The following is a draft, perhaps a poem, making the political personal, inviting you, and all, to be part of the movement for a democratic society, addressing the question of exclusion, expressing a beginning of the vision.

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We’re a movement of activists, forever young, students of life, for a democratic society, international, intergenerational, inter racial, interesting: students, seniors, survivors, seekers, strugglers, sisters, singers, speakers, scholars, sociologists, socialists, scientists, saints, savants, satirists, soldiers, sailors, slackers, scriveners, scribblers, smiths, semites, whoever you are, from wherever, for a democratic society,

all who would like to join, please do, respond to this invitation.

we are a union
an unarmed army embracing all humanity
to affirm and represent the rights of the common people, the oppressed, the multitude,
all who have been voiceless, and in the struggle to find our own voices.
challenging the old order and building the new

joining the global movements,

of popular democracy, liberation theology, peace education,
non-violence, direct action, civil disobedience, insistence,
for justice, where ever we are and everywhere,
for a transforming of patriarchal power to a true sharing of authority
in partnership and cooperation
between women and men
and all the genders and races and workers
a new social contract
a world labor contract

to affirm human responsibility

to turn around the impending climatic disaster of global warming
and the consequences of the oil and fossil fuel based industrialization of the past age,

and to do what we can to stop the bloody wars,
and putting down the guns
and making peace
and creating a culture of peace
and non-violence
for the children of the world,
that the next generations, to the seventh generation,
should not have to live through the wars and oppressions that we, and our fore-bearers have seen and suffered.

we, of course, serve to overturn the old order of power and war and greed,
and are completely subversive to fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, top down centralization of power
and most of what passes for government these days

we are inclusive, non exclusive,
there is room at the table for everyone with an open heart

agents and vanguardists and recruiters and opportunists enter at their own peril.
our task is to turn your heart
that you become an agent of the movement,
in whatever organization you serve,
to undermine hierarchy and totalitarian purpose
to transform itself and themselves
to serve instead
the grass roots, bottom up, horizontal, work democracy
insurgent movement and movements in every institution of the old order
joining the union for global partnership, the big we

we take on the nsa, cia fbi, rcp, iso, plp, dlc, ,
and any other initialed new-speak contraction of complex reality into simplistic ideology obedient to some old authority

our message is:
give up the old order, the old politics, the old wars
join the new order of the ages
our undertakings are favored.
democracy is what it is about
for everyone
even the minority of one

for justice
for respect
for freedom

for healing from the wars and traumas of past time which we have inherited, and our mis-leaders perpetuated.
and which we must do all what we can to stop now,

in iraq, afghanistan, columbia, darfur, all of them,
and the heart of the war, longest bleeding, in palestine and israel.

the entire war system must be transformed
no more war
economic conversion of the war economy is our common cause
we are workers in building a peace economy

our task is to work together in an artistic harmony
blending our strengths,
meeting our needs also in mutual aid
using the knowledges we have
teaching peace
doing
revolutionary evolutionary actions changing history integrating national groups

r e a c h i n g

for quality public education available for everyone
for quality public health available to everyone
for redirecting resources for ending hunger and poverty
for creating new work
for reclaiming the public commons from the privatizers and usurpers
for putting more minds to curing aids and alzheimers and malaria and all the other dread diseases
for restorative justice, rebalancing what is out of harmony
for cultural survival
for the abolition of nuclear weapons totally
for mother love and apple pie and better days to come
there are many principles of organization in this association
we are a center-less circle with its circumference everywhere
we are an underground army of nurturers, arising
we are a network of affinity groups
we are a chorus of caucuses
we are a solidarity deeper than differences
we are veterans of past struggles, intent to affirm our continuity
we are your best friend and your worst nightmare
we are keepers of the dream

we are intent on change, and changing ourselves as well

we are each of us, you, a center of power
each with unique capacities to reach out
to family and friends, lovers, partners, teachers, coworkers, neighbors, acquaintances
compatriots from by-gone barricades and student days
all who know us.

we are encouragers of one another to mobilize our power

you are a center of power, send the call out,
put it in your own words, to all who know you, try again.

we are discovering what we can do together.

we combine many ideologies and analyses,

we are promoting human solidarity and effort for authentic relationship.

like students for a democratic society
we seek to create a sustained community of educational and political concern
maintaining a vision of democratic society where at all levels people have control of the decisions which affect them and the resources on which they are dependent, increasing democracy in all phases of our common life, promoting participation
we seek relevance through continual focus on realities and on the programs necessary to affect change at the most basic levels of economic, political and social organization.
our urgency is to put forth a radical, to the roots, democratic program whose methods embody the democratic vision
this is an initial statement of mds/movement for a democratic society

if you would like to join,
to acknowledge your membership
which is in your heart

please respond

alan haber

answer please, 2 questions:
the beginning of dues

what do you need?
what do you have to offer?

