The language, imagery, rhetoric, and communication skills that every member, organizer, leader, and speaker on the American Left should be using if we want to win in America… Whatever you think of Obama, this is really inspiring. The left must build the capacity to be infecting the media with radio spot after radio spot, ad after ad, song after song, pushing a progressive vision for America’s Future, including showing people how to organize, how change is made, how power is built, and that yes, there ARE alternatives to our current problems.

During the 1960’s, millions of young people became active to change the course of this country’s future. Starting with the struggle for Black freedom, continuing to with the fight to end the War in Vietnam, and pushing forward with the Women’s Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, and various other progressive social movements, the youth of our country found their voice and got worked tirelessly for social change.

But despite a myriad of problems facing our generation – from the War in Iraq, to the genocide in Darfur, to devastated Gulf Coast and possible economic recession – the youth and student movement remains divided, atomized, and visionless. It isn’t that things aren’t going on – they certainly are – but rather that there is a lack of unifying issues, frameworks and visions under which our generation can feel a common purpose.

From this atomization, excitement and passion around such an issue is surfacing: the climate crisis. After decades of piling evidence, the dialog around global warming is finally coming to an end; the Right can’t cover up the facts any more; the jury ain’t out anymore (hasn’t been for a long time), global warming is the result of human interaction with the environment, and if we want to protect the future, we have to act now. Young people have the power and the passion to hold the government accountable to keeping America safe from impending catastrophe.

So how does global warming relate to the war in Iraq, the genocide in Darfar, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the possible recession you ask? Well, because the fight for environmental justice has the potential to unite young Americans across countless boundaries. It has the potential to be a historic catalyst.

The war in Iraq, despite the Bush administration’s 7 year campaign to mislead the American people, is slowly being shown nakedly for what it is: an aggressive and illegal war to control Iraqi oil. Our addiction to fossil fuels – something that can be easily changed by zero-emissions vehicles and investing in green jobs and alternative energy sources – is no excuse for squandering human lives (both American and Iraqi) and wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on war. All of this could have been prevented, and can be brought to a halt, if we mobilize to confront the human causes of global warming and transition to green energy sources.

The genocide in Darfar, is about poverty and disputes between third-world militias, tribes, and Sudan’s government over land and resource scarcity. Resource scarcity, especially in Africa, has only been increased by climate irregularity. Those interested in preventing future genocides and fighting poverty in places like Africa, should take on the battle to fight global warming as a key issue in their political work. Progressives should deepen our analysis of issues in Africa. Less money needed for war, provides more money to develop both programs at home for Americans, and programs abroad to fight poverty, disease, hunger, and allow people to build their own futures.

Hurrican Katrina, and other large super-hurricanes, has many climatologists have pointed out, will only increase in severity and frequency as the globe warms. If the globe warms just a few more degrees, large parts of U.S. coastal cities – and coastal cities all around the world – will be under water. (Its kinda hard to study if you’re up to your knees in water!) It rising water isn’t enough to scare my generation, the effects of these super-hurricanes, combined with rising water levels, should. With the water alone, a good portion of New York City will be underwater. Many scientists have predicted that as the globe continues to warm, the Northeastern United States could be introduced to a new phenomenon: hurricanes reaching northern coastal cities.

In the past several years, tropical storms – much less severe than hurricanes (let alone super-hurricanes) – have flooded many Northern cities such as providence. But with rising water levels, a hurricane in the North would have devastating results. Take New York City again. Where New York Harbor means the ocean, the land forms a right angle. If a high waves or a storm surge from a hurricane hit land making a right angle, often the only place they have to go is up. Imagine a surge of 20, 30, or even 40 or more feet approaching Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Eastern New Jersey. Need I go further?

The intersections between climate change and war, economic damage and poverty are enormous, and could provide a catalyzing issue for a growing and unifying progressive youth movement. Will we be able to channel that energy in productive directions? Recent developments among youth organizations and events suggestions yes. In early November of 2007, over 6,000 youth converged on the Nation’s capitol to demand congress and the executive take historic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and push our nation in a positive direction with “Green Collar Jobs for All” and “Green Pathways Out of Poverty”. The event, called “Power Shift”, brought together students and youth from diverse backgrounds across the nation under a unified demand to take action to stop global warming.

These students educated, built community, took action, lobbied, attended workshops, and listened dozens of speakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA), Representative Ed Markley (D – Mass), and Van Jones of the Green for All. Jones gave a historic talk about need for a united, powerful progressive movement to lead our country in a new direction of change. Many youth representatives that weekend testified before Congress for the need for Congress to take action to cut fossil fuel emissions talking about their families, their lives, and the future of our generation.

The youth pledged to elect a “climate president in 2008” and gave notice that any member of Congress who wasn’t working to protect our future would have to look for a new job, as young voters search for more progressive, more climate friendly representatives.

The intersections between global climate destabilization and virtually every progressive issue only increase daily. Let’s seize the opportunity to use it as a tool to unite our movement, and build a popular movement to save our planet and its people! We don’t have the luxury of time. Second place means parts of New York City and Providence, and half of Florida under water. Second place means a billion climate crisis refugees world wide. Second place means water wars and increase ethnic cleansing and exponentially increasing poverty, disease, and famine. Second place means millions of deaths across the world. Second place means, quite literally, a global meltdown.

Wanna Get Involved? Act now:
Student Environmental Action Coalition - http://www.seac.org
Campus Climate Challenge: http://climatechallenge.org/
Energy Action Coalition: http://www.energyaction.net
It’s Getting Hot In Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/

Language is yet another field in which Progressives lag light-years behind the Right. It isn’t bad enough that our movements are hard to be apart of, are often alienating to outsiders, and ask too much, too quickly of their participants. We have to take it to the next step and talk to people like we are from a different planet. And when our language is accessible we are usually don’t understand how people are receiving what we are saying, nor do we grasp the full implications of the assumptions our language are creating or reinforcing.

