My oma would read me Aesop’s fables as a child because she believed stories should always teach you something. And that something was always easier to learn through the lessons of someone else.
My favourite was The Wolf and the Lamb.
I would listen as she would tell me of the wolf looking to justify his actions by finding some blame in the lamb he wished to eat.
But the lamb did not feed from the wolf’s pasture, did not drink from his spring. The lamb had not lived long enough to insult the wolf. But still the wolf ate the lamb, citing his right to dinner.
The lesson; the tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless to appeal for justice from an unjust oppressor.
And so, how then, does one beat the wolf? After all, Aesop also told us of the shepherd who learnt once a wolf, always a wolf, after the one he trusted ate half his flock.
The answer, my oma would say, was to be brave.
Like the mice who lived in fear of the barn cat but could not find the bravery to hang a bell from its neck. Without bravery, things continue much as they always have.
The wolf will find the justification to eat the lamb no matter how unfair.
It wasn’t the tale itself that made it a favourite. It was that the answer in beating the wolf was so obvious.
Climate messaging has a distribution problem. We need new tools for a new era of climate communications. Always put the audience first. A lot of climate content is only reaching existing supporters. That’s because it doesn’t align with the values of audiences outside the progressive base, and because it’s delivered via news, which many audiences just aren’t consuming.
This interactive guide, How to Reach New Climate Audiences, by Harmony Labs (in partnership with Earth Alliance) dives deep into audiences based on what they value, the media they engage with, the voices that speak to them, how they relate to climate, and the storytelling approaches that resonate.
This research invites climate communicators to start with audience values (based on Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values) and engage people where they are, organically and authentically, in addition to relying on traditional messaging strategy or approaches.
The techniques they use to think about reaching audiences are useful to any issue area.
This article shares the lessons learnt from organizing for narrative change based on the case study of the Yes on 15 Schools and Communities First – Prop 15 campaign in California.
This article was originally published by NPQ online, on May 24, 2022. It is used with permission.
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How can community groups shift narratives? A ballot initiative campaign from 2020 provides some important lessons. That year, community organizing groups and labor unions across California launched a campaign to take on the corporate loophole in Proposition 13 and reclaim billions of dollars for public schools and public services.
They knew they faced an uphill battle. Proposition 13, or Prop 13—the 1978 ballot initiative that capped property taxes in the state and set the stage for the presidency of Ronald Reagan two years later—has long been described as the “third rail” of California politics.
The Reframing Migration Narratives Toolkit is a set of resources by the International Center for Policy Advocacy ICPA for progressive campaigners working to put diversity and inclusion back on the public/policy agenda and counter populist narratives.
Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s 29th Prime Minister, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss why sucking up to Trump will get Australian leaders nowhere and how the AUKUS “shocker” is making Australia more dependent on the United States, right at the time America is becoming less dependable.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 8 November 2024 US time and things may have changed since recording.
Guest: Malcolm Turnbull, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia // @TurnbullMalcolm
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
Prevention, not cure, may be a more effective way to combat misinformation.
As they start their careers, doctors swear to uphold the Hippocratic Oath. If people tackling misinformation were to establish an equivalent oath, we should make sure to borrow one of the original’s phrases: “Prevention is preferable to cure.”
As with medicine, so with misinformation: It is better to prevent misinformation from spreading at all than to try to debunk it once it’s spread.
Here’s why. Debunks don’t reach as many people as misinformation, and they don’t spread nearly as quickly. If they do reach us, they generally struggle to erase the misinformation from our debates or our brains. Even when we’ve been told that the misinformation is false, research suggests it continues to influence our thinking.
So it helps to take a page from medicine: Prevention, not cure, may be a more effective way to combat misinformation.
Understanding how prebunks work (and how they don’t) is essential for reporters, fact checkers, policy makers and platforms.
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Strong Towns member Michel Durand-Wood’s blog,Dear Winnipeg. It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.
It is a basic shibboleth of Marxist thought that the law is structurally biased in the interests of capital over labour. Whether this is expressed through the language of base and superstructure, form determination or internal relations, an account of law as ultimately serving the interests of the ruling classes of specific social formations constitutes one of historical materialism’s distinct contributions to legal analysis. However, all too often this role of law has been asserted rather than demonstrated. Marx and Engels’ formulation of the state as the ‘executive committee’ of the bourgeoisie, whilst central to an historical materialist analysis, nevertheless risks occluding the complexities of the legal form and the deeply contradictory way it is pressed into the service of both capital and labour. I have often regarded law as something of a ‘black box’ for much progressive political economic work; whilst a broad observation of law’s functionality for capital is made, the actual internal processes by which the law exercises this function, and the role of the judiciary in executing it, are often out of view.
Foreword: This article discusses online hate, with the aim of understanding its psychology. It offers only two specific illustrations, both chosen to be non-harmful.
Foreword: This article talks about legal requirements in several places. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, obviously; I’ve done my best to research and be able to speak to legal realities in the US, the EU, Canada, and Great Britain, which are the only polities I’m even remotely competent to speak to. I’m far from perfect though, and there may be some additional legal requirements that apply to your organization, depending on where you’re based. For instance, New York, in the US, has extra legal protections for trans employees that don’t apply to the US generally.
Forward: This article is for the parents of teenage minors and adult children. If your younger child has told you that they’re trans, I’d suggest that you check out Our Trans Loved Ones, which focuses better on their specific needs in brief, and The Transgender Child, which is the most well-respective and comprehensive full-length book in publication about parenting a child who’s told you that they’re trans.
The research found that while a majority of drivers wanted to purchase an EV next time they buy a car, the government’s focus on improving charging infrastructure – at the expense of helping with the upfront cost of an EV – is putting the brakes on sales.
