Here are two press releases from two different NGOs responding to the same major news event (and the graphic that one of them included). I’m giving you the headline and first paragraph, and a link in each headline to read the whole thing—and then I’ll dissect them for you. Neither of these is a client and I had nothing to do with writing them—so this is purely about the lessons we can draw.
Empty podium with Presidential Seal in Yosemite National Park—included in the BSR press release
BSR regrets today’s executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a set of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that are intended to reduce the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels and cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030. In combination with the administration’s dramatic cuts to climate programs at the EPA and U.S. State Department, this announcement undermines policies that have stimulated economic growth, consumer savings, job creation, infrastructure investment, private-sector competitiveness, and public health.
The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Climate Action Plan, including withdrawing support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, “is completely misguided and ignores the irreversible clean energy economy that is already underway, creating good-paying jobs and economic vitality in communities across the country,” Ceres President Mindy Lubber said in a statement today. Lubber served as the EPA Administrator for the New England Region in 2000.
Which did you find more effective?
Ask yourself just two questions: which worked better for you, and why? Then scroll down to see what I felt worked well and poorly about each.
While the BSR release did a better job understanding the need for rich content, with numerous links and a picture, the copy was pathetically weak. This press release:
Used a wimpy headline that doesn’t take a position
Chose a stock photo that doesn’t add anything to the reader’s understanding—why not a photo of demonstrators thanking a company for providing clean energy and good jobs?
Made a terrible verb choice in “regrets”—which makes it sound like an accident that was BSR’s faults—rather than a much more appropriate verb, like “condemns”
Buried the real story in the second paragraph, which has hard-hitting facts to make a clear case against the Executive Order:
Just 18 months ago, the U.S. federal government estimated the net economic benefits of the CPP at US$26-45 billion, with consumers set to save US$155 billion from 2020 to 2030. In addition, the CPP provides regulatory support to the clean energy economy, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy and Employment Report, supported more than 3 million U.S. jobs in 2016. The public health benefits are also significant. Research suggests the Clean Power Plan could prevent 3,600 premature deaths and more than 300,000 missed work and school days by cutting pollutants that contribute to soot and smog. – See more at: https://3blmedia.com/News/BSRs-Statement-US-Administration-Executive-Order-Climate-Change#sthash.qUNCeiiF.dpuf
I would have used a headline like “BSR: Trump’s Short-sighted Reversal of US Climate Change Leadership Could Cost Consumers $45 Billion and Kill 3600″—and then moved right into a bulleted list of the facts. I also would break up BSR’s long paragraphs.
This very long press release has enormous amounts of juicy content, but you’d never know it from the headline and lead. Even further down, it notes that companies investing in carbon mitigation are seeing 27% return on investment, 29% revenue increases, and 26% reduction in carbon emissions. Isn’t that a lot more newsworthy than “BSR regrets…”?
The Ceres release, while also flawed, is much better. It starts with a headline expressing a strong point of view (although we don’t know who is stating this point of view), moves into a sound bite, and finishes the first paragraph with a significant and highly relevant credential.
So what are the flaws in the Ceres document?
The release itself is pretty much all rhetoric, without the facts to back it up. BSR had the facts, but didn’t call attention to them.
There’s no link to Lubber’s complete statement (and only two links in the whole release).
The important point about losing competitive advantage to China is all the way down at the bottom of the release.
Why do we continue to let ourselves get bound up in thinking that we can’t do anything about the biggest challenges of our time?
I say in my “Impossible is a Dare” talks that we have enough abundance for all, but big kinks in the distribution—which we can fix. Hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change are all resource issues. And when we see them that way, they are all fixable.
Hunger and poverty about not having enough to cover basic necessities; the resource issues are obvious
Wars usually start because of a chain of events that begins with one country’s perception that a different country is taking something that belongs to the first country: land, water, energy sources, minerals, labor ,shipping access, etc. Even religious and ethnic wars trace back to resource conflicts, if we go deep enough.