I was recently at a dinner with some friends in New York’s East Village. Two of them, Matt and Madeline, started explaining a concept from social movement theory, namely that before periods of great social upheaval, unrest, or organized social movements, there is often a period directly preceding it where the expectations of the public are raised. In other words, people begin to have a sense of entitlement, which then can’t be met by the system, and they make the connections and rebel against the system which made those false promises (i.e. raised expectations can lead to politicization and radicalization). The example they used was the Civil Rights Movement, and the period directly beforehand when blacks had helped fight fascism in the Second World War for a country that segregated them at home - a country they had to return to after the war. As you would rightly expect, they weren’t too happy. An increased sense of entitlement, and raised expectations for progress, were shattered by the system of racial apartheid at home.

More recently, I was reading Greg Wilpert’s book called “Changing Venezuela By Taking Power“, where he explained some of the factors that lead Venezuela to where it is today on a road to possible genuine liberation. He talked about, in more detail than I will include here (it’s definitely worth the read if you want an honest account of what’s going on with the Bolivarian Revolution; the point of view you won’t get in the corporate media), how the Venezuelans had their expectations raised around the systems of capitalism and representative democracy, both of which failed them miserably - as those systems will consistently do to the people at the bottom of the social ladder. The result? This allowed room for President Hugo Chavez, and members of the Venezuelan Left to organize a movement, and use governmental power to push for new systems: Participatory Democracy and Socialism for the 21st Century.

And then, as a final example, last weekend, when I was returning to Brooklyn with Kate and Pat, the subway train paused longer than usual in the subway at Borough Hall. The station manager came on the loudspeaker and announced that due to a problem with the trains we’d have to take bus. So we existed the station and walked, along with a hundred to two-hundred people, to the nearby bus stop.

When a train stops running in New York City, its customary for passengers to get a free transfer to the bus (a one-ride metrocard/subway ticket costs $2.00 normally - and if you don’t get a transfer, you have to pay another $2.00 for the bus) or another train. When hundreds of people get off a subway train though, they almost never give out physical/paper transfer tickets to those passengers. And since the MTA’s (subway authority) communication isn’t always the best, there is no way the bus driver would know that all of this is going on in the middle of the night.

So when there are 150 or 200 people all lined up to get on a train, in the middle of the night, in a mass of people (not in a line), you can imagine that some people will get upset when the bus driver asks some questions about the train being stopped. In other words, when people feel like they have been wronged and are entitled to compensation or justice, they are very willing to fight for that justice (even when “justice” is just a free transfer ticket).

As I was at the back of the crowd chatting with Pat, Kate, and Daniel (who we’d randomly bumped into at the bus stop), I couldn’t help but be amused by a thought that had entered my mind. Suppose there was a crowd of people, who didn’t get kicked off the train. Instead they were waiting like normal for the bus. Imagine that you then make an announcement, that you can all rip off the MTA by simply saying that the train had stopped, and you all were forced to get off. Well, while I was standing there watching dozens of people forcefully piling into a cramped bus, I couldn’t help but admit to myself that very few people would ever go along with such a plan. I thought immediately back to Matt and Madeline’s comments about social movement theory around people feeling entitlement. If you raise expectations to the point where people feel entitled to some service or social norm, they will fight like hell to make sure they have it - and will be furious if they don’t.

My mind switched to the big picture, in thinking about what that means for social movements. Since I study communications and human thought processes, I couldn’t help but think about what implications the Metrocard Transfer Thought Experiment had for the dominant stories that run through our society. If that phenomenon exists when people feel entitled to something, and often not when they don’t, what does that mean for GOP/Rightwing narratives like “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps”, and “Trickle Down Economics”, and the demonization of programs of social welfare (and the word “welfare” itself - as if human welfare is somehow bad). The implications kinda knocked the wind out of me. They must debilitate chances for social change. In short, those narratives must be destroyed. We need new, progressive narratives about what is right and wrong in society.

But realizing these things also should give us hope - we can change these them. We can build movements which empower people, and give them a sense of entitlement about what rightfully theirs.

With the last remnants of the New Deal on its deathbed and with a looming environmental crisis about to wreak havoc upon our world, our generation - raised in the age of information technology and expecting to have the same basic social safety net that previous generations had - will soon come to the conclusion (if we help them out a bit), that their reasoned disillusionment with change, will be minute compared to the consequences of not fighting back. As a movement we must seize the opportunity presented by our current political moment.

Our demands should be simple: “we want the world!”

