HMP Governance Lab: Introduction to Health Policy
HMP Governance Lab: Introduction to Health Policy
1.6 Advocating for Change
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Profs Jarman and Greer talk about the skills needed to become an effective advocate.
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Hello, and welcome to the HMP governance lab podcast. I'm Scott Greer. And today I'm going to be speaking with Professor Holly Jarman about advocacy in health and public health policy. So supposedly, we want to make the world better, we want to make change, we want to make ours and others voices, herds, all of that gets called advocacy. But what is advocacy.
Holly Jarman :So we have a bit of a beef with this word, it gets used a lot in a lot of different contexts. And so hopefully, we can to parse out some of those differences between advocacy and lobbying and other things. But the basic idea here is, we want to see see a change happen in the world. And we have to be honest with ourselves and think about the contribution of a policy change, a change in the way the law or the regulations or the policy more generally, and how that relates to the change in the world that we want to see. Because the changing policy doesn't always translate into a change in the outcomes we want to see. Because sometimes there are roadblocks to change political roadblocks, institutional roadblocks, but there are always ways in which we can identify some of those policy, roadblocks, political roadblocks to change and try to remove them. So that is also to a part of advocacy.
Scott Greer :Is it also advocacy when what you're doing is expressing yourself making your voice heard?
Holly Jarman :Yeah, absolutely. So you are putting, putting up an idea for change that you want to see. And sometimes advocacy just means trying to change the public conversation, change the conversation amongst your networks, change the conversation in your organization. So I count those things as as advocacy as well.
Scott Greer :This is a really important point, because on one hand, you've had really important social movements, where it wasn't quite clear what specific policy they wanted. But on the other hand, most good advocacy practice involves very specific asks, and we'll come back around to that. But first, let's start with the top line. If I want to create change, if I want to advocate effectively, what do I have to do?
Holly Jarman :Right, so there are a couple of different ways to go about this. There are different ways to get the policy changes that you hope would lead to better outcomes. And so partly, they're based on the different strategies that you want to adopt. And so they also, to some extent, relate to your individual skills, your individual politics, your individual identity, too. And so your choice of strategic action will depend on on you and where you're at and how you're employed. But I think in general, it's a good way to think broadly about advocacy, and choose different complimentary strategies don't just do one thing. So on one end, we have lobbying. And we use that word because lobbying activities in the United States are defined in law in a specific way. And your lobbying activities have to be monitored, according to that law for you to be in compliance with the law. So when we talk about lobbying, most of the time, we're talking about going to elected representatives, and asking them to change a law or introduce a law or take some other action related to legislation and their jobs. And so lobbying in law, as I said, has to be carefully reported. So we're often talking when we're talking about lobbying activity, about the actions of registered professionals, you register as a lobbyist, and that's what you do for your career. And it's focused on what legislators are doing, trying to effect the legislative and the budgetary agenda. It can sometimes also include regulatory agencies or executive the executive branch. So this could be submitting comments to proposed regulations, sitting in meetings or these days, probably attending a webinar where a regulatory agency talks about the policy they're going to put in place and providing comments that way. Or that contact could be less formal, forming a relationship with individuals within an agency in order to affect the course of regulation. So professional lobbyists are mostly partisan, but can play multiple sides of of many issues. So As a lobbyist, if you work for a lobbying firm, you will be expected to take on clients of all kinds, you might have a specialization as part of your firm. But you also may be lobbying on different sides of the issue. And so not a lot of people from our degree programs feel that way about health issues, they mostly have an opinion, they want to see a particular set of changes in health policy. And so it's much more likely that our students will do something that looks more like advocacy. So that's lobbying. advocacy is more for people who do care about the subject matter, rather than people who want to work for a lobbying firm that's focusing on clients who pay. So advocacy can sometimes be confusing, because it can look a bit like lobbying, but it is legally distinct. lobbying activities are very controlled and law, advocacy activities are less so you're also much more fixed in terms of your organization's position on a given issue, you can advocate for a particular change, and you're more likely to focus on a specific issue area, in your case, something within health, but probably much more specific than that. And one side of the debate, you're corresponding with elected representatives or their staff, more likely, or corresponding with individuals in the executive, you can be using these four channels, channels of influence. And you might also then be combining that with trying to shape debate public debate around those issues. So you might be communicating with the public through media pieces. Or you might be communicating with membership of your organization in some important way. You might also be part of the policy entrepreneurial landscape in terms of packaging, research, analysis, policy solutions, and then giving those out to various audiences. So and then from that advocacy can also shade into being more of an organizer with a repertoire of action that's a bit more like a social movement. Scott, how would you define a social movement?
