When I arrived in Seattle 18 months ago, I quickly realized two things. First, this city is bustling with so much creativity that it is on the verge of becoming the next Silicon Valley. Seattle has the cultural capacity to become a leading innovation center for the world, especially around participatory government and social technologies as they play out in a burgeoning green economy. And we’re on the verge of taking things to an entirely new level.
The second thing I noticed was that I kept meeting people who should already know each other, but didn’t. I’d sit down with Sarah Jaynes of the Washington Progress Alliance – an organization dedicated to building infrastructure for the progressive movement – and have a chat a few days later with Jeni Krencicki Barcelos at the Three Degrees Project only to learn that she had helped build the Progressive Ideas Network – another organization dedicated to building infrastructure for progressives. Yet, they hadn’t met each other. I found dozens of people like this with a wide range of backgrounds and interests.
So much potential collaboration untapped.
Some might think of this as a problem. I saw it as an incredible opportunity. The prospect that we could unleash the talents, insights, and experiences of the Seattle scene riveted me. How could we effectively bring people together and catalyze this awesome creative scene? Continue reading →
As long as we’re taking the measure of the country this week, let’s look in on the far (and not so far) fringes of the right wing. What’s up with them? And how worried should we be?
For the past several months, I’ve been trying to get a bead on the actual numbers of the far-right movement. To that end, I accrued a motley little collection of surveys, studies, and sociological research pulled together from here and there. I’ve been sort of walking around this pile, kicking at it, figuring out which pieces fit together, in the hope of getting a handle on exactly how many really scary people there are out there right now. It seemed like an important question to get answered.
Finally, I did what I should have done on Day One. I picked up the phone and called Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, who knows more about the hard research on the far right than anyone else in the country.
“Chip, how many far-right wingers are there in the United States?” Continue reading →
I often begin public talks by asserting that what we believe to be true is more important than what is actually true. Then I share examples like these:
Saddam Hussein is linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Environmental action destroys jobs.
Regulations hurt markets.
Government is wasteful.
Each of these claims is based on an underlying belief about the world. In the case of Saddam Hussein, most Fox News viewers consider the linkage to 9/11 as incontrovertible regardless of the evidence presented to the contrary. Similarly, economists from the most prestigious universities have ardently declared that markets should be “free” from intrusion by government in order to create wealth and prosperity. This implies that regulations are harmful and restrictive to the workings of markets. It further inculcates the implicit belief that markets are inherently good and will always behave in the interest of public welfare, even in the face of a mountain of hard facts that contradict this view.
Why do I begin presentations with this strange assertion? Because it tells us something very important about how our minds work. Continue reading →
In my workshops on framing and strategic communication, I often teach audiences how to “break a frame” by exposing the underlying logic of a particular set of ideas and looking for a leverage point. This brief video is exemplary of frame breaking. It takes a simple, yet cogent story and pivots it in a powerful and engaging way.
My hope is that advocates for progressive social change will learn how to do this successfully. We have to change the stories of our culture in order to make headway on the great challenges confronting us.
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In forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn’t worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.
We begin with this week’s triple whammy.
Freedom vs. The Public Option
Which would you prefer, consumer choice or freedom? Extended coverage or freedom? Bending the cost curve or freedom? Continue reading →
My little series on the turn of the decade (which started last week) was originally conceived as a two-parter: a look back to the past, and a look ahead to the future.
That changed a bit this week, when the present rose up and made itself known in a very big way.
American history has a rhythm to it: years of calm punctuated by seasons of astonishing upheaval. Sometimes, the long quiet spells — like the long intervals between earthquakes in places like Haiti — can go on for so long that we forget that life could ever be different, or that History, writ large, can possibly happen to us at all. All the really heinous, traumatic stuff — war, famine, economic panic — happened in somebody else’s past. The sweet prosperity we have now is what forever looks like. Continue reading →
Jan 20th, 2010
by Joe Brewer.
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Are you one of the millions of progressives grieving about the catastrophic fiasco that happened in Massachusetts yesterday? Wondering why it is that a Republican took the Senate seat in one of our most beloved – and deeply blue – states? This event is a tremendous learning opportunity for us.
Now is the time for bold vision and action. While the corporate minions of our party’s past continue to call for us to act like Ronald Reagan if we want to win (see this disgusting diatribe by Mark Penn who recommends kissing up to Wall Street and ignoring main street as a strategy for success. Leaves one wondering just what the hell “success” means to him), we know what we really need to do:
Fire all those political consultants who couldn’t find a progressive victory if it hit them on the head!
Jan 20th, 2010
by Joe Brewer.
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For all you Democratic Party strategists, Jon Stewart sees what’s going on. So do millions of young people who watch his show. We’re building the future political system to remedy this abysmal failure of leadership and tactics.
We saw what happened when John Kerry refused to fight for what he believed in during the 2004 election, instead opting to follow the latest poll conducted by an “approved” consultant on the insider list of the party leadership. We observed the tactics of the status quo in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, including the adoption of Rovian attacks in the infamous “3 AM Ad” that used fear to discourage voters from caring about Barack Obama as a way to undermine his electability (and throw the entire progressive agenda under the bus at the same time). Most recently, we’ve stood by as a “super majority” which has more representational leadership in the federal government than any party in our lifetimes, waffled and caved in to a non-existent opposition in the debacle called health care reform throughout the last year. Continue reading →
This article is republished from Campaign for America’s Future.
It’s the New Year, and I’m celebrating by coming back to work after a three-month sabbatical from CAF. After four years of pretty consistent blogging, I needed some distance, some time to pursue a few errant passions, and the chance to recover my focus. As of this week, I’m back on the job with a fistful of new insights and research, and a head full of fresh things to blog about. It’s genuinely good to be back, which is a clear sign that the break was a) needed and b) long enough.
For the last couple of weeks, the blogs and papers have been full of pieces about the turn of the decade, with due regard to signs and portents for what the last decade’s disasters all meant, and what glories and horrors await us in the one now ahead. Since this kind of navel-gazing about change and meaning and the future are what I do, I suppose it’s incumbent on me to devote my first couple of homecoming posts to this topic. Given that it’s now January 13 and the prognostication rush is mostly over, I might even claim to be the final word on the subject.
So, here it is, in two parts. This week: A look back. Next week: A look ahead. Continue reading →
Dec 21st, 2009
by Joe Brewer.
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This presentation provides a clear and comprehensive account of how the human mind works and why it is so vital for our politics.
George and I developed the framework for cognitive policy together that we see as absolutely vital for addressing the great challenges of our time. Tom Crompton and I are designing methods for identity campaigns that put these insights into practice for promoting positive social change.
The crew at CPW launched this company to deliver powerful techniques and emerging new practices based on what we know about the political mind so that practitioners in the advocacy, policy-making, business, and education worlds can learn to apply these insights as techniques for the effective management of social change.
Together we are laying the foundations for thriving in a changing world.
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