing this we cultivated genuine relationships where journalists would both know us and our work.” Learn more about this strategy.
   
2. Understanding the importance of hyperlocal media
   Hyperlocal media is a news or content provider focused on a small community.⁴⁷ Arif Ullah noted that this kind of media is “often hungry for stories, and the work we’re doing is compelling, important, inspiring, and exciting. Larger media outlets sometimes look to local media for story ideas, which has helped us get coverage from major media outlets as well.” Learn more about this strategy.
   
3. Connecting the dots
   “Our work is focused on improving the lives of community residents, making it relevant to local media outlets,” Ullah said. “We find that reporters are often drawn to stories that resonate with their audience, especially those that involve local people and address community needs.” Learn more about this strategy.
   
4. Doing the work even when the media is not covering it — establishing a reputation for credibility
   “Our work is focused on improving the lives of community residents, making it relevant to local media outlets,” Ullah said. “We find that reporters are often drawn to stories that resonate with their audience, especially those that involve local people and address community needs.” Learn more about this strategy.
   
5. Having and sharing a consistent message
   Arif Ullah pointed out that South Bronx Unite has “established a reputation for credibility and we are consistent in our messaging.” And they “create media advisories and invite media to our events and actions.” Learn more about this strategy.
   
6. Creating relationships with universities
   “We make ourselves available to journalism school students who remember us and the issues we work on when they become reporters/ journalists,” Ullah said.
   
7. Connecting with allies
   “We have built relationships with many organizations, institutions, and people (including elected officials), and they often refer reporters to us,” explained Ullah. Learn more about this strategy.
   
8. Having a strong social media presence
   Senior Organizer Matthew Shore noted, “Every journalist I’ve met has mentioned how they follow us and stay up to date with our stories and posts. It’s clear that many news outlets get their story ideas from our posts on our socials.”
   
9. Speaking truth to power
   South Bronx Unite founding member Mychal Johnson explained, ”You must be willing to speak the truth to power for the community’s benefit; this often means challenging the status quo. Honesty and commitment build respect and relationships.” Learn more about this strategy.

These principles have made South Bronx Unite the force they are in building narrative power. Lessons from these and other park and green space equity advocates show what we need to do to get news attention for our solutions:

• identify and connect with journalists who are interested in and open to reporting on your work;
• craft elements to make stories easier to tell;
• become part of the news cycle; and
• reuse the news.

Let’s consider each of these in turn.

Identify and connect with journalists who are interested in and open to reporting on your work

Although it may be tempting to run straight to a news outlet to share your story, monitoring the news can help us learn: is our particular take on parks and green space being covered? If so, how is it being covered, who is covering it, and what’s missing? If your goal is to get the attention of specific policymakers, how does the issue appear in the outlets they listen to, read, and watch?

BMSG’s news analysis found gaps in park and green space coverage around equity, but those gaps may be different from what appears in your local outlets. By monitoring the news you can learn precisely:

• Which outlets care about park and green space equity, and might be open to covering your story. Monitoring the news will help you pick the right outlet when it comes time to pitch your story based on your overall strategy. Depending on what you’ve determined about your targets, you might monitor news outlets from national TV networks to radio talk shows, podcasts, influential blogs, regional newspapers, trade publications, social media, and popular web sites. 
• Which journalists are reporting on your issue. You can create a media list of relevant reporters, influencers, and freelancers and then start to build meaningful relationships with them. That list can be a starting point for deciding whom to contact when it’s time to pitch a story. Journalists will be more likely to respond to your pitches if they know who you are, understand your authentic connections to communities working to improve parks and green space, and can rely on you for fresh interpretations of the issue. Social media is an easy way to follow and begin connecting with journalists — as you cultivate these relationships, track their contact information and any details about the types of stories they produce in your media list. 
• How parks and green space are being covered. Media monitoring doesn’t have to be too complex or in-depth: advocates can sign up for automatic updates when new stories are posted about parks or other topics using free services like Google News Alerts, and keep a brief record of answers to basic questions like: 
  • What was the publication? Who does it reach? 
  • Who wrote the story? Have they written about park and green space equity — or related issues, like gentrification, displacement, or climate change — before? 
  • Who was quoted? Was our organization mentioned or quoted? Any of our partners? 
  • Were solutions mentioned? Was our solution named? 
  • Were there any problematic frames or terms used that we want to correct or is there any information missing? 
  • Is there an action we should take to correct misinformation, pitch a story, or reach out to the journalist for another reason?

