As the goal of the convening says, this body of work is based on the belief that

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1 public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible. Abraham Lincoln To: Interested Parties Re: Summary of Convening at Pocantico on Advancing Progressive Narrative Fr: Richard Kirsch, Roosevelt Institute Dt: 2/25/13 During the past two years, several new initiatives were launched to tackle the failure of progressives to change the overall political discourse by telling a powerful story about what we believe. Rather than simply bemoaning the far better job that conservatives have done in popularizing their ideology, these projects have begun to shape a progressive strategy to promote our worldview. In early January 2013, the Roosevelt Institute and the Proteus Fund co-hosted a two-day meeting, with a goal to advance the development and use of progressive narrative, how we communicate what we believe to most effectively build power over time. The convening, held at the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund 1, brought together 31 national leaders with a wide diversity of perspectives. Participants included social psychologists, cultural communicators, online activists, union organizers, linguists, philanthropists, public opinion researchers, ad-makers, and people involved in developing three new progressive narrative projects. As the goal of the convening says, this body of work is based on the belief that shaping worldview is an essential element of power. And as the Lincoln quote emphasizes, what is possible in the day-to-day realm of politics is defined by how people view the world around them. Translating the concepts in Steven Lukes s seminal book, Power: A Radical View, Richard Healey and Sandra Hinson 2 propose three faces of power: 1) elections and issues; 2) infrastructure; 3) worldview. The emerging body of work around progressive narrative is a result of a growing number of progressive leaders understanding that our failure to operate in the third face of power has been a major shortcoming of our movement, severely limiting our ability to win on issues and to make the most of the policy and organizing infrastructure that has been built in the last decade. This memo provides a brief summary of the substance and major recommendations from the convening. You may also read a much more detailed report on the 1 This report is based on materials prepared for this meeting and the discussions that took place there. It reflects the views of the author and not necessarily those of other conference participants or of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, its trustees, or its staff. 2 Grassroots Policy Project, Theories of Power for Activists, January Memo on Narrative Convening 1

2 convening, with a description of the full range of recommendations and more on those listed here. Summary of Three Narrative Projects: The following chart summarizes the three narrative projects, whose leaders participated in the planning of the Pocantico convening and which were at the core of the meeting: Project Goal American Values Project To provide a comprehensive and practical synthesis of the current and best understanding of progressivism, encompassing its history, traditions, worldview, values and positions on major issues. Progressive Economic Narrative Group To develop and promote a common economic narrative that is used across the progressive movement, a powerful story that we are telling consistently through words and actions, in our communications and organizing. Main product Progressive Thinking Progressive Economic Narrative (PEN) Progress Alliance of Washington To create a powerful, unified values-based progressive story that we can use to frame our communications now and over decades, reinforcing each others' messages and eventually winning the hearts and minds of the American public. Hero s Handbook A short description of each of the three narratives is included on the last page of this memo. I note here that Progressive Thinking is very different kind of document than Progressive Economic Narrative (PEN) or the Hero s Handbook. As a comprehensive synthesis of progressive values, thinking and tradition, it is an excellent companion to the other two narrative documents. Both the Hero s Handbook and PEN are developed primarily as narrative tools to be used in progressive communication. They are much shorter and focus on teaching people how to communicate progressive worldview. In the case of PEN, the focus is only on economic narrative, while Hero s Handbook addresses both economic and other issues. Both PEN and Hero s Handbooks have engaged in extensive training on how to use their narrative tools on current issues. For readers interested in a detailed review and comparison of the three narratives, please read Progressive Narrative Mapping, a report I prepared on the main products of the three progressive narrative projects, which includes: 1) a detailed description of the content of the major publications of each of the three projects; 2) a comparison of the content of the three publications; and 3) examples of the narratives being used by progressive organizations and elected officials. Objectives of Convening: The objectives of the convening included aligning and strengthening the narratives; fostering stronger working relationships between key people working in separate sectors on narrative; increasing the persuasive powers of progressive narrative by integrating the insights of social psychologists; and leaving with next steps for implementation. Memo on Narrative Convening 2