Scott Greer :The term that launched thousands of sociology, PhD theses,
Holly Jarman :how would you define it seriously,
Scott Greer :a group of people coming together to organize with a shared interest in changing society. And it can be in their own interest, such as emancipation from various legal restrictions on them. Or it can be in the interest of somebody or something else, such as, for example, conservation movements,
Holly Jarman :right? So we're talking here about like mass mobilization? How can you get people mobilized and engaged around an issue. And then, as more of an organizer with an advocacy role, you're you might be organizing those people organizing volunteers, trying to mobilize members around an issue and asking them to do specific things like contact their members of Congress, write something and put it in the press, go out to a protest, organize online, do a social media kind of action. So there are more of these kind of mass mobilization strategies. But I want to say that smart advocates will probably adopt a blend of strategies, they are going to want to understand mass mobilization, public messaging, protest media, but also often they need to understand the formal channels of decision making. So the regulatory and legislative routes. So I think a combination of those tools, and an understanding about how and when to leverage them seems to be really the the core of the art of advocacy.
Scott Greer :And I'll add that human nature doesn't make it easy to have such a blend or to have such a strategic combination. Because if you're really angry, you might not be so happy with people who say this is the best available compromise. And if you think you're doing really good work, trying to get a policy that will actually survive the political system and judicial challenge. You don't necessarily take kindly to somebody having a demonstration outside your office saying that you're a sellout. But what if you don't want to be an advocate? What if you don't want to have a social movement? In business schools, they'll often be explicit, but there's a category of stuff like human resources or general counsel or regulatory compliance, and it'll often have an insulting name like non market activities, which means it makes no money and Public Affairs, lobbying and advocacy is often in that category. And there's a reason that no aspiring chief executive starts in human resources or public affairs. So What if you're listening patiently, but really, you're thinking this isn't me.
Holly Jarman :Um, I would make the argument, I guess that these advocacy skills, so the strategies and also, the skills with communication in particular, are just so helpful. And not just helpful in changing the world, but also in changing your corner of the world. So if what you want to do is actually advocate within your organization, to your board of directors, that is actually advocacy. And it's kind of important to understand their motivations, the formal decision making channels to be able to mobilize people within your organization to support your position, like these are some similarities here, I think, in between public advocacy and advocating within your organization, I think though, these are very transferable skills. And I would say, there's a lot of overlap between the different forms of advocacy. So union organizers often have great communication skills in just the same way that an advocate or formal lobbyists will have. And the ability to build relationships and motivate people is really key. And those skills, also transfer to management, since you're advocating every time you write to your boss and ask for a policy change within the organization or trying to get a better job for yourself. And so really, the gap between sales or marketing and politics is not that big sometimes.
Scott Greer :And leadership is often leadership, regardless of whether what you're trying to do is motivate a sports team, or motivate a sales team or motivate a community to get an incinerator closed down.
Holly Jarman :Yeah, right. So being able to mobilize, bring a team together, bringing people around a single issue is incredibly important. And so don't get hung up on the politics word. If you listen to us, I hope that you'll realize that we think everything is inherently political, but then that's also our our bias and our training. But the things you do in the office in a management setting around teams absolutely translate to advocacy and vice versa.
