Acting On Our Values is Good Economics

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Progressive economic policies that focus on people’s wellbeing can hit a brick wall (or at least a sturdy parapet) constructed by the current cultural common sense – the pervasive, default perspectives that shape our thinking in deep, often unconscious ways – about the economy.

The dominant model of the economy in this country (which successfully undergirds a whole host of conservative efforts) remains skewed toward prioritizing business’ interests over people’s wellbeing, easily reverts to a fatalistic “individual navigation of the economy” frame, and is steeped in pessimism about our ability to create a vigorous, equitable economy that serves us all.

Fortunately, there are powerful, alternative visions and models that can compete at this deep level to build and support the case for progressive economic policies.

Click here for a summary of the essential elements of a people-first paradigm Topos has assembled – along with our partners and clients –  over the past years.

We’ve conducted extensive multi-method research on the ways Americans think and communicate about the economy, across geographies and demographics. These efforts have enabled us to create strategies to advance models of the economy that both stay true to our values AND effectively compete with the current default models that hold us back.

A framework that flips people’s focus from what businesses need for the economy to do well, to a focus on people’s wellbeing (ALL people’s wellbeing) as what is necessary to drive our economy, can be a powerful tool to add to our moral and justice-oriented tools in the box. Along with messages that provide people with an authentic sense of power and agency and connect the dots for a clear role for collective action, including through government policy, this framework can help us make progressive people-first policies the priority.

 

Think Big: Help Co-Create a Research Agenda!

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We are excited to see many of you this Thursday, 10/27 at 3pm ET at our October Learning Community meeting on Democracy and the Will of the People. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to register!

In addition to hearing from a set of fantastic speakers, we’ll also start the conversation about co-creating a research agenda for next year. Through our work with partners in 2021, we learned we need more research on how to counter conservative narratives — research that accounts for long-term, strategic challenges but provides concrete solutions for the here and now.

We want to work with the Think Big cohort to identify the questions we need answered, prioritize the most pressing, and find answers through research methods such as ethnographic interviews, term testing, and surveys.

Some ideas have already started to surface. We’ll talk more about these ideas (and more!) at this Thursday’s meeting but are getting the conversation started here.

Let us know — Which of these questions do you think is most important? AND, please also add at least one idea of your own.

 

Feel free to share this invitation with like-minded allies!

Questions? Email us: thinkbig@topospartnership.com

https://thinkbigcommunity.net/

Empowering Perspectives

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An interesting tweet caught our attention:

“If we view ourselves as besieged victims who need to go into hiding, then we will cultivate fear and hoarding. If we view ourselves as a community working hard to protect the most vulnerable among us, then we will cultivate courage and helping. Mindset matters.”

This perspective strikes us as accurate and helpful, and right in line with the most basic premises of effective public interest communication: Complex situations can always be understood in more than one way, with very different consequences. Making progress depends on identifying the perspectives with the most positive consequences.

When it comes to COVID, but also many other topics – from climate change to the economy to sustainable agriculture, etc. – it is easy for us to see problems as daunting or overwhelming, as though we are at the mercy of events way beyond our power to make a difference. Fear causes us to turn inward; cynicism causes us to shut down.

But other perspectives help us recognize that we are active participants, making the world better through our choices and actions. We feel strong and uplifted when we recognize how our actions matter.

For most of us, our most effective activity to slow COVID is to stay home, and that doesn’t feel much like “taking action.” In fact, it feels like passivity, unless we are reminded that this is a decisive, winning strategy because our actions have consequences for everyone around us, for better or worse. “We are all in this together” – not just in an abstract or moral sense, but in practical, meaningful ways. In COVID, we support each other by staying apart.

Communicators encourage empowering perspectives on a range of issues by:

  • Focusing on practical, understandable solutions more than problems and threats,
  • Connecting the dots so people understand a complex topic and how the solution solves the problem, and
  • Providing clear choices they should be supporting by voting, by speaking up, and by making their priorities known.

Storytelling in the COVID-19 Moment

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Right now there’s lots of great advice about messaging in light of COVID-19 and about how to transform engagement strategies with social distancing in mind. In addition to these critical needs, there is an additional, overlooked need that we, progressive leaders, need to take on. NOW.

We need stories that teach truth, create civic engagement, and provide hope.

The Cultural Common Sense is quickly shifting. What lessons will people learn from this moment? Will fear, xenophobia, othering, and scarcity mindsets take over? Will people lose all faith that government could be an effective problem-solver? Will they look for comfort in an authoritarian father figure?

Or, will people emerge from this moment understanding that our public structures and systems matter, that we are interdependent, that government of, by and for the people means that we-the-people have the power to shape our nation?

The stories people learn in this moment will shape the Cultural Common Sense, with implications for all of our policies and policy battles going forward. The media is holding the Trump Administration accountable for failures, and we should continue to do that too. However, we also need to communicate wins – to demonstrate that collective action matters.

It’s on us to tell Success Stories, not “feel good” stories.

In people’s desire to find light in this time of darkness, individuals are sharing “feel good” stories – Italian balcony concerts, neighbors helping neighbors, the kindness of strangers, and so on. These are very important for emotional and mental health; it’s great that individuals are providing optimism. However, “feel good” stories will not teach about collective solutions, create civic engagement, or provide hope that we-the-people can build the country we want and need.

Progressive communicators need to share stories of successful collective action – what we have accomplished and could accomplish. Like the Little Engine that Could, we-the-people can accomplish great things for the common good in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Our research shows that people rarely hear of wins. In moments like this, with even more threats to already precarious lives, people feel powerless, especially the most vulnerable. Advocates have successes. We need to share them widely and often, and we should not undercut them with the notion that “it isn’t enough.” The specific win matters less than the idea that we-the-people got something significant accomplished, which inspires people to keep going for more, for that next bigger win.

Some of these stories are national in scope. For example, long before COVID-19, our research showed that people are inspired by the part our nation played in containing the Ebola epidemic. (We suspect people still don’t know that story because progressives don’t expend ongoing energy in communicating successes.)

Many of these stories are local in scope. For example, when our research respondents heard how residents of Chicago’s Southeast side banded together to take on a wealthy, multinational corporation and were successful in banning the storage of toxic material (petcoke) to make the community safer, they were inspired and excited to join a similar effort.

What Success Stories can we tell in this moment?

The eruption of activity by progressive organizations is inspiring. You are stepping up in heroic ways at the local, state and federal level. For example, advocates have won expanded paid sick leave, direct cash transfers, and were victorious over the failed logic of providing a trickle-down payroll tax cut. Work is well underway to protect and expand voting rights with efforts to advance vote by mail, registration requirements and so on. Activists in several states are winning the release of low-risk inmates due to health concerns. There are undoubtedly additional inspiring achievements playing out at the local level.

We need to make sure the average American hears about your efforts, your successes, your power. This isn’t about your ego. It’s about a teachable moment when Americans can see that people working together accomplish great and important things.

Please share your stories with us! We are starting a story bank for this moment, and need your stories. If you want some advice in crafting an effective story, let us know.

Stay safe, healthy, balanced and powerful!