3 Diversity of Participants Advances Narrative: A major goal of the convening was to bring people with a rich diversity of experiences and perspectives together. A consensus point in the meeting evaluation was that our success in doing so was one of the great strengths of the gathering. This was not a meeting with presenters and an audience, but one that fully engaged the insights of all participants. Typically, one might assemble communicators from progressive organizations and public opinion researchers. Instead we convened a group that brought together thinkers and communicators from a variety of progressive groups and people with experience in using cultural communications on issues and academics, including a social psychologist, an expert on class and gender and a linguist. The insights and contributions from these participants significantly broadened the scope of the discussion, suggesting new strategies for creating, testing and promoting narrative. Recommendations to Advance Progressive Narrative: The final session of the convening focused on specific ideas on how to advance the narrative, through a written exercise and a group discussion. The full report on the narrative includes 26 ideas (and more ideas within those) for next steps. The following summary is based on ideas that were most frequently listed in the written exercise and recommendations that generated the most interest in the group discussion. A longer description of each of these is included in the full report. 1. Consolidate two of the narrative projects to create a more useable and accessible product for activists: While each of the narrative projects highlighted at the conference will continue to be developed and improved, it will be helpful for activists to have one narrative that they can share and use. PEN and Hero s Handbook are now collaborating on a single document that can be utilized in a training program described below. The very useful American Values Project narrative document will serve as a resource for those who want to go deeper. 2. Training and support for using narratives in issue campaigns, based on PEN and Hero's Handbook: The most frequent suggestion was to develop a training program for organizations on using narrative in their issue campaigns and related organizational communications. Participants suggested: Training targeted on specific issues and at types of organizations (by issue; constituency); Preparing case studies of how narratives have been employed; Documenting how to use narrative in an issue campaign: what is best practice? What process should people go through? What resources does it take? Training has been a priority for both PEN and the Hero's Handbook. Both projects have concluded that using their narratives in campaigns, with training and support is much more effective than training on the narratives in the abstract. The projects have also concluded that working with groups on the narrative as a campaign progresses is also key to fully understanding and implementing narrative. Memo on Narrative Convening 3

4 Next steps: Identify two to three new or ongoing campaigns which want to incorporate narrative intentionally into their effort; Work with each campaign to develop a narrative, based on a combination of PEN and Hero s Handbook, informed by the key values identified n Progressive Thinking; Prepare materials; train campaign communicators and organizers on using the narrative; Work with each campaign on incorporating the narrative as the campaign unfolds. 3. Prioritize research to advance narrative: Participants identified a number of topics and approaches for further research. We can summarize them in the following two categories: 1) audience questions; 2) academic research. Audience issues: All three narrative projects are primarily focused on constructing narratives that can be embraced by supermajorities 60% or more of the public, narratives consonant with both the progressive base and people who respond to both progressive and conservative stories and values. While the participants agreed with this overall approach, the second most frequently proposed idea was to do much more in-depth exploration of how different audiences understand narratives and related messages. The objectives would be to avoid communications that are not effective with key audiences and to take advantage of targeted communications to different audiences, which can now be done with an increasing array of sophisticated technologies. Key constituencies identified for this research and narrative development included Latinos, the Millennial generation and white working class families, each of which brings distinctive perspectives to the narrative. Incorporating academic research: The perspectives of academics raised the potential power of systematically incorporating academic research into the narrative work. This includes learning from linguists, social psychologists and others. Among the research topics identified, which have clear implications for narrative were: Testing the use of a variety of metaphors to see how each impact people s views of economic policy; How does the use of villains promote or detract from the progressive values and supporting emotions we want to advance in the public debate? How do the emotions of fear, anger and hope relate to people s engagement in politics? How to account for people s tendency toward system justification (the tendency for people to want believe in the status quo)? Memo on Narrative Convening 4

5 Next Steps: Compile report on existing research in both topics: audience differences and academic research; Identify key researchers to work with on a regular basis, including the willingness to provide feedback on specific communications questions; Prioritize and budget research topics. 3. Convene cultural communicators on economic narrative: The discussions at Pocantico highlighted the great importance and current scarcity for progressives to develop and integrate cultural communications and communicators in our work. Artists and cultural communicators tell our stories, and speak to the heart and the spirit. Pocantico participants who were engaged in cultural work emphasized that we need to develop simplified narratives, with emotional punch. At the conference, we explored the language and images used by the media (such as the fascinating, intentional effort to change the portrayal of LGBT characters), stories told on TV and in movies, and communications by visual and performing artists. The list, of course, could be broadened to include: video games; comic books; stand-up comedy; sport events; and various means of affecting their content and underlying message. Next steps: Organize a convening, which is centered around cultural creative people and cultural communicators working with some traditional progressive communicators and the narrative projects. The discussions would focus on: narrative content; ways of communicating; and implementation. Make the focus of the convening the economy, which was identified as the most central challenge for progressives. Structure the convening to lead to the development of real products and plans for their dissemination in various cultural venues. 4. Promote importance of narrative capacity to funders: Several people emphasized the need for the narrative projects to work together to promote the importance of narrative within the progressive infrastructure, including with funders. Narrative, needs to be seen as an important core capacity, which should be developed across issues and organizations as a kind of utility in support of the whole progressive movement. Current communications capacity funding focuses on use and delivery of short-term messages. Narrative provides a missing part of communication; a theory and practice of what it is most important to communicate. Next Steps: Organize a meeting of funders, along with narrative projects and a select group of progressive groups who want to intentionally incorporate narrative in their work. The focus would be the importance of developing narrative capacity. The meeting would: Review current state of narrative work; Memo on Narrative Convening 5