Adapt this list to include the items that are most important to you. When you have a sense of what’s missing from the news that your targets are seeing, you give yourself leverage to pitch the story from a fresh angle, making it more enticing to a journalist.

Create elements to make stories easy to tell

As 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt famously said, reporters don’t tell issues, they tell stories.⁴⁸ For example, a story about community residents fighting to increase green space to contend with rising asthma rates will hold more interest than a report about how air pollution aggravates asthma. That’s because the story about community residents has all the components of a story: characters (the residents, their allies, and the people opposing them), a scene (the neighborhood or place for the park and green space or maybe the city council chambers where the argument is made), and action (what the residents are doing to make their case). The health harms of air pollution and how it aggravates asthma will be part of the story and be easier to understand within the context of the story.

Good stories have a scene, a plot, action, and characters — even stories about policy and systems change. But, as we know, a story that focuses too narrowly on individuals won’t help the audience understand the policy or environmental factors at work — so the plot and the scene are just as important as the characters. Story elements can help make our stories compelling and breathe life into the plot and scene. They are the pieces that reporters put together to tell a story, like a picture, a relevant data point, or a compelling statement from a source. If we develop story elements before talking with reporters, we make it easier for them to tell the story in ways that illustrate our frame. Of course, you can’t control how the reporter frames the issue, but you can control who you put forward to make your case. You can provide reporters four story elements — authentic voices, media bites, social math, and compelling visuals — to help them create a story that reflects your overall strategy for park and green space equity.

Authentic voices

Authentic voices are spokespeople who can provide a unique perspective on the problem and need for the solution based on their personal or professional life experiences. They might have suffered from the problem directly (typically referred to as “victims” or “real people” by reporters). Or they might have other direct experience as park users, local business owners, or community organizers. Think carefully about the range of authentic voices you can prepare to make your case because, as the saying goes, “the messenger is the message.” In other words, news professionals and your audience will respond to who is speaking, not just to what they say. For example, Warinda Harris grew up in Texas, where she saw first hand the disparities between parks in affluent communities versus those in lower income communities. Living through the history that led to these disparities makes Harris a dynamic spokesperson whether she is speaking to reporters or decision makers. Her values and lived experience touch many audiences, as when she sat on a panel hosted by the Children and Nature Network, an organization committed to the belief that nature makes kids healthier, and shared her experience around power.⁴⁹ She sparked a fire for more people to recognize their communal power and organize when she told that audience of allies and advocates:

“We’re rooted in communities that have had negative experiences with power, with folks who perceive power as something that is being used against them or is part of something being done to them. Our work is in developing leaders from within those spaces, meeting them where they are, and training them to reshape their relationship to power — to understand that while they may not have vast amounts of money, collectively they have the power to organize around issues of common concern … They can claim their place at the table with decision-makers — that’s power meeting power.”

Ms. Harris is an experienced speaker, but no matter who they are, credible messengers need support. Depending on their experiences and background, they may need training and practice, logistical help (like child care or transportation), or emotional support (like someone to sit with them during or after an interview). Training and supporting authentic messengers takes work, but it’s worth it: the lived wisdom of those closest to the problem, and the solution, breathes life into efforts to build power so we can all enjoy equitable, just parks and green spaces.

Media bites

Media bites are concise statements that capture the essence of the story in just a few words. Reporters face serious time and space constraints in their stories, and many of them will not have considered the equity issues around parks and green space. A well-crafted media bite can help them see the issue — and communicate it to their readers and viewers — quickly. No matter how complicated your overall strategy, only a few sentences from the most compelling spokespeople are likely to appear in any given story. Your challenge is to be strategic in what you say to increase the chance that the park and green space equity issue you are focused on in the immediate moment is what gets repeated in the story. Your media bites are based on that foundation.

Media bites communicate your core message — problem, solution, and values — tailored to respond to a reporter’s question to emphasize one key point. For example, Arif Ullah of South Bronx Unite clearly and succinctly evoked his organization’s core values when he told a TV reporter, “Waterfront access should not be correlated with a person’s income or a person’s livelihood.”

A media bite from New Orleans nonprofit The Water Collaborative, which appeared in an article by New Orleans Public Radio, explained the rationale behind The Collaborative’s overall strategy of seeking fees to support a new storm water system based on land conditions rather than property value: “‘Concrete doesn’t drink water. How much concrete do you have on your property? That’s how we base your rate,’” said Rebecca Malpass, The Water Collaborative’s policy and research director.”

This media bite is especially powerful because it also evokes the body and physical processes like breathing or drinking. Consider ways to incorporate metaphors that evoke breathing — or other physical processes like inhaling or choking — into your media bites to help audiences feel more directly what is gained by equitable access to parks or green space, or lost when that access is denied.

