Maureen Curtin, associate professor in the English and Creative Writing Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Oswego, reports in this article on an initiative that is designed to spur teams of faculty and visiting artists to teach "intellectual issues" through students' storytelling. The courses were part of the general education curriculum and, thus, drew a diverse, and reluctant student body. The author adds that at the time, she was active in a coalition promoting workers' rights and solidarity in the region, so she developed a course that would set these struggles in the history of political economy. She focused on high unemployment rates and diminishing job prospects for new college graduates, believing that this would be on the students' minds. In the discussions that followed the author offered an account of how storytelling worked to promote debates about political economy, which, in turn, gave rise to a space for belief and the possibility of solidarity. The author reflected on how educators can strengthen conditions for the emergence of the commons by promoting storytelling and political belief as avenues leading to critical thought and transformative practice.