Scott Greer :And you said something that I want to pick up on mobilizing around something about what you're asking for, can you go into that?
Holly Jarman :Oh, yeah. So you are trying to achieve something here you have a goal for the change you want to see. And either that's going to be changing the public conversation or hopefully, leading to policy change, leading to societal change, ideally, right. And so getting everybody on the same page is really important. I we often when we study social movements, and advocacy organizations and Coalition's as political scientists, we look at why these Coalition's sometimes fail or fall apart, or why social movements don't achieve what they set out to achieve. Very often, it's a difference in opinion between the different parts of the coalition, different factions within a social movement. And some people want one thing and some people want another. And over time, the the differences can override the unifying energy of that, like the common goal of the social movement or advocacy coalition. And that's when things start to go wrong in advocacy is when you get those kinds of disagreements. So as an advocate, as a general rule, I think it's important to understand how to bring people together around an issue and try and make compromises and deal with listen to and understand the differences of opinion within the coalition. And this is especially important for Coalition's, of people who don't have a lot of power, who don't have a lot of resources. because quite often, if you have a lot of power and resources, you can lobby on your own, right, you have big companies, I study tobacco control. So tobacco companies hire teams of lobbyists, they pay a lot of money, they get very professional lobbying. And you can see place instances where the tobacco policy has changed as a result of that lobbying. If you are a social movement, an organization part of a group within society that has fewer resources, fewer less power, I guess. One of the ways to get around that is to team up with other people. So you will often find that a small low resource NGO That has a particular stance on policy will come together in an advocacy coalition with others. And a social movement is really a coalition of ordinary people from all over the place. And its power is in the numbers of people who are mobilized around the issue, not necessarily in the amount of money that it can raise, although extra money to support each other, whilst you're advocating can be really helpful.
Scott Greer :So working from that, what are some of the things that you might actually want to do as an advocate?
Holly Jarman :Okay, so we talk a bit when we talk about advocates, when we talk about social movements as well about the repertoires of those groups. So what are the things that they actually do the smallest steps in order to try and get to a situation where the policy changes? So the core of this I want to emphasize is that you have some clarity on what you're actually asking the person who has power, that you're almost always asking somebody in power to do something, what are you asking them to do, and it has to be something that they can do, legally, in terms of their position. And it has to be something that you can realistically persuade them to want to do. Now, sometimes you're going to want to ask for more than you know, you can get so there is a degree of that sort of negotiation and political sensibility is important there. But having a clear ask in a lot of these cases, is really important. I think about the occupy movement, and the Occupy Occupy movement had so much energy behind it in one way in terms of mass mobilization, but they were very weak in terms of what they actually wanted people to do. Like there was, you know, what do you what do I do as a member, ordinary member of the public to support occupy? What do I do as an elected member of Congress to support occupy, they were really silent on those questions, and I think it was detrimental to the success of the movement. Anyway, I wanted to say something more about some of the tools, the more specific tools that are used in advocacy. So even in this class, you will hear some specific vocabulary, like one pager and leave behinds. And so I need to maybe explain a bit of this vocab. Scott, if that's okay. So, a one pager, you have to take that ask that central request, and you have to put it on one page, which is really hard, actually. And you have to have a sense of what your main ask what your main message is. And then behind that, a sense of how much detail you need to put on the page to make it persuasive. So that implies an understanding of your audience who's reading this thing, how much time do they have, what kinds of things are likely to attract their eye and make this appealing and easy to read quickly, but also stand up to further scrutiny. Because if you're handing out in person, a flyer or one pager, or you're putting that online, there's going to be institutional memory there. But that thing's not going to disappear quickly. So somebody who comes across it in a year still has to be able to look at it, and it has to hold up to scrutiny at that time. Anyway, that's a one pager. So a one pager can be part of a set of leave behind materials. And so that's super useful in a situation where you're meeting someone in a position of power, like a legislator, or more likely their staff person. giving them something physical to look back on later, is really useful. In management settings. This is very similar to having a kind of folder or takeaway at a meeting or other event where people take this thing away, and it's something that they can use to jog their memory about the discussion that you had. So these kind of leave behind materials will say something about your organization and how it's situated. They'll include clear contact details for how to take a next step, they are likely to include your one pager, and they might include other things like infographics or a convincing letter with all your supporters on there, something like that. Sometimes organizations include white papers, or more likely an executive summary or