New data, released today by the Australian Automobile Association, reveals sales of fully electric vehicles fell by 25% in the three months to September.
Vehicle emissions account for almost 20% of the state’s overall emissions.
While the biggest obstacle for choosing an electric vehicle is the upfront cost, the government’s EV policies are almost entirely focused on expanding and improving charging infrastructure.
The Australia Institute surveyed 800 NSW residents between 6 September and 10 September 2024. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%.
Here are steps to develop a risk mitigation plan from the Disinformation Toolkit 2.0: How Civil Society and Non-governmental Organizations Can Combat Harmful Mis- and Disinformation by InterAction. This excerpt is from pages 17 – 21.
Developing a Risk Mitigation Plan
This section summarizes steps you might consider taking to develop a strategy for identifying and responding to online disinformation that could affect your organization’s operations and the safety of your staff.
Think about your strategy in five parts, which are detailed below:
A guide with resources, directories and media about strengthening democracy collated by the Democracy Resource Hub.
Discover democratic reform strategies and civic engagement tools to enhance democratic institutions and defend against backsliding.
Explore nonpartisan reforms, participatory democracy innovations, and civic tech solutions for inclusive governance and addressing historical injustices through citizen assemblies and digital democracy platforms.
What is ”Strengthening Democracy” and why is it important?
Strengthening Democracy is at the heart of the project for democratic renewal. It aims to create more inclusive, responsive, and just democratic systems and institutions. Strengthening Democracy includes:
From December 2019 to June 2023, inflation in Australia rose faster than it has in 30 years. Over this time, the share of national income going to corporate profits also increased substantially.
At the same time, the share going to wages and small businesses declined.
The profits made by large corporations during this time are huge: some $100 billion over and above their pre-pandemic profit margins.
According to Australia Institute research, these rising profits made up more than half of the inflation above the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s target range of 2% to 3%.
The link between profits and inflation in Australia was replicated in research by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), headed by former Liberal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.
Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision.
This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. Note: Minor formatting edits have been made by the Commons Library.
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For many of us, the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive electoral victory has been a time of deep despair and mourning. There has been plenty of commentary trying to make sense of Trump’s win and the factors that led to it. But no analysis changes the fact that the outcome represents a serious blow to our most vulnerable communities, a sharp setback for causes of economic and social justice, and a profound challenge to whatever semblance of democracy America has been able to secure. We have lived through it before, and it feels even worse the second time around. It is right that we take this as a moment to grieve.
But even amidst our feelings of sorrow or hopelessness, we can recognize that political conditions are not static.
Explore how humor and dilemma actions empower pro-democracy movements by exposing authoritarian absurdities and fostering community resilience.
Humor and dilemma actions are powerful tools for defending democracy, especially in repressive environments. By placing authoritarian regimes in “lose-lose” situations and engaging public attention, these creative tactics help counter repression and strengthen communities.
The following insights are inspired by “Defending Democracy with Humor and Dilemma Actions Tactics,” a webinar hosted by the Democracy Resource Hub and Horizons Project on the 28 Oct 2024 as part of the Intermestic Learning Series, which fosters global knowledge-sharing to support democracy.
As Trump returns to power, we face more than two choices. We can defend a broken status quo or dismantle it. We can also transform it into something stronger.
Our government is stuck in the past, bogged down by bureaucracy and incompetence. The Democrats had their chance to fix it, but they chose to maintain the status quo. It’s time for real change. – Donald Trump, Oct 28, 202
November 6, 2024 – The day after a historic election, and the headlines on my phone are loud and clear: Trump Storms Back to Power. Across the country and around the world people are grappling with what this means—not just for the next four years, but for the future of democracy itself. Beneath the shock, a deeper message resonates across red and blue states alike: Americans are calling for change.
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Strong Towns member Michel Durand-Wood’s blog, Dear Winnipeg.It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.
Highway department’s are selling multi-billion dollar highway widening projects based on flawed traffic projections.
The projections prepared for the predecessor of the proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project predicted traffic would grow 1.3 percent per year after 2005. In reality, traffic across the I-5 bridges has increased by only about 0.1 percent per year since then (and at its pre-Covid peak, had increased only 0.3 percent per year).
Actual I-5 traffic levels are more than 30,000 vehicles per day below the levels forecast for 2024 in the Columbia River Crossing EIS. Rather than increasing by 30,000 vehicles, I-5 weekday traffic has only increased by 3,000 vehicles in 18 years.
Inaccurate and biased traffic models are a misleading and even fraudulent basis for multi-billion dollar spending decisions.
Claims that we need widen I-5 between Portland and Vancouver are based on projections from traffic models. The best evidence of how well a traffic model works is how accurate its predictions have been. By that standard, we already know that the traffic models developed for the Interstate Bridge Project are simply wrong and untrustworthy.
Conservatives spent more than $120 MILLION dollars astroturfing anti-trans hatred for this election cycle, which begs the question… what would trans people do if they had that cash?
In the last of our daily election episodes of After America, Dr Emma Shortis reflects on the glass ceiling in American politics, the Democrats’ failure to address their own shortcomings over the last three decades, and why the Australian Government doesn’t need to just cop whatever challenges the next US administration throws at it.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 7 November 2024 US time and things may have changed since recording.
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States and given the host of global debacles the US has its hands in—ranging from the genocide in Gaza, to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran to the Ukraine war—nobody is quite certain what direction the country will take with the former president at the helm again.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.
My oma would read me Aesop’s fables as a child because she believed stories should always teach you something. And that something was always easier to learn through the lessons of someone else.