6 Discuss priority recommendations from Pocantico; Envision how core narrative capacity could be best structured; Prioritize areas to fund; Develop outreach plan to other funders. Focus on big organizing ideas for narrative: Recognizing that the progressive narrative work is young, several big ideas were proposed to advance the current narrative conceptions, including: Visionary goals: Drive narrative through a very short list of simple but bold, aspirational goals, which together project a vision of the world we are seeking, in ways that connect to people s lives. The vision encompassed by these goals would be linked to immediate fights. Strategic sub-narratives: Center communications on a small number of strategic sub-narratives, which would also have an aspirational vision and be connected to immediate issues. The leading example suggested was a progressive concept of family for the 21st century, families that provide nurture, security and opportunity. The narrative on family could be used to drive stories and be injected into campaigns on social issues, economic issues, and issues of civil and human rights. Family is a particular apt narrative for cultural communications. Values first: Reach alignment on a strategic set of values, and use those to underpin the narrative. The values would answer the core questions of who we are and what we believe. Alignment on values will create alignment on our narratives, so that the stories we tell on each issue will reinforce our vision and beliefs. Next Steps: The three narrative projects should discuss: The potential for each of these ideas to advance the overall work; How they might be incorporated in the current narratives; How the ideas might be explored in the other priorities identified above. For example: could campaigns adopt a list of bold, unifying ideas? could the cultural convening explore the use of family? Conclusion: The new focus on narrative emerged from, as Larry Marx has written, a consensus among progressives that that even though we might win from time to time, we do so within a narrowly constrained framework of conservative ideas, values and principles that are deeply embedded in the public debate. These ideological constraints both prevent progressive political victories from happening in the first place and also hinder them from escalating and building on each other. 3 3 We are the 99%... Aren t We? Yes we Can: Problems and Prospects of Progressive Ideology, Larry Marx report for the Proteus Fund, Memo on Narrative Convening 6

7 The convening in Pocantico is an important step in responding to this challenge, as it brought together the nascent narrative projects, engaged them with a variety of progressive leaders and generated a wealth of ideas to advance the work, from implementation and dissemination of the work that has been done so far, to bold ideas to advance the development and dissemination of a progressive vision for America in the future. The biggest challenge ahead of this work is to generate the resources to build the capacity to implement these ideas. In particular, progressive funders need to see narrative as a key capacity for advancing their broader mission and the work of their grantees. It is my hope that we will be able to look back at Pocantico as a launching pad for progressive institutions and funders to building capacity to make major advances in progressive narrative, a fundamental element to building power over time. Memo on Narrative Convening 7

8 Capsule Summary of the Three Narratives Progressive Thinking (PT) includes two narrative structures, both organized around a central progressive message: Everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does his or her fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. The quest in the first structure is for a more perfect union. PT includes an extensive definition of four foundational progressive values: freedom; opportunity; responsibility; and cooperation. These are the foundation for progressive beliefs about: the role of government; the economy; and national security and foreign affairs. PT applies these beliefs to 11 issues: jobs and the economy; taxes and deficits; health care; Social Security and Medicare; education; immigration; environmental, climate and energy policy; reproductive rights and health; money in politics; and Gay rights and marriage equality. Progressive Economic Narrative (PEN): Under the headline, An America that Works for All of Us, PEN is based on five conceptual pillars, which address: 1) the economic problem; 2) a progressive definition of economic goals; 3) the role of government and business; 4) the political problem; 5) call to action. The headlines on a PEN poster, developed as a communications summary, read: 1) Working families and the middle class are getting crushed; 2) Working families and the middle class are the engines of our economy; 3) The great American middle-class wasn t built by accident. We build a strong middle class by decisions we make together; 4) We re all in this together. We all do better when we all do better. PEN applies this narrative structure to specific issues including: good jobs and workers rights; federal fiscal fight; health care; and job creation. Hero s Handbook: Hero s Handbook is a tool for creating progressive narratives on issues, based on a core set of progressive values, using six story elements: 1) the quest; 2) the threat; 3) heroes 4) heroes tools 5) villains and 6) villains weapons. The 10 values are: freedom and justice for all; honesty and integrity; equal opportunity; hard work; personal responsibility and shared accountability; everyone does their fair share; the Golden Rule; diversity makes us strong and; our children should inherit a better world. Hero s Handbook provides poll-tested answers to each of the six story elements. For example, the progressive quest is for: strong families; a secure middle class; and a better world for our children. Examples of other story elements: heroes are people who work together to make things better; a hero s tool is a good job, good health and a safe place to call home; a villain is those who don t pay their fare share, and a villain s weapon, rigging the system for their own political advantage. The Hero s Handbook includes examples of applying this structure to seven issues: our budget; health care; freedom to marry; climate change; workers rights; women s health; and immigration. Memo on Narrative Convening 8