a short memo summarizing a piece of analysis or evidence in that packet. So These are the tools are kind of hard to create too. But they're useful things like infographics, maybe you want to display statistics in an important way. And you can do that in your one pager. But maybe you need a separate piece that's either digital or, or in the physical world that looks at those statistics and lays them out for somebody kind of backing off from the small, smaller pieces, like a one pager or leaves behind materials, a lot of organizations will produce what we would call a white paper. So that's something else you're going to come across in the context of this class. And the white paper is a longer document that has a piece of analysis in there that may be more or less research based, frankly, depending on the organization. And it's likely to come with an executive summary which the clue is in the name, the the the people in power will read the short version. But the whole point is that you lay out your full argument with evidence in a white paper. Other things you have to be adept at writing as an advocate, include things like press releases, or media copy, maybe you're in a space where you need to be really good at doing that. But also writing blog posts or other online content, maybe you need to have a really good sense of how to do social media clearly and well. So translate your written piece into a social media post that attracts attention in certain ways. So the ability to work across different media is I think, kind of important.
Scott Greer :And media training is important if you're actually going to deal with the media. It's one of these things that doesn't take long. But it's a list of stuff that you'll really wish you knew if you find yourself dealing with the media because they can be dangerous. It's anachronistic now, but it's long said that you shouldn't pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Holly Jarman :That is a very old analogy. I don't know what the digital age version of that is. So I want a second that though, media training is so important. Being able to clearly put your message in a few sentences and not panic, as you're imparting that to a journalist, or maybe even doing it online or on live TV. That's really important. And it's just a skill that can be learned. And you can learn it. And it doesn't take long. But good goodness, you have to put some forethought into it.
Scott Greer :How about other things you can do once you've made it into the dome of the statehouse.
Holly Jarman :So there are a few things you can do specific that are kind of specific to legislators really. And the funniest one for me is always the congressional briefings. So when you work as a start legislative staffer a lot of the way that you get fed as you go to various congressional briefings and you eat things at the buffet. So within the house and adjacent buildings, you will find these little meeting rooms, and you can get a representative to sponsor a briefing for you, they have to in order to reserve that space. But it's quite often a panel of folks from an external organization, giving their expertise to the room, which is probably going to be mostly consisting of staff members, but also can sometimes consist of represented. The reason to, to mention this is that the briefings and physical interaction in normal times are really important. And so it's good to think about that kind of advocacy world at the same time that you're thinking about the internet, the social media sphere, and so on. You know, you can't just run an advocacy campaign online, you have to think about in person context, too. And so one of those physical situations is to have a congressional briefing. Another one, where it's a slightly different situation, you might be called in more likely as an expert or a representative of an organization is a legislative testimony. So committees in legislatures hold meetings, and they are allowed to bring in outside experts. And this is where you see sometimes people being grilled quite harshly by a panel of representatives who very often are set up much higher than you are at the table. And so this is again, giving legislative testimony is a specific skill that you can learn. Maybe we'll talk about that too in a separate cast. But the key thing here is that it's practice it's scripted. The people who do this are trained And it's in person, it's very performative. So the testimony then becomes a written statement. And quite often those written statements are available for a long time. And so that organizations put a lot of effort into ensuring that the person giving testimony is well prepared. So there are other kinds of testimony too, you could give testimony before a regulatory agency. So that might be at the national level, or in your state, perhaps, or you could even give testimony in the context of local government. So maybe at City Hall, so you might be engaged as an advocate in persuading a member to introduce a bill, or to have a hearing about that bill, persuading them to hold a briefing to highlight attention to an issue, etc. And so some of the advocacy behind the scenes might be to get in touch with staff members have that representative form long term, good relationships with them. And then eventually, you'll be in a position where you're proposing the right thing at the right time. And they then you're going to persuade that staff person and ultimately that member to introduce the bill or have a hearing or whatever your your goal is,
Scott Greer :and introducing a bill or holding a hearing is the thing you can do, even if you know it has no chance of turning into law. If you can persuade a legislator that having this bill out there, it's a text that we should be talking about and refining for some day when it has a chance, or have a hearing in the hopes of getting some knowledge attracting the interest of some other members, maybe attracting the media. So there's a lot of hearings and legislation that get introduced as part of a much longer run campaign. And nobody, when they're introducing it, or holding the hearing thinks it's going to become law.
Holly Jarman :Right. So sometimes, yeah, these bills have a signaling intent. So they're they've kind of tried to change the conversation, as well as in the distant future, hopefully changing the law.
Scott Greer :A little example of this is that people involved in healthcare finance, are enormously well resourced and know a lot. And they have plenty of hearings and expert testimony over decades. Whereas it turned out in the Affordable Care Act, when we're talking about the class act, which was long term care insurance, our political elites did not feel well informed, and what little they knew came from the dog efforts to hold informative hearings at the Subcommittee on aging. So those hearings, which didn't look like they amounted to much ended up being disproportionately important in how Washington thought about long term care.
Holly Jarman :Yeah, never discount that activity. It seems like it's not achieving a purpose, but sometimes it really is. So that's how to engage with the legislature, if you want to engage. However, with the executive branch, there are various ways to go about that. So you might well be doing this in a formal way. So, you know, as we said, agencies can have hearings to, or they can share in public meetings, how they're proposing to change a policy. And so you might be providing comments or feedback in that context, along with other groups. Or you might choose as an organization to form relationships with particular individuals in the executive and kind of feed them information about how your policy preferences and how you'd like to see the regulations develop. But one of the most accessible channels is to comment on proposed regulation. So anybody can do this. And it's pretty easy to do, you can actually submit your comments online. All it takes is a tiny bit of learning about what a proposed regulation is, how to navigate the website. So you can find this proposed regulation that might affect you or your interests, or your issue or your organization, and then write a small brief response to that, and then submit that online. So this is something that a lot of members of the public will actually do. But more likely organizations and advocacy Coalition's will do this, too. And I think a lot of it, a lot of the effort here is actually finding the regulations in the first place. So get practicing on regulations.gov, finding those regulations and those dockets and then go from there.
Scott Greer :And they've got to answer, especially in the federal bureaucracy. The Administrative Procedures Act says they have to demonstrate that they took your thoughts into account, even if your thoughts are strange.
Holly Jarman :And the comments are strange.
Scott Greer :And the other thing is that they're using it to gauge potential opposition or engage potential allies, because a lot of these have very, very few comments. And it's very easy to see if there's a group of people out there that you hadn't thought of who are getting exercised about this issue. Then might change how policymakers Think about it, they might tread more carefully.
Holly Jarman :And so the other thing we should talk about is various forms of protesting. Now, we've seen a lot of different kinds of protests this year. And so picketing is a bit distinct than protesting because picketing is around us, particularly industrial action. Although picketers and strikers might choose to show solidarity with other issues. protesting, as you know, is really trying to raise public awareness around an issue, try to point attention to the institutions that people that might be causing problems might be, have the power to change the situation. And so purchasing can be an incredibly effective way of signaling intent, signaling commitment, signaling that there's a shared set of ideas amongst a group of people, and that those people are willing to give up something their time, or they're willing to risk something, in fact, to be there at the protest and point out their viewpoint, particularly to people in positions of power.