Catastrophic climate change is a bit different, but it’s still about resources. Instead of being about one country having too much or too little, it’s about using the wrong kinds of resources, or using them in environmentally destructive, socially harmful ways.
In fact, climate solutions require solutions based in abundance. We have to shift from finite, expensive, polluting energy sources such as petroleum products and uranium—whose extraction and refining as well as burning for fuel cause environmental destruction—to infinite, inexpensive, and clean sources such as solar, wind, small-scale hydro, magnetic, geothermal, and designing for conservation, deployed at or near the point of use. When we allow ourselves to think abundantly, problems have a way of turning into solutions. Turn loose the socially conscious, environmentally aware engineers!
When companies start thinking about solutions based in abundance, they have even greater incentive to solve these problems—because they can see the profit in it. But too often, we “should” them with guilt and shame—very ineffective tools. Instead of nagging them about how the world is suffering because of their actions, let’s show them how acting differently can address these problems not out of guilt and shame but in creating and marketing profitable products and services.
The creativity of business can create markets where none existed, using technologies we’ve never harvested. Think about how a small-space indoor vertical garden can provide fresh veggies in urban food deserts…how green lighting options such as solar-powered LEDs that replace toxic and flammable kerosene can better the environment, health, safety, and the local economy all at once…how studying nature’s amazing engineering—”biomimimcry”—can create new products like adhesives modeled after gecko feet or a fuel-sipping plane designed to mimic the most aerodynamic birds.
Yesterday, I posted something on Facebook about reaching a real, and sympathetic, human being on the White House Comment Line. Since the US election last November, I’ve called my elected officials a lot more than in the past. Someone wrote back, saying I was “like the Energizer Bunny” with my consistent activism.
My reply revealed the secret:
Actually, [his name], it’s less Energizer Bunny and more a matter of what I call “the fulcrum principle”: doing not all that much but doing in ways that leverage and multiply the impact…I use my time strategically so the 10 to 15 hours or so I spend on activism per week has a big ripple. Of course I never know when a meeting or demonstration is going to be worthwhile and when it will be a waste of time. I have guessed wrong on a few meetings lately—but then I go to one that’s so energizing and activating and inspiring that it actually recharges me. I went to one like that Saturday and hope the ones I plan to attend Wednesday and Thursday (and the socially responsible business conference next week where I’m MCing two sessions) will be just as awesome.
Three men on river structures with ladders and levers ” New York Public Library Digital Collection.
I’ve played with this metaphor for a long time. I was able to find rejection letters I received for my original The Fulcrum Principle: Practical Tools for Social Change, Community Building, and Restructuring Society book proposal as far back as 1992—and a printout of the proposal itself, though not the electronic file.
Looking at this proposal 25 years later, it would have been a big, ambitious, world-changing book. And other than
Adding in recent developments such as the Arab Spring, Climate Change activism, Black Lives Matter, and of course the massive resistance to the new US president, and
Technology shifts including the Internet and social media, smartphones, 3D printing, and the amazing breakthroughs in green design,
The proposal is still remarkably relevant. Let me share a few highlights:
The Fulcrum Principle lets us “achieve the greatest result with the least amount of effort,” including finding others to do some of the work
Change happens as fast as possible, but as slow as necessary
Why we need both “shock troops” and “put-it-back-togethers”
We build momentum for change by presenting the possibility (and manageability) of positive change, finding points of agreement with our opponents—and then expanding those points, changing enemies into allies
This momentum can change the world—and it has, many times
It’s accomplished more easily when you remember to have fun
Grassroots organizers can learn a lot from business (and with 25 years of hindsight, I’d add that business can learn a lot from grassroots organizers); similarly, Left and Right activists have lessons to share with each other
Economic and environmental goals can work in tandem (did I really understand that all the way back in 1992? I’ve gone on to write five books that explore this idea)
Organizers have quietly developed lots of tools we can harness to make this journey easier: new approaches to everything from how to facilitate productive meetings to how to get the most information in the least time by dividing up a book among different readers who report their insights
The proposal also touched on a raft of social issues, among them:
Nonviolent alternatives to the military
The role of multinational corporations
True democracy going far beyond elections
Does it even make sense for change organizations to chase after funding?
