Monday morning Momentum

[Joanne98]

Usually a contradiction in terms, I realize. But not today.

I’m sitting here at Momentum watching Alex Gibney, director of Taxi to the Dark Side, talking about waterboarding, Gitmo, and how America descended into a country willing to torture and even kill people, even if they’re innocent (as many of the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib internees have turned out to be). And he’s doing so in a calm, rational voice, certain that his audience is sane, too. Just the sound of it is a good thing.

There’s a reason people attend church even when their religion doesn’t demand it. The converted need to be preached to sometimes, just to remain invested. So if nothing else, meetings like this are always inherently useful, even necessary.

Unfortunately, that’s sometimes all that results from these things. I’ve been to a few conclaves where a pep rally would have gotten just as much done.

So are we learning anything here? Yep. Partly because of the quality of speakers and the convention’s unusual structure: 18 minutes per speech (make your point, show what works, and get off), and no formal Q&A periods but plenty of roaming face time, made possible by a strictly limited head count (300 people here, total).

You could call the format elitist, but it would be a strange description for a bunch of people fighting for immigrant and labor and women’s rights. Call Tanya Harris, an ACORN activist who has devoted herself to rebuilding the devastated Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, elitist, and I think she’d just laugh gently in your face and get back to work.

It’s an eclectic mix — microloan lenders, health care experts, environmental activists, you name it. The main thing the speakers seem to have in common: they’ve actually succeeded at something, and they’re sharing their knowledge about what works. That’s refreshing.

Right this minute, psychology professor Drew Weston is discussing how to communicate progressive values (which the majority of the public shares on an overwhelming number of issues) by "shaping and activiating neural networks" in voters. It’s sound science married to basic neurology — which is to say, really just good basic marketing — but it’s also something the left is still learning.

Here: look at these six words:

Ocean moon glasses chair faith floor.
Now, name a laundry detergent at random. What’s the first detergent that comes to mind?

Tide, probably, simply because of the preset association with "ocean and moon," etc. (Readers of Prisoner of Trebekistan will recognize this from the memory techniques I learned for Jeopardy.)

Simple, powerful, and (sadly for us all) poorly understood by lefties. Weston is now illustrating how the GOP has brilliantly done this for years, turning the positive word "liberal" into "latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, anti-American," etc. (Also probably the root of the impulse to call 300 activists meeting privately "elitist.")

And now Weston is now moving into how concise conservative messaging is, contrasting it with the muddled, unfocused messaging of progressives. (Using the word "progressive" now because the word "liberal" has been soiled in such an Orwellian fashion.) If you’ve read George Lakoff, this is nothing new, but it’s stuff that every successful activist absolutely needs to understand.

And now he’s demonstrating some specific reframes. On national security, for example, the proper frame isn’t specific policy arguments, since they can’t address either the underlying emotions or principles. The proper frame: "if we detain people without hearings, wiretap our own citizens, and torture people on mere suspicions, the terrorists have won, because we have given up everything our country has stood for."

Let’s all say that together now.

So this really is a useful gathering. That’s nice to say and mean. Even when a few of the presentations have felt a little gee-whiz, remapping history with a Steve Jobs shine, they’ve still been provocative.

Continued>>>

http://thismodernworld.com/4406