Scott Greer :The Women's March on Washington, right after Trump was inaugurated was a nice case of protest, and its ambiguities. because on one hand, it didn't have an ask there. What was the Ask the Donald Trump agree with protesters, he wasn't about to. Instead it was about for example, making people feel more empowered by marching, it was about giving the Democratic Party the sense that there would be a price to pay if they compromised with Trump. So you can't say that the women's march of Washington had an ask and that they achieved it or didn't achieve it, because they were intending to change the political weather.
Holly Jarman :And that's the important thing here, right is the protest is the visible part that you can see. But there's a huge amount of organizing behind that that is actually part of creating change. So you know, you as a as part of a protest movement, you are probably forming a platform common positions on an issue, you're probably mobilizing people to do other things as well as protests. So in addition, give money to certain groups, or write to elected representatives, or show up in their offices, or sign petitions, you know, those kinds of activities can go alongside protesting. This is why we kind of talk about social movements having repertoires of actions like a toolbox basically, that they can use these different tools together. And so you'll see that these, if you think about the Black Lives Matter, protests, people were protesting in different ways. And then also signing petitions and also lobbying and also doing other advocacy, in ways that once you've mobilized someone around an action, you can then maybe ask them to do take other actions, give them money, give their time, maybe to you can go across issues. So think about the election and think about how to mobilize people that you've mobilized around one issue around, maybe supporting ballot counting and staffing on election day. So there's that potential once someone is mobilized for them to get engaged in in more different actions.
Scott Greer :And there's a lot of quite intuitive management and sales at work here. So for example, never have any event where you let people get away without giving you some contact details. And a lot of the details will be bad, and a lot of the contacts won't pan out. But you want to make sure that people who are committed enough to spend an afternoon demonstrating for you are going to be reachable in the future. And in the same way, if you can get even a small donation or sell even a small piece of material, swag cap a button, that's going to make people feel more invested. Once I've spent $5 on something, I'm much more likely to feel that it's dear to me. It's not an attractive feature of human psychology, but it's one you can use
Holly Jarman :and purchase in social movements. In particular, try to use visuals and creative means to try and get their message across because those attract people's attention. They keep people mobilized and engaged. But behind all that you have to be a really effective manager, a really effective leader. You have to lead volunteers, many of whom will not necessarily have varying levels of commitment, right? So you have to manage volunteers, you have to bring people together, you have to manage logistics. And you have to do things as Scott said to try and keep the coalition together in the long term. Keep people's names and addresses maybe let them know and keep lines of communication open about your platforms, your positions, your future actions, and doing that in Long term, and especially in conditions where you're not particularly compensated very well or at all for what you're doing takes a lot of energy. And so I think one of the things we see with social movements is that they burn bright for a while. And then we have what we call a protest cycle where that energy kind of gets used up. And so it's important to think about the sustainable long term goals for your movement. In addition to like the day to day, what are we going to do next week, types of things,
Scott Greer :and even in say, the case of a protest, permitting relations with the police, portable toilets, sound systems? What happens if it rains? What happens if there's a jump provocateur of people come who actually just want the party or the violence? Do you have stewards to try and keep order? Like, there's a lot of things that are easy enough to list but they take some practice to get them in put in place?
Holly Jarman :Yeah. And so in my experience, the organizers I talked to really highly trained a number of people get their training through the union movement or similar organizations, and then branch off into other areas of advocacy.
Scott Greer :So what are some things we can do that don't involve big protests?
Holly Jarman :Yes, there are some halfway house things to where you're also managing groups of members or volunteers. I'm thinking about things like petition drives, for example. And so these might revolve around a particular issue. Or they might revolve around an even a local issue or change in law, where anything where a number of signatures has to be obtained in order to change the law. So a lot of states have direct ballot initiatives. This is something that we've seen more of, in recent years. And so one of the most effective ways to change the law might actually be to be on the street, and basically be knocking on doors, organizing teams of people, and trying to get signatures. So you'll see people in non COVID times really doing a lot of this around an arbor. And we've had some kind of interesting ballot initiatives recently, around election law, and also around marijuana where those pop that popular support demonstrated through a petition really made a difference.
