By Tabitha Espina

This essay is part of The MLA Democracy Project: Essays on Teaching Democracy and Literature.

In my Writing for Social Change at University of Washington (UW), Tacoma, I approach democracy not as an abstract concept to be studied from a distance but as a living practice students can engage with through writing, research, and community partnerships. This pedagogical approach recognizes that civic engagement begins when students understand how rhetoric shapes democratic participation and develop tools to contribute their own voices to public discourse.

Central to my teaching is helping students develop critical consciousness for how foundational democratic concepts, such as liberation, rights, justice, and social change, have contested meanings that shift across contexts, cultures, and communities. Rather than presenting these concepts as having stable, unquestioned definitions, I guide students through what Krista Ratcliffe and Kyle Jensen call “rhetorical listening in action,” a practice of attending to the cultural logics and power dynamics that shape how different groups use and interpret language (3).

When students analyze social movements like Abolish ICE or period poverty advocacy, they learn to ask the following questions: Who gets to define “rights”? Whose voices are centered in conversations about “liberation”? How do marginalized communities redefine these terms to challenge dominant narratives? For instance, when students examined the Hilltop Action Coalition’s work in Tacoma’s historically Black neighborhood, they discovered how community members articulated “development” and “progress” in ways that directly contested the city’s official discourse, centering residents’ voices and cultures over economic metrics.

This approach is grounded in Kenneth Burke’s “dramatistic pentad,” which asks students to identify the act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose of social movements as rhetorical situations (xv). By applying this framework to movements like Land Back and Philippine disaster relief, students recognize that democratic participation requires understanding not just what is being said but also who is saying it, in what context, using what resources, and toward what ends. They begin to see rhetoric as a form of power and to recognize their own potential to apply it.

The course progression scaffolds students from analysis to action. Students first complete a social movements rhetorical analysis, examining how non-establishment actors use language to challenge institutional power, identifying rhetorical strategies, assessing evidence, and understanding how movements construct compelling narratives for change—necessary skills for navigating the information landscape of democratic participation.

The community literacy project then shifts students from analysis to engagement. Small groups focus on local organizations, facilitated through connections with the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation (GTCF) and the UW Tacoma Office of Community Partnerships, to examine what Lorraine Higgins, Elenore Long, and Linda Flower call “local publics”: spaces where ordinary people develop public voices to engage in intercultural inquiry and deliberation. Students have investigated organizations like the Tacoma Rainbow Center, documenting how LGBTQ+ community members use literacy practices, like support group facilitation and policy advocacy, to affirm belonging. This project positions students as both learners and potential contributors. When students examined period poverty on the UW Tacoma campus, for example, they did not just write about the problem. They analyzed the rhetorical strategies advocates used to make menstrual equity visible as a social justice issue, documented the literacy practices involved in campus organizing, and contributed to public discourse about campus resources and policy change in response to Washington State law.

The course’s structure itself models democratic participation. Field trips to the Northwest Room at Tacoma Public Library, a Bayanihan Filipino American cultural event, and Washington State History Museum’s This Is Native Land exhibit ground our theoretical discussions in local spaces where community knowledge is celebrated and civic work happens. Students see democracy not just as periodic voting but as ongoing engagement with local publics. The course culminates in a community advocacy letter, which asks students to move from studying democratic participation to enacting it. This final project invites students to compose a creative advocacy message connecting their personal experiences to a social cause that matters to them. Using the storycrafting framework shared with me by Megan Sukys, GTCF chief strategy and communications officer, the project emphasizes starting with story, then data, then story conclusion, and students learn that effective advocacy requires logos, pathos, ethos, and kairos, emotional resonance and factual grounding. The assignment invites creative approaches, like formal letters, social media campaigns, short stories, videos, infographics, or any multimodal form that best reaches their intended audience. In response, students have produced remarkable work: a creative TV talk show format examining diversity and labor issues in the NFL, pitch videos for local nonprofits, social media advocacy campaigns, novel chapters connecting personal experience to systemic issues, advocacy campaigns for disaster relief, blog platforms amplifying marginalized voices, and educational resources about community organizations. These projects demonstrate sophisticated understanding of how different modes (visual, audio, gestural, spatial, linguistic) work together to create persuasive public discourse and invite others into advocacy.

These projects are pedagogically powerful, I believe, because they ask students to consider real audiences beyond the classroom. Students learned that democratic participation requires having something to say and knowing how to say it, in ways that resonate with specific communities, cultures, and contexts. Students are asked to articulate what “writing for social change” means to them personally, what skills they can contribute, and how they see themselves as agents within democratic life.

The class structure, overall, is a process that teaches civil discourse and collective responsibility. Regular “current connections” assignments ask students to bring real-world examples of rhetoric and social movements into our discussions, ensuring that course content remains responsive to current events and student interests. Several students have transformed course projects into campus and community engagement, using the rhetorical analysis and community literacy skills they developed to organize with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

My pedagogy ultimately rests on the conviction that democracy is cultivated, maintained, and refined through discourse and action. By teaching students to analyze how rhetoric shapes social movements, to engage ethically with community partners, and to contribute their own voices to public discourse, I hope to support them to be active participants in democratic life and to add their voices and their creativity to ongoing struggles for justice and social change in their communities.

Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. U of California P, 1969.

Higgins, Lorraine, et al. “Community Literacy: A Rhetorical Model for Personal and Public Inquiry.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2006, pp. 9–43.

Ratcliffe, Krista, and Kyle Jensen. Rhetorical Listening in Action. Parlor Press, 2023.

Sukys, Megan. “Storycrafting Questions.” PDF.

Writing for Social Change: Sample Student Projects

“Abolish ICE Movement,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDNbmgCvsYI

“Diversity in the NFL,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWVp3Kf6BPY

“Failing Forward: A Lesson in Community Advocacy,” emilydrum98.substack.com/p/failing-forward

“The Hilltop Action Coalition,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sszqdf9hXNQ

“Supporting Disaster Relief in the Philippines,” reliefph.carrd.co/

“Tacoma Rainbow Center,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPS6lSzJcjI

“UWT Period Poverty,” drive.google.com/file/d/1mBjNFi9_KpJqKki4-mmIoaeoSr_SVfhP/view

Tabitha Espina is director of writing and assistant professor of writing studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma.