The mythology of democracy belies what Mbembe (2019) calls the “brutality of the pro-slave democracy.” Outwardly, American history and culture favors a resplendent image of hard won freedom, meritocratic excesses, and moral fairness for all, disguising and distracting us from the thriving plantation that underpins American livelihood. Fry (2010) has named the inevitable trajectory of the plantation as defuturing, “the negation of world futures” through the incessant and relentless beast of the extractive colonial project. Climate science has marked this moment as collapse, and vanguards like the IPCC report have given projections of our imminent demise- a mass extinction event. How do we face the ruptures of late-American empire? This panel brings together the perspectives of psychologists, historians, educators, and activists to collectively brainstorm answers to this vexing question. Social justice movements, captured by neoliberalism, have largely failed to create new realities outside of the ones forged by colonialism such as pervasive carcerality, limitless growth, and extractivism. Ontology, our sense of reality and being, determines the extent of possibility in the world we create in community and as interdisciplinary scholars. Resistance movements of the late-American empire have been created from within the colonial ontology. As such, their imagination is bound by the limits of the colonial imagination, their methods by the methods of modernity. Akomolafe (2020) describes post-activism as a new paradigm where movement is not outside of the world, seeking to save it, but instead locates itself inside the world, or a part of the world. What might emerge when movements for social and racial justice change their maps, stories, and practices? And what stories allow the greatest potential for the realities we prefer? To what extent can storytelling become a mechanism for decolonizing our historical narratives as well as a prospective tool for new knowledge production? We have been asked to change our stories before. We are invited to consider “new subjectivities” (Sandoval, 2000) and “new metaphysics of political struggle”(Alexander, 2005). What might understanding their assignment actually mean for movements today? What happens when we allow new stories for reality to emerge? How might we work in our communities with the intent of offering alternative concepts than the ones we have been using to approach status quo activism? In this workshop we explore decolonial strategies to engage new stories driving our political struggle, activism and our roles as scholar-practitioners. Panelists will invite attendees to offer their own perspectives, strategies, and experiences in an effort to generate new ideas and their practical applications.