Daniel K Forkkio - "Healing & Reconciliation via Storytelling & Filmmaking" - CEO, Represent Justice

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Daniel K. Forkkio is the CEO of Represent Justice whose mission is to turn stories into action by building narrative power within system-impacted communities and mobilizing audiences to transform the legal system. Because, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. For this exceptional work Daniel was recently named a 2024 Elevate Prize winner, chosen alongside nine other nonprofit leaders from across the globe for leading some of the most impactful missions to change our world for the better. RJ began as part of the impact campaign for the highly acclaimed Hollywood film, Just Mercy, starring Jamie Foxx and Michael Jordan, about the life of acclaimed public interest lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, and the civil rights work he does helping the incarcerated and the condemned. A policy expert conversant in the film's core issues, Daniel witnessed something remarkable at the screening and advocacy events he organized for Just Mercy - the unexpected impact of the people present connecting with each other through their own real life stories of similar lived experience. Says Daniel, "It got me thinking … what about this power of firsthand storytelling should extend beyond a campaign? What if we we were constantly working with folks who were impacted by this issue and, in fact, what if they were the ones producing the film? What if it wasn’t a matter of a Hollywood actor? What if it wasn’t as much a matter of a studio release? What if impacted folks, in their communities, had these skills of convening and using film as a medium? And, that became really the blueprint for Represent Justice." Five years later, RJ has people in 20 different states producing films and campaigns about their own lived experience, learning and growing from one another in ways that are completely transformative. Through their year-long fellowship program, RJ provides training, support, compensation and mental health resources. All of which culminates in folks being able to produce a campaign about their unique personal experience rather than relying on whatever Hollywood has produced most recently. “What I started to learn about these films is that the films themselves were part of the reconciliation process for the person that had gone through an experience. And so, the act of writing down what had happened, thinking about their audience, the different characters ... and what were the myths around those characters. And what did they want the audience to do and think and feel concerned about, allowed for a reconciliation of all of the different frames that they had been told about their story … and allowed for a different level of control and empowerment around their story. And then, with the film screening, they could go to their local community, their local council members, their local community partners and they could just gather people differently. When you learn together, and when you learn someone’s story and see how it connects to yours, it just creates this inspiration and this understanding that allows you to tell your story more effectively," says Daniel.

Learn more and watch some of these magnificent films at RepresentJustice.org

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