Social math

Every day we are bombarded with news stories involving very large numbers — but often we are numbed rather than informed because outside a meaningful context, large numbers stop making sense.

One solution to this problem is using social math. Social math translates statistics and other data so they become interesting to the journalist, meaningful to the audience, and helpful in advancing public policy. The best social math surprises people, provokes an emotional response, or paints a picture that helps your audience see what you are saying. To create social math, you can:

As you are constructing your message, decide what numbers you need to make the case as stand-alone statistics and as social math comparisons. Choose carefully so you don’t drown a reporter (or other audiences) in numbers because you can’t be comprehensive and strategic at the same time.

Compelling visuals

Media stories rely on images in our increasingly visual culture. When you are pitching a story, reporters will often ask, “What will I see when I get there?” What they are really asking is, “What can I show my viewers or readers if I cover this story?” Make sure you have something visual to offer.

Developing the right visuals for your story is a strategic decision as well as a creative endeavor. Brainstorm visual possibilities and then pick the ones that illustrate the landscape so people can easily see the relevance of your policy goal. For example, the heat severity map that GreenInfo Network, an organization that assists others in using Geographic Information Systems and other related technologies, made for Make the Road Nevada, an organization that builds power and mobilizes immigrant communities in Nevada on issues that impact them including environmental issues, displays the correlation between heat islands or high temperatures and a lack of green spaces.

Become part of the news cycle

Once you have a sense of who’s writing about park and green space equity and how your story fits into the media landscape, you can develop a story that is compelling, timely, and meaningful to the audience of the news outlet.

To create news, you need to take action. To get news coverage, we can’t just say something, we have to do something. Will you hold a demonstration, call attention to an injustice, make a demand to a policymaker, or release an important report? Will you “piggyback” off breaking news? Will you submit opinion pieces or meet with editorial boards to ask that they write editorials supporting your issue? Will you pitch a story to a reporter you have gotten to know? Will you use some combination of these tactics?

Your strategy to create news doesn’t need to be elaborate, but make sure you’re prepared with story elements as you plan to become part of the media landscape about park and green space equity.

Make your story newsworthy

A good story must be newsworthy, which means it must be relevant now. Park and green space equity is important to us every day, of course, but journalists cannot produce stories about every issue every day. They will need a good reason to convince their teams that your story about parks and green space should take precedence over other stories already in the queue. In order to make your story newsworthy, think: what will make this story most attractive to a journalist? What will break through all of the noise and grab their attention?

Over many years of studying news coverage, BMSG has found several “newshooks” that consistently attract journalists, including controversy or conflict, breakthroughs, injustice, irony, new research, anniversaries or milestones, seasonal connections, celebrity, or broad appeal. You can try on each of these newshooks to find one that fits your moment:

_{Table 4: Identifying newshooks}

Think about the messages and strategies you have developed — could any of them be used as newshooks? Which category would they fall into?

Piggyback on breaking news

When you find a connection between park and green space equity and news of the day, let journalists know and use that connection to draw attention to your work. For example, starting in March 2020, news stories in the U.S. began to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic as people became infected with the virus and panic set in. In the following months, as state governments implemented restrictions on gathering, park advocates saw an opportunity to “piggyback” on the news around Covid-19 to highlight the inequities around parks and green spaces. An article published by the Wilderness Society, for example, reported on the restrictions on accessing outdoor spaces with the closure of beaches, parks, and playgrounds,⁶² and observed that for many communities that are primarily Black or Latine/x, having unequal access to healthy outdoor spaces is nothing new. Similarly, advocates like Francisco Romero, Manager of Community Transformation for Promesa Boyle Heights (PBH), a Los Angeles community-based nonprofit organization, used the news about Covid to talk about the systemic inequities around parks and green spaces, and to advocate for a post-pandemic world that would take a new approach in funding priorities that makes equitable investments in park-poor communities across Los Angeles.⁶³

Use opinion space

Newspapers have three regular spots for publishing opinion pieces: editorials, letters to the editor, and op-eds (opinion editorials).

• Editorials are written by the news outlet’s editorial board to express the voice of the paper; unlike news coverage, editorials take strong positions on an issue. You can send a letter to an editorial board asking them to write an editorial on your issue and, for example, ask policy makers to vote a certain way. Often, the editorial board will want to meet with a team from your coalition to understand the issue better and determine whether they want to do an editorial about it. Some outlets also run regular columns; you can pitch them just like you would pitch a reporter.
• Letters to the editor are short (100-200 words) reactions to a news article or opinion piece the paper has already run. Many outlets have forms on their websites for submitting letters to the editor and op-eds. Successful letters are usually sent the same day the story appears.
• Op-eds are a great way to get your concise story in front of target audiences. Crafting and pitching an op-ed can be challenging, but worthwhile: op-eds help shape narratives because they allow advocates to make a strong case for action as they tell their story from their perspective and frame it from their own point of view. For example, an op-ed from Diane Regas, head of The Trust for Public Land, Let’s close the park equity divide, used COVID-19 to illustrate the lack of parks in communities of color, including the historical factors that led to this great divide and the history of racist housing policies known as “redlining.” Within the op-ed, Regas led with values while making sure her policy solution was clear.

BMSG’s guide for writing an op-ed can help your organization structure the piece when your voice needs to be heard on park and green space equity.

Pitching a story

A pitch is an invitation to a reporter to cover a news story. Sending a pitch, usually by email, will help reporters explain to their news directors and editors why they should do the story. Of course, there is no perfect recipe — pitching, news releases, and media advisories can all help — but pitching first can whet the appetite of a reporter without bombarding them with too much information. Crafting the pitch will force you to be concise and name your values, solution, and problem in just a few short sentences, all based on the message you developed as part of your overall strategy and how you are taking advantage of newshooks.

Tips for crafting an engaging pitch

Preparation can help make interviews less intimidating! Remember to:

Evaluate your efforts

Evaluation can help you ensure that the time you’re spending developing your strategy, assessing framing challenges, crafting your messages, and getting media attention is time well spent. Revisit your media advocacy plan periodically to make sure it still reflects your overall strategy and make adjustments if needed. Immediately following a news event you organized, or after you get news coverage for another reason, is a good time to reflect on and evaluate your progress to date.

Evaluation doesn’t have to be too complex: some basic questions and reflection among key players on your team at each stage in developing your strategy can help you determine how you’ll approach your next task and elevate what’s working and stop doing what is not working. Consider questions like:

• Did our target see this coverage, or get wind of our event? How did our target respond?
• Did the news stories reflect our perspective? Is our frame apparent in the coverage? Did we say what we wanted to say?
• Did we establish new relationships, or cement old relationships, with reporters? Are we starting to be considered a trusted source?
• Did we get better, as an organization, at contacting and talking with reporters and creating news?
• What would we do differently next time?

Depending on the answers to these or other questions, you can refine your approach.

In summary

News media can be a powerful tool to breathe life into efforts to build and maintain safe, equitable parks and green spaces for communities who have too long been shut out of those places. Whether and how you use the news depends on many factors, including your overall strategy — if media coverage is the best way for you to reach your audience to effect change, remember to:

• Monitor the media so you know where coverage of park and green space equity is — or should be — happening;
• Use newsworthy stories and strong interviews to become part of the conversation;
• Craft story elements that help reporters tell dynamic stories about park and green space equity work and why it matters for everyone; and
• Capitalize on news coverage to build momentum for future efforts.

Conclusion

Imagine a future where no matter where we come from, what race we are, or how much money we make, we all have healthy and safe outdoor spaces for our families and our communities within reach — a future where everyone in every community can breathe in nature, commune, heal, and gather together.

Building that future is possible, but it has to begin with believing it is within our reach. Fostering that kind of collective vision will happen only if our stories about parks and green spaces build a narrative that shows how people are connected to nature, elevates our values — such as stewardship, liberation, health, and community connection, — and helps our neighbors and our leaders see themselves and their communities in the hard and necessary work of creating and sustaining equitable parks and green spaces.

Advocates, organizers, researchers, policymakers, and residents in every community can make these narratives the norm, the expectation, and, ultimately, our new reality by fine-tuning their change goals; identifying, training, and supporting spokespeople who can deliver clear, compelling messages that highlight shared values and community-led solutions; and building relationships with key news outlets to ensure that the right messages reach the right audience at the right time.

No matter why you care about parks, we hope the communication tools in this guide will help you advance your equity goals. Be sure to use the layers of strategy to clarify your vision before you begin, and remember that when you craft messages, metaphors that evoke breathing can help give life to your messages and help your audience see and even feel themselves in your words. As you do the work, take a breath, look around and recognize the incredible strides you and other advocates have already made in advancing park and green space equity.

If we are able to tell the stories that need to be told in a way that people can hear them, we will be creating a more equitable future where people can connect with each other, enjoy nature and good health, and be liberated from historic inequities to exhale and finally be able to breathe freely.

