Whispers of Change
By Safina Center Community Organizing Fellow Mikaela Loach
Group photo of the LUSH Spring Prize awardees of 2025—including LION and Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana—who are all creating “whispers” all over the world. ©Mikaela Loach
I hear a whisper in the trees and she tells me another world is possible. She tells me this world is already here. She asks me to listen. To slow my beating heart only for a moment. To choose to see what people are already doing all around me. To choose to see that revolution is an every day event: not simply a destination. That transformation is a constant. That change is already here, already happening. That we can choose to direct that change and so many already are.
Those whispers have grown louder, I can see more of us are hearing them. The Freedom Flotilla sailing to challenge Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots and uncompromising campaign winning the NYC Mayoral Primary. London’s High Court ruling that Shell can be held legally responsible for their legacy of oil pollution in Nigeria (as part of a court case brought by the Ogale and Bille communities in the Niger Delta). None of these changes just happened. None of these shifts have come from singular, exceptional individuals: they have been made in the most part by ordinary people working together and refusing to accept the world as it is.
In response to our whispers, the status quo will and is attempting to silence us. The more attempts there are to silence, the more desperate the establishment gets in these attempts—arresting Mahmoud Khalil, proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, kidnapping the Madleen 12 in international waters—the more visible the truth is. Our actions have impact. They matter. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be trying to stop us.
As a communicator, I use my platform to amplify these whispers through a video journalism series called “Did You Know?”. This year so far I’ve amplified the work of:
JABBEM: a grassroots campaign in my birth island of Jamaica who are resisting the colonial Beach Control Act of 1956 which currently means that less than 1% of Jamaica’s coastline is freely accessible to Jamaicans.
Land In Our Names (LION): a grassroots collective working for land reparations in Britain.
Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana: an Indigenous women’s federation in Peru that recently won legal personhood for the Marañon River.
Mikaela filming a “Did You Know” video with JABBEM members in Portland, Jamaica. ©Mikaela Loach
Mikaela recording a “Did You Know” video with Mari Luz from Huanakana Kamatahuara Kana at the LUSH Spring Prize. ©Mikaela Loach
It is an honour to be able to amplify these transformational whispers. These videos alone have reached 1.5 million people so far this year alone. Our whispers combine together to form a collective voice. One that asks us all to be “a little bit brave.” One that reminds us that the ending to our story is not yet written. One that tells us that another world is already here if we are willing to listen and whisper with her.