Scott Greer :Bear in mind that petitions are not a trivial thing to do. The common comment is that the $60 million question with wanting to do a petition is where's your $60 million?
Holly Jarman :Yeah, exactly. They are expensive, you have to be incredibly organized. You have to mobilize volunteers. And it's so it's,
Scott Greer :as Kanye West learned when he didn't buy himself the right canvassers, and ended up with a lot of forged papers in a number of states.
Holly Jarman :Oh, my gosh, you have to tell me the rest of that
Scott Greer :Kanye West wanted to run for president. However seriously, he didn't know that you that the easiest thing for a person gathering signatures to do is to just sit in a bar and make them up with a friend and a beer. So he ended up submitting tons and tons of invalid obviously forged signatures where Mickey Mouse wants Kanye West to run for president in Illinois, Kanye West got taken for a bunch of money and he's not going to be president.
Holly Jarman :I'm kind of glad he's not going to be president.
Scott Greer :It would be memorable,
Holly Jarman :would be interesting. Okay. So there are some other things you can do too, that are outside of that zone of protesting, but are really about mass mobilization. different take on this is a Lobby Day. So you as an organization, you're going to bring your members together or your volunteers together and arrange a coordinated meeting. Well, set of meetings with elected representatives. So you know, at that point, which offices you're going to, you're training volunteers and giving them basically a script, and some leave behind materials. And they're going to meet with staff members, and make the case and sometimes with the elected representatives to make the case directly. And quite often. That also then involves figuring out mass transport for everybody, and figuring out where you're going to have lunch sometimes. Then this is held in conjunction with another congressional event or briefing where the Lobby Day participants get to interact with each other and with elected representatives that are champions for the issue. So that kind of Lobby Day takes a lot of organizing, but it can be really effective.
Scott Greer :And don't underestimate that politicians and their staff are constantly the attention getting the attention of lobbyists and smooth, boring prepackaged Communications and Public Affairs staff. So anybody who looks like a real person, be it a real authentic chief executive or a real authentic laid off nurse is really interesting, because they have something new to say that hasn't been processed through a million committees in the Public Affairs Division.
Holly Jarman :Right? Never underestimate the power of narrative and storytelling in advocacy, people are intrinsically interested in other people's stories. And sometimes motivating a decision maker through an image, an emotional appeal can be more effective than throwing a bunch of statistics at them, you know, so however much we like to talk about evidence based policymaking in public health. And we do like to talk about that. It's also sometimes important to think politically about emotionally how a person will respond ideologically, how they respond to someone's authentic story.
Scott Greer :And we talk constantly about deep dives and data driven policy and so forth. But the narrative wins every time. In part, because politics is about telling a story, and telling a story, starting with the narratives a lot easier. Right?
Holly Jarman :Now, if you happen to have a lot of money, there are a couple of additional advocacy tools that are available to you. And you can, for example, try to commission your own research, you can pay for a poll, you can pay for a study, you can do that kind of work and pay people within universities or within think tanks or whatever to do your work for you. And then commission that research with the expectation that the research is going to produce the data that you need the story that you want to tell.
Scott Greer :And I want to underline a lot of the time you don't do polls, because you want to find out what the public thinks, because you know what you think and that's what's important. You do the polls in order to find out how to sell what you want to the public. And then you can go to a legislator, for example, and say, if you frame it this way, it's much more popular. So calling it the inheritance tax doesn't produce the same response as calling it the death tax. So republicans did a lot of opinion research to find out that people are opposed to a death tax. They're opposed to death, they're opposed to taxes, of course, they're opposed to a death tax, and use that in order to