As the title suggests, here are some ways that events can fulfill Organizing functions. Events might be considered organizing if they:1. help to increase and solidify the commitment of new or preexisting members.2. whenever possible, recruit new members, and get the contact information of all the people (especially the new ones) who join in the events - later following up with each of them, individually if possible.3. are well messaged/framed, with language and concepts used that help to lay the foundation for the construction of a new dominant narrative throughout society - a narrative about justice, peace, equity, democracy, liberty, human dignity, diversity, sustainability, and solidarity.For example, the conservative theme of “small government”, can be exposed for what it is: the destruction of good forms of government (programs of social uplift), and the expansion of bad forms (more money for the defense industry, the nationalization of corporate debt, tax breaks for the rich). We can show that theres an alternative to that - a participatory democracy where people control their own lives and country through a system of elected delegates - as opposed to unaccountable “representatives” who represent corporate interests instead of the interests of hardworking Americans.4. elevate sympathetic voices which people can’t ignore, and indeed, can personally and collectively relate to. These voices must cut through dominant narratives that largely isolate and atomize us, while causing people to have feel solidarity with other human beings - feelings solidarity which can later be translated into solidaristic action and organizing.5. expand democratic control by the people over society. Whenever possible, activist events can be used to organize for democratic popular power by allowing people to both participate in the event, and/or take social power into their own hands. While this power must be directed in a productive direction, it is fundamental to winning a new world that people begin to have ever more practice at what it would take to run a society, and how desirable that would be. Democracy needs to be made viral and contagious.We could list more, but the above are usually pretty crucial. I will add more as I think of them - or others suggest them to me.

Progressives need hundreds of videos, charts, and radio spots like this permeating on television channels, radio stations, newspaper pages, and other forms of media. It is a hyper-visual and self-explanatory method of communicating how spending priorities in America are WAY off. We can use content like this to open up space to talk about the needed progressive and democratic shift in American life.

Check it out: Oreos Cookies, U.S. Budget and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream on TrueMajority.com

Yesterday I posted an article from Business Week by Carmine Gallo entitled “How to Inspire People Like Obama“. It goes over (super) basic rhetorical and public speaking skills that all radical organizers should know if they want to be able to give effective speeches and presentations. One useful tool, when used appropriately, is declarative statements. Some people in segments of the movement (lots of young white people), have developed an accent in which every sentence they use sounds like a question. My friend John Cronan talks about this in his Revisiting Rhode Island: Reflections on Movement Building blog series on ZNet. We call the accent a “vaguely neutral” one. It spreads like wildfire in some (mostly-white) youth groups. Its really bad for organizational growth as it makes the group look really odd. Here’s a comedian Jonathan McIntosh showed me. He’s talking about the accent (which apparently isn’t just in some social movements circles). Anyone who does this accent should listen to this guy. Using that accent is really ineffective communication!

Why does the left lose in America? While there are a bunch of reasons, language is one of the biggest ones. In Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate George Lakoff explores cognitive science, language, linguistics, and how all of them relate to progressive politics and progressive framing/messaging/organizing. Every radical interested in winning should read Lakoff and those at Rockridge Nation and The Rockridge Institute. Apply a radical analysis to their tactics and BAM - we’ll be infinitely more successful. Don’t Think of an Elephant is a great introduction to framing and messaging. Take a look:

“Don’t Think of an Elephant! is the definitive handbook for understanding what happened in the 2004 election and communicating effectively about key issues facing America today. Author George Lakoff has become a key advisor to the Democratic party, helping them develop their message and frame the political debate.

In this book Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate.

Lakoff’s years of research and work with environmental and political leaders have been distilled into this essential guide, which shows progressives how to think in terms of values instead of programs, and why people vote their values and identities, often against their best interests.

Don’t Think of An Elephant! is the antidote to the last forty years of conservative strategizing and the right wing’s stranglehold on political dialogue in the United States.

Read it, take action-and help take America back.”

A great talk Van Jones gave at the National Conference for Media Reform in 2007. He talks about the politics of togetherness, avoiding defeatism, realizing when the Left is actually winning on issues. He uses superb language and themes that all leftists should take up. He’s a great orator and motivational speaker. Feeling down? Need some inspiration? Check it out!

The peace movement, which has largely convinced the entire population that the Iraq War is about oil, and the environmental movement, which has framed the debate that global warming is a clear and present danger, both don’t seem to be bridging the gaps between the two issues. I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but from what I’ve seen, most of the two sections of the progressive movement aren’t making the obvious connections.

Burning fossil fuels is driving global warming. The United States just spent almost $1 trillion (yes, trillion with a “T”) to ensure permanent access to Iraqi oil. In other words, money that could have gone to dozens of serious social programs - including funding a complete greening of the American economy - was instead funneled into an illegal, costly, and lethal global warming drilling expedition and nobody is talking about it.

The war, as the election season in the United States speeds up, is largely off the table. It’s gone off the media radar for election coverage, which isn’t surprising, though obviously quite frustrating. The environmental movement, which has been doing a phenomenal job linking solutions to global warming with solutions to poverty in America (i.e. “green pathways out of poverty”, “green collar jobs”, and “solar cells, not jail cells”), but doesn’t seem to be focusing in a large way on why our national spending priorities are what they are. How can we prompt a green economic revolution in our country if half of our budget is going to waging a bloody war for control of fossil fuel reserves!

