Tag: martin luther king jr.

By Posted on Posted in Activism, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Brilliant article in Yes Magazine by Mistinguette Smith: “6 Strategies to Make Powerful Social Change—Starting With “Stay Woke.””

One of the points I make when I give my “‘Impossible” is a Dare (NOT a Fact)” talks is that every one of us has the power to be an agent of change. For every Count Leo Tolstoy (born into wealth and privilege and used his position to work for social change), there are dozens if not hundreds of Martin Luther Kings, Gandhis, and Mother Teresas: ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Most meaningful social change gets accomplished by ordinary people, especially when they organize and work together. I personally started the movement that saved our local mountain. Bree’s courage and power are the norm, not the exception.

I’ve often heard very successful people get asked, “How did you do _____ before you were _______ (the successful person’s name, emphasized)? Even with my own rather limited fame, I’ve been asked “How did you save the mountain before you were Shel Horowitz?”

Here’s what they’re missing. What turned me from Shel Horowitz, self-employed marketing consultant working out of a farmhouse, to Shel Horowitz, locally famous saver of mountains, was going out and starting the movement to save the mountain. It was the doing that created the fame.

Yes, I did have the marketing skills to leverage that and eventually build a brand around profitability consulting for green and socially conscious businesses. Yes, I had the writing and research skills to create a body of work that attracted a major publisher and a celebrity co-author for my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Yes, I created enough leverage from that book to be able to do my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, comes out in March, with endorsements by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, the founders of BNI and GreenBiz.com, the author of The New Rules of Green Marketing (among others), and essays from the authors of Unstoppable/Unstoppable Women and Diet for a Small Planet. I grabbed the opportunities to make more of a difference in the wider world, and not just my own community. But just because I made those opportunities happen doesn’t mean they weren’t available to others.

Social change can be based in very small actions. The backstory about Mistinguette Smith’s article is that her editor wanted to ditch the phrase in the title, “Stay Woke.” Mistinguette brought that discussion to Facebook, and that may have been why she eventually won the argument. But the key element to making the change is mindset. This is how I heard about her article before it was published, and how I knew it was published and could read it.

To accomplish positive social change, I think we need two things: one is the sense that we can make a difference and the willingness to try—something any of us can achieve.

The other is the motivation to achieve a higher good than simply obtaining power or profit.I’d even go so far as to say the need to make the world better is a basic human drive, just like food or shelter or sex. If we’re not doing this in some small way, we don’t feel complete.

Let’s look at the difference between two ordinary men who led their countries out of apartheid: Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (formerly called Rhodesia). Both were hailed as liberators originally. Mugabe, a teacher and prison-educated lawyer, turned out to be a brutal thug, a dictator motivated by the desire for power and wealth.

But Mandela was clearly motivated by a desire to heal his suffering country. His actions were all about unity and reconciliation. He will be remembered as a hero to the end of time.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Copywriting, language, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , ,

Yesterday, I blogged about the combination of vision, engineering, and marketing that made Apple and some other companies so successful. And for years, I’ve been a champion of putting reasons in your marketing.

This TED talk by Simon Sinek goes a step farther. Again using Apple as an example, he says it’s not enough merely to include the because; you want to lead with it. If you put your reasons why—your higher purpose—right at the top you immediately attract the people who are falling-all-over-themselves-eager to be part of your dream and your mission. This, he says, is why we don’t buy MP3 players or tablets from companies like Dell, but we salivate at Apple’s every product release—because Apple leads (and has led, since at least the original Macintosh introduction in 1984) with the deeper why.

Another of his examples is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; King, he notes, did not say, “I have a plan.”

However, King’s speech actually had a bit of a slow build. The first 351 words (of 881, total) are about the plight of black people in this country from the Emancipation Proclamation to the day 100 years later when he gave his speech. Only then, more than a third of the way into his speech, does he move into his vision of the race-neutral future.

Still, I think Sinek is right—but I think it also has to hit on the benefits to the individual, unless you’re speaking only to the driven. I’ve often used this technique in my copywriting without consciously thinking about it. From now on, I will do it consciously.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will dishonor King’s memory by having a rally on the same site, opposed to all the values King held dear.

I’m okay with that, actually. I’d never go, other than to hold a counterprotest sign—but I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As did King, by the way.

I think Beck and Palin are despicable. I also think they have every right to hold their gathering of the lunatic fringe. And I’m aware that I’ve taken plenty of stands over my career for which others would paint me as “lunatic fringe.” Some of them are now mainstream, such as aiming for zero waste, repurposing rooftop space into food and energy collectors, and getting the heck off fossil and nuclear power sources—but they sure weren’t 30 or 40 years ago. I would not have granted then, and don’t grant now, the right of others to tell me how to think, and I don’t claim that same privilege against others whom I disagree with. The right to try to convince them, certainly—but NEVER to dictate what is or is not acceptable thought.

I remember holding a lone protest in front of the local courthouse when the U.S. bombed Lybia. The first day, I got a lot of middle fingers and angry shouts. By the second day, a few people had joined me. On the third day, with a larger crowd, we were getting mostly thumbs ups and supportive honks. It was hard, on that first day. But I remembered my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Taking an unpopular position didn’t take the burden off me to take a stand.

And some of my positions are still out of the mainstream—so far. One such is that a Muslim group has every right to practice that other First Amendment right, freedom of worship—even two blocks from Ground Zero. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, there’s already been an Islamic center coexisting in that neighborhood since before the World Trade Center was even built. But even if there weren’t, this country was founded on the principle that people can peaceably assemble, worship the God of our choice (or no God, if we choose), and say what we want to say even if it makes others unhappy. That’s what made us the shining light of Democracy for the world, the example that so many other nations wanted to follow. Those are American values that I hold dear. And I predict that they will once again return to the mainstream of an America that seems to have forgotten its proud heritage.

It means the right to build an Islamic Center—a gathering place for peaceful worship and community activities—on an abandoned site a few blocks from Ground Zero, and it means that Beck and Palin are appropriately permitted for their disgusting festival of intolerance. The appropriate reaction is boycott or counterprotest, not an attempt to silence those we disagree with.

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