New ways of looking at drugs and crime, housing, healthcare, transportation, parenting, world distribution of resources, and even sexuality
Interestingly, without revisiting this proposal, I essentially put it into practice when I founded the movement that saved our local mountain in 1999-2000. And I think that’s a lot of why we won in 13 months flat. The “experts” thought we couldn’t win at all. I felt sure that we would succeed, but even I thought it would take five years. I didn’t realize at the time that I had already created the roadmap years earlier.
Perhaps I should dust off this proposal, update, and resubmit.
With a full auditorium in Miami, and 2000 livestream sites reaching 200,000 people (according to ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero, who opened the March 11 session), the American Civil Liberties Union moved beyond the courtroom and into community organizing. While ACLU lawyers have often been present (and advising) at actions in the streets, I personally don’t remember a time when the group—founded in 1919 in resistance to the notorious Palmer Raids, rounding up activists at the behest of the Attorney General of the time—actively worked to create a mass movement of resistance.
While it also covered the Republicans’ proposed replacement for Obamacare and attacks on Planned Parenthood, The training—really, more of a presentation, other than Lee Rowland’s remarks—focused largely on the administration’s attacks on Muslims and immigrants and ACLU’s Freedom Cities initiative developed in response—working to gain local law enforcement officials to adopt a nine-point platform of non-cooperation with federal ICE anti-immigration actions.
Following are the notes I took. I didn’t take notes for the first couple of speakers, which included Romero, ACLU National Political Director Faiz Shakir, and I believe there may have been one other.
ACLU’s PeoplePower.org screenshot
Lee Rowland, Senior Staff Attorney: Your Rights in Protesting
We will stick up for controversial, even abhorrent points of view. We believe none of us should be silenced. There are people who think Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization.
Public forum spaces: streets, sidewalks, parks—you have the right to protest. But in the street, you do not have the right to block traffic unless you have a permit specifying that. A permit gives you a bunch more rights, and you can work with government to work out a parade route, use amplification.
1/21/17 was the single largest day of protest in American history. Let’s give that a run for its money!
The sidewalks outside Trump Tower have become a very popular place. Sidewalk protests are automatically legal as long as you don’t block access to doorways.
Parks. You can sing, pray, dance. But each park has a trigger number for attendees. Exceeding that number requires a permit. Know that number. Breaking news is an exception. Spontaneous protests in response are not restricted by number.
Other government property that aren’t designed as public spaces. The general rule is that the government has more ability to shut you down if they can argue that your presence is disruptive. Airports can stop you from disrupting but not from expressing speech (including sign holding). The farther from the core of facility’s purpose, the more rights. So you won’t have a lot of rights at the departure gate, but maybe at arrivals…or outside. [Editor’s note: I participated in protesting the immigration ban at Bradley (Hartford) Airport just after the first Executive Order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations. We had about 3000 people in the baggage claim area.] If you’re organizing at an airport, get a liaison from the airport staff if you can.
Congressional Town Halls. They can’t shut down buttons, small signs. They can regulate the size but not the content.
The government can’t censor you just because it disagrees with your opinion.
But these high-fallutin’ rights on paper don’t always translate to the streets.
Watch your surroundings. Being armed with your rights empowers you. You can yell to demonstrators being arrested about their rights including right to remain silent and to refuse a search. You have the right to photo/video anything in public view. Officers will lie, but make notes and tell the ACLU.
We as Americans have to go out and grab that moral arc and turn it toward justice.
Louise Milling, Deputy Director
Health Care: Affordable Care Act is the most significant civil rights/civil liberties legislation in this century. It has saved and changed people’s lives. 20 million were lifted out of the ranks of uninsured. It bars discrimination on preexisting, gender, transgender. Gave us no-cost birth control. More services for people with disability. To live out the civil right of not being in an institution.