Language matters. Progressives frequently enter a discussion, lose their temper or are annihilated by their opponents, and then can’t seem to fathom why they lost the debate. Even worse, some times they blame their loss on the audience – as if the public is the cause of our inability to effectively communicate our values and vision. What we almost never realize is that we regularly lose the debate before it has even starts.

The Language Around Global Warming

Take global warming. Open a copy of the New York Times and find an article about global warming. Take out a highlighter and highlight every form of the word “global warming” you see (“global warming”, “climate change”, “climate crisis”, etc…). Then tally up the number of times each term is used. There is a good chance that the most common term you will find, is “climate change”, often used 2 to 3 times as much as “global warming”. A few years ago, the term “climate change” didn’t exist in newspapers, and the term “global warming” was used every time the concept of environmental chaos was discussed. Today the opposite is true. Newspapers, television news outlets, and even progressive activists all regularly use the term “climate change”.

Well, as one might have guessed, this wasn’t an accident. A man by the name of Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist, advised Republican politicians to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”. This effort by conservatives popularized the term and it is now a popular term. Why did he do that? Because the term “global warming”, as he put it, was “too hysterical”. The word caught on and is now part of the narrative that is told to the public and repeated by the public about global warming and environmental destruction. In a 16-page document entitled “The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America”, Luntz Research Companies advised conservative politicians on what language they could use to argue that there is “no consensus” on the issue of global warming. Hell, even Democratic Party leaders now regularly use the term.

As soon as we use the word “climate change” in front of an audience, we are triggering a whole slew of conservative stories and arguments that the right has built up around that term. And they do this for every issue!

Moral of the story: When we use their language, we lose.

How Language Traverses the Brain

But it goes deeper than that! It is telling to look at how the brain processes language and what that means for our political work.

A recent study by Sam Harris (author of Letter to a Christian Nation), Sameer Sheth, and Mark S. Cohen unearthed new evidence that shows how seriously language triggers deeply held opinions and assumptions. Their study, entitled “Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty”, explores how the brain processes statements that of “belief”, “disbelief” and “uncertainty”.

What did they find? The study found that while a statement’s validity was processed in more advanced parts of the brain, it always passed through more primitive portions (the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula – portions of processing reward, emotion, pain perception, taste, and disgust) where it received a “final stamp” of “belief” or “disbelief”. If a participant thought a statement to be true, parts of their brain linked to reward, emotion and taste showed activity; statements which they perceived to be untrue activated sections of the brain linked with pain, disbelief, and taste.

If these findings are indeed true, what would that mean for the left? What would it mean for how we frame things, how we relate to people, and how we choose our words if the consequence of a poor or alienating word choice is that our statements actually make the public “feel” discomfort, bad taste, and disgust?

The study seems like it could help to explain a lot. It would help to partially explain things like “stubbornness”, and people voting “against their self-interests”, and many trends that progressives often display contempt for.

Perhaps that’s our primitive brain applying disgust to things we should have much more sympathy towards.

What we are up against

The republicans are often quite honest about their intentions. Take Gary Bauer for example. Bauer was a 2004 republican presidential hopeful. In describing politics, he said: “We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There’s a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody’s values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe.” I don’t see any reason to doubt the sincerity of their stated intentions. We should respond accordingly.

Even though we are young, are we going to sound like raging, angry lunatic? Or will we be the voice of reason that helps to guide people through the darkness and into the light.

Solutions

When a republican or evangelical gives a speech, they tell you what they think, what they want, and how they plan to get it. They are usually quite honest about their intentions. They use highly inspiring and hopeful language, talking about everyday people and popular themes (many of which they helped create). We need to be talking using the same type of inspirational language from a progressive perspective.

Luckily for us, there are already those in progressive circles working hard on figuring out new ways to communicate our values with the public. The smartMeme project (www.smartmeme.org) is one of the groups pioneering a field they call “story-based strategy”; an exciting initiative which challenges progressives to reframe the debate using alternative narratives to counter dominant myths around social programs.

Another small collective, Beyond the Choir (www.beyondthechoir.org), is also doing innovative work on how progressives can communicate our values using strategic and well-planned organizing, education, campaigns and actions.

George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute (www.rockridgeinstitute.org) is also paving the way in taking back language from the rightwing.

While much more is needed, we should all challenge ourselves to begin a much needed dialog about how our words, our actions, and our attitudes are received by the American people. Our victory depends on it.

Recommended Links

Progressive:
George Lakoff – www.georgelakoff.com
Rockridge Institute – www.rockridgeinstitute.org
Beyond the Choir – www.beyondthechoir.org
smartMeme – www.smartmeme.org

Conservative:
Frank Luntz – www.luntz.com

Recommended Articles

• What Prevents Radicals from Acting Strategically by Beyond the Choir (Matthew Smucker in collaboration with Madeline Gardner) www.beyondthechoir.org
• Building a Successful Antiwar Movement by Beyond the Choir www.beyondthechoir.org

Recommended Books

Progressives Books:

• Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff
• Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff

Conservative Books: (note: Luntz is the same way, but from a conservative perspective. It is very interesting to read his stuff both for concepts and to learn how the other side thinks and is framing almost every issue.)

• Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz

Bibliography

Harris, Sam, Sameer A. Sheth, Md, Phd, and Mark S. Cohen, Phd. “Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty.” Annals of Neurology (2007). Wiley InterScience. 28 Dec. 2007 <http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117858891/HTMLSTART>.