The only folks I’ve seen actually trying to link the two issues are the “no war, no warming” folks. But the slogan just doesn’t cut it. All it says, all it invokes, is a group of people who happen to be against two things (key word: against). The direct linkage and correlation between the two issue’s aren’t highlighted when they are dichotomized in that way. We need to be more creative and thoughtful when linking the two - and we need to frame our message in positive language. People need to understand them as one concept. Much like messaging around “green collar jobs” invokes two issues with one conceptual frame.

The connections are clear. The public, soldiers, and veterans are all against the Iraq War in record numbers. Large portions of the population think we need to take action against climate destabilization too. Both global warming and the war are only getting worse. The U.S. Government and Corporate America just handed us these narratives. Let’s take them and roll with it!

My good friend Joshua Kahn Russell turned me on to an AMAZING book by Malcolm Gladwell called “The Tipping Point“. Apparently I missed this one when it came out. Wish I hadn’t, but glad I read it now! It’s one of the best books I’ve read in years.

After I read it, I realized that a lot of my not-so-progressive friends and business student acquaintances love the book. If you are a progressive, read it with an eye towards seeing the basic concepts and how powerful they are - not with the expectation that you will agree with everything Gladwell says about this or that issue. The underlying concepts are groundbreaking and, dare I say, revolutionary.

You can read excepts from the book and what Gladwell has to say about the book here. I’ll definitely be reflecting on and referencing this book a lot in the future. Its definitely one to read a few times! The endnotes are even amazing!

Again, progressives get it wrong (Obama knows strategy though!). It isn’t about facts - you can pile facts to the ceiling (though we have truth on our side and must show it). Without a clear vision, an emotional vision, a spiritual, cultural, epic vision of the future - you won’t get the votes. Here’s Frank Luntz - Republican Party Strategist and Message Maker doing a focus group of Democrats after Super Tuesday. He asks “name one accomplishment of Barack Obama”. Almost none can do it. While Obama might have a ton of them. that’s not the main part of his message! (Also see my post: Language Warriors)

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After the polls closed on Tuesday in Super Tuesday States, Hillary and Bill Clinton injected $5 million from their personal fortunes into Hillary’s campaign. As a challenge, the Obama campaign asked their supporters to match that number. In under 24 hours, that happened - mostly from small donors giving small amounts from their pockets. That number is up to over $7,600,000.00 in a little under two day. TWO DAYS. He reached $6.5 million in a little over a day. Incredible!

The Left should ask WHY this is happening, instead of merely critiquing Obama’s politics (and theres plenty to critique). Below are six of Obama’s speeches. All are incredibly inspiring. The left should learn from his rhetoric, his lack of stupid dogmatic language, his imagery and story-telling skills, his charisma, and his message. We take that message roll with it - using real organizing, and real analysis behind it. We should stop whining and start winning!

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Here’s an letter to the San Francisco Chronicle talking by Rabbi Michael Learner. He talks about how Obama is basically one of the only spiritual progressives on the national scene:

“Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, and author of the 2006 national best-seller ‘The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.’

I enthusiastically support Barack Obama, the first serious spiritual progressive candidate for the presidency. Once in office, Obama’s discourse of hope, challenging narrow technocratic consciousness, will open the possibility for serious social movements to push him beyond the constraints of Democratic Party spinelessness.

Spiritual progressives want a New Bottom Line so that institutions, social practices, even our own personal behavior is seen as efficient, rational and productive, not only to the extent that they maximize money and power (the Old Bottom Line) but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring for others, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and enhance our capacity to respond to others as embodiments of the sacred and to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

In our Spiritual Covenant with America ( www.spiritualprogressives.org ), we apply these ideas not only to support single payer health care and taxes on carbon emissions but also to replace our foreign policy Strategy of Domination with a Strategy of Generosity, recognizing that our well-being as Americans depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet. Hence we call for a Global Marshall Plan to dedicate 1-2 percent of the GDP of the United States each year for the next 20 to once and for all eliminate domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care. It will be up to us ordinary citizens to create the pressure that will allow Obama to fight for the spiritual progressive agenda he actually believes in, but is unsure can be realized at this historical moment.“

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Finally, I have been looking through Obama speeches. His speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Chicago (Super Tuesday) had something really interesting about them. None of them mentioned God. In the past, Obama has talked about “an awesome God”, giving moving speeches in Churches and other religious institutions. He’s a member of the United Church of Christ, but it seems as if he doesn’t need to wear it on his sleeve. He finishes most speeches with talk about an epic mission to build a better America. Again, if the Left wants to win, we should take notice of why this man is winning…

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.

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>.