To understand news narratives about green space and park equity, we first searched the Lexis-Nexis database for news and opinion articles published between January 1, 2021, and October 15, 2022, in U.S. newspapers and wires. We excluded wires because they produced a high volume of news without a local focus where advocates may be working.

Authors and acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to thank the People Parks and Power (P3) partnership for making this project possible. P3 is the first national funding initiative in the United States that seeks to support community based organizations to reverse historical inequities in parks and green spaces with a particular focus on Black, Latinx(e) and indigenous communities throughout the country. It is a joint effort of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, led and managed by Prevention Institute.

It would take many, many pages to list all of the reasons we are grateful to the P3 team. Suffice it to say, for their ongoing dedication, their content knowledge, their insights, and their unflagging commitment, we thank them all, especially Manal Aboleta, Rachel Bennett, Grace Cotangco, Sandra Viera, and Elva Yañez from Prevention Institute, and Katrina Badger, Pamela Russo, and Shammara Wright, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

We are especially grateful to all of the P3 grantees who have helped shape our thinking about park and green space equity during in-person and virtual convenings, one-on-one conversations, and via email. Thank you especially to the following grantees for sharing their stories, examples, wisdom, and feedback:

• California Indian Museum and Cultural Center reeducates the public about and preserve California Indian history and cultures.
• Central Texas Interfaith is a coalition of congregations, public schools, and unions working together to address public issues that affect the well-being of families and neighborhoods within their community.
• Make the Road Nevada builds power and mobilizes immigrant communities in Nevada on the issues that impact them the most — including environmental issues.
• South Bronx Unite is a nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting their community to improve and protect the social, environmental, and economic future in New York.
• The Conscious Connect redevelops underutilized spaces for the purpose of education, culture, and health.
• The Water Collaborative is network dedicated to water and sustainability in New Orleans that has supported community-led efforts to improve water infrastructure in the city.

Thanks also to all the interviewees who shared their expertise and lived wisdom, including Wendy Ake – directs the Othering & Belonging Institute’s Just Public Finance project, Phyllis Boyd – Director of Indianapolis Department of Parks & Recreation, Yvette Lopez-Ledesma – Senior Director of Community-led Conservation at The Wilderness Society, Nicole Lim – Executive Director of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, Toody Maher - Executive Director of Pogo Parks, Roxxanne O’Brien - Parks and Power organizer at the Hope Community, and Jose Rivera –communications associate for Make the Road Nevada.

Thanks to Alyssa Wulf and Erik Sahlin from Real Language LLC who shared their expertise and helped us craft language and metaphors that breathed life into messages about park and green space equity.

Thanks to Caryn Ernst from Ernst Consulting for sharing her expertise on local park policy, and to Spitfire Strategies for helping shape our thinking about park and green space equity.

Thanks to the Berkeley Media Studies Group team, especially Hina Mahmood and Pamela Mejia who led the research and writing of this guide.  We would also like to thank Shaddai Martinez Cuestas, Rosaura Wardsworth, Ingrid Daffner Krasnow, and Lori Dorfman for their valuable contributions in writing and editing, and Heather Gehlert and Lunden Mason for additional communication support on this project.

Finally, we want to express how honored we are for the opportunity to connect with and be part of the passionate, committed, and brilliant community of people engaged every day in pushing for a world with park and green space equity. It has been a true pleasure and privilege to be on this journey with you.

Appendix

News analysis methods

To capture articles about green space equity we created a search string to capture all mentions of “green space” and “park equity” that included terms like “equality,” “inequality,” “ecological,” “environmental,” “park land,” and “community garden,” among many others. We identified a universe of English-language print articles from LexisNexis news archives and collected a random sample from the period of coverage, to reflect the distribution of news for further analysis.

We used an iterative process to develop and refine a coding instrument by drawing on existing literature about green spaces and park equity. Our coding instrument captured information about where articles were published and when; whether the stories were opinion pieces with a specific perspective or news articles that aimed to present multiple perspectives; and why articles about green spaces and park equity were published on a given day. We also assessed how often solutions appeared and if procedural, distributional, and structural equity were discussed as part of them.

Before coding the full sample, we tested intercoder reliability to ensure that coder alignment did not occur by chance. Specifically, we used an iterative process and coded multiple subsets of articles, then held discussions about any disagreements and adjusted coding decisions until we reached consensus about what the codes included. We achieved satisfactory intercoder reliability scores for all coding variables (Krippendorff’s alpha >.8),¹² and took additional qualitative notes during coding.

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