The Republican replacement bill attacks the structure, the financing. It kicks the legs out from underneath of the stool. American Medical Association, AARP, hospitals have come out against it. This bill jeopardizes millions of us and the people we care about. We’re going to step up for this one.
Planned Parenthood: This bill says Planned Parenthood can’t be part of the Medicaid program. And that people on Medicaid can no longer go to Planned Parenthood for cancer screening, birth control. 1 of 5 women turn to Planned Parenthood for health care at some part of their lives. Planned Parenthood is targeted because Planned Parenthood provides abortions. But not through the Medicaid program. Their vision is that Planned Parenthood should be stripped of participation in Medicaid because it provides a constitutionally protected service that allows women to protect our lives. Is that what decency looks like?
Medicaid: It’s an entitlement program. The federal government promises it will contribute money to pay for the services it covers. It’s going to take care of you. This bill would be a radical transformation. It says we are going to cap the money we will give toward any particular person. That means fewer dollars, fewer services for the most vulnerable, for the most essential thing—our health. The harm will be felt most acutely by people with disabilities. Medicare provides payment for support to go to work and live independently.
This was unveiled on Monday. By Wednesday it was already in committee for markup. They want it for a full vote in March and on the president’s desk n April. Less than two months for a program that would deny health coverage for millions? To totally radically restructure a program that’s been in place for six decades?
We saw four senators change their responses (AK, OH, CO, one other). We need you to tell your reps why this matters, the values that motivate you to come forward. It matters to the members of Congress, to the woman on Medicaid who goes to Planned Parenthood, to the man in a wheelchair who is able to go to work, to the rural woman who’s able to get insurance. This is for the people, by the people. I’m asking you to pledge to come together and stand up in the name of decency, care, dignity, fairness for all. Game on!
Andre Segura, staff attorney in national office
Trump administration is launching an assault on immigrants and people of color. In his first week, he released really bad Eos (executive orders), calling for the border wall, more ICE agents, and the Muslim ban. This hit home. We are immigrants and children of immigrants, people of color, of different faiths, with accents. That’s what makes our country great and we’re seeing this assault. I think of my two boys. Are they going to be called racist names? My parents with their beautiful Columbian-American accents?
3 Issues
Muslim ban. Friday afternoon after he took office, and there was immediate chaos. ACLU and partners worked overnight to challenge that. We filed at 5 a.m. the next morning. We filed to put a stop to that order. I drove to JFK in the morning. There was a small but loud protest, and a dozen attorneys inside. Over the next few hours, more and more attorneys came. And I looked out the window and saw a sea of protestors. And that’s what became the story. Regular people came out and said this is not the country I want to live in and I’m going to go protest. We now have the second ban. Trump rescinded that first ban after numerous lawsuits. But the second one suffers from the same flaws and it needs to fail. We need you to come out and voice your support.
President Trump is trying to bully cities and states to become part of his deportation force, by threatening to withdraw their funding. So this means when a police officer pulls someone over or knocks on a door, they have to think, is there some issue with their immigration status. This is damaging to local law enforcement. We need to stand up so people don’t fear going to the police to report crimes. All the best law enforcement departments are saying this. We are bringing criminal charges against Joe Arpayo [extreme right-wing/anti-immigrant former sheriff in Arizona]. The lesson is that when local law enforcement takes immigration into their own hands, you will see more profiling and more discrimination. So we’re asking you to push more cities not to roll over and give up good policies. We need to demand that they protect our immigrant neighbors.
Immigration/deportation raids. ICE comes in wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests, it’s like a military operation. Trump wants to add 10,000 ICE agents to the 5-6000 already there. They will not be accountable or transparent. You will not know what they are up to in your town. But we’ve seen excessive force, guns drawn, children scared. Trump is saying we’re going after only the most violent. But we’ve seen the reality. It’s parents, Dreamers [undocumented people brought to the US at a very young age], domestic violence victims. People are being questioned coming off domestic flights. We have to stop it.
We can do some things. We have know-your-rights materials if ICE shows up at your door. They need to have a judicial warrant. Otherwise, don’t open the door. Get out and educate people about their rights. We do not want you engaging with ICE and their raids. If you hear of a raid, go out, document, film it. We need that information.
Padma Laxmi, immigrant from age 4
Joined her mother two years after her mother arrived in America in search for a better future, with $100 in her pocket. “She sculpted the mist, willing a life into existence. And I love this country for allowing that to be possible. America has shaped our dreams, values, and insecurities for three generations. There is no story of ours that is disconnected from the American story. But lately I’ve begun to feel like an outsider.” I grew up in NYC, our neighbors were Peruvian and Filipino, doctors and cab drivers. Seeing all those faces from around the world is what kept me from feeling I didn’t belong. Through my work on Top Chef, I’ve met people from all over America, meeting people in Charleston, New Orleans, Miami. What makes these cities great is the diversity of the people living in them—and that makes the food delicious. I am so grateful I ended up here. And that I can pay it forward by mentoring and employing other young women and starting a health foundation.
What makes America great is our culture of inclusion. We all are a superpower because we’ve managed to create the best of each immigrant culture and create our own uniquely American culture. For all its faults and felonies, our country has been, until now, admired world over. We’re squandering that good will and reputation globally and here and home. What happened to ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’? I am standing here in defense of liberty, freedom, and true equality.
My mom came here in the ’70s inspired by the feminist movement. She wanted a better life for me than she had, equal opportunity. Today, we have a state of emergency. Rights and freedoms we’ve taken for granted are being eroded daily. I am alarmed by the rising hatred and violence. But even before, I’ve been horrified by images of black and Latino boys being bludgeoned to death by the very system we were told would protect us. Our system is two systems: one for the white establishment, and one for those unlucky enough to be born brown, gay, trans… I want my daughter Krishna to live in a country governed not by fear but by compassion.
I didn’t see my mother for two whole years. I know that pain of separation. Tearing undocumented parents from their children doesn’t help anyone. Giving refuge to a Syrian family teaches the very American principles of empathy and tolerance.
I don’t have to be Muslim or Mexican to be offended. We should all be offended. We shouldn’t have to walk in someone else’s shows to see that those shoes hurt terribly. This January at the Women’s March, I protested for the very first time. I was holding my little girl’s hand, she’s 6. It felt wonderful. I realized we are all powerful and we must exercise our power now. There’s a sign in the NYC subway, ‘if you see something, say something.’ I’m saying something now—to all of you. Providing shelter to refugees in need is not a partisan issue. It is a human rights issues. Letting folks use what ever bathroom they want, as we do in our own home, is just common decency.
I watch Krishna play with her African American friend Cassius. She’s biracial and can pass for white. When our kids, a few years from now, go to the store for butter, they will surely be treated differently. That’s not right. They are equal in the sandbox. Shouldn’t our policies reflect this too? Now is not the time to close our eyes and think ‘this, too, shall pass.’ We must do more than march. We must consistently resist discrimination of any kind. We must not tolerate the intolerance. To do nothing is a crime against our nation. We owe it to those suffragettes, those who refused to sit at the back of the bus, to our fallen soldiers to preserve what they fought so hard to defend.
Democracy isn’t a static thing. It’s an ever-evolving organism and we must not let it or ourselves devolve. Yes, we are brown. And we too are American And yes, we are Muslim, Hindus, Jews. That Sikh father shot in his own driveway, he was American too. And over half of us are women, and we deserve equal pay. And the right to choose what we want to do with our own bodies. We too are the United States of America. Let’s remember that first word in our country’s name. Let’s not forget who we are.
Faiz Shakir
ACLU’s National Political Director came back on stage for a quick recap of the action plan:
Request a meeting with local law enforcement officials, put it on PeoplePower.org. Some of them just need a pat on the back and great job. Some need more persuasion.
