Over the past several decades, many environmental and social change efforts have come to reflect the centrality of shopping in our culture, suggesting change can be made—or is even best made—through alterations in our individual consumption patterns. These efforts—buy Fair Trade or organic, use a reusable bag, screw in a CFL lightbulb—are a great place to start, but they are a terrible place to stop, ignoring the real source of our power: coming together as engaged citizens.

In The Story of Change, released in July 2012, Annie Leonard argues that it’s not bad shoppers who are putting our future at risk; it’s bad policies and business practices. If we really want to change the world, we have to move beyond voting with our dollars and come together to demand rules that work.

Annie takes viewers through an inspiring exploration of what effective changemaking has looked like through history—from Gandhi in India to the US Civil Rights movement to the environmental victories of the 1970s—and shares the things you’ll find whenever people get together and change the world: a big idea, a commitment to working together, and a whole lot of action. She also let’s viewers know that making change will take all kinds of people, offers a series of changemaker identities and ends the movie with a question for viewers: Which are you?

Credits

The Story of Change was created and released by The Story of Stuff Project and produced by Free Range Studios. Our distribution partners included dozens of local, national and international progressive, environmental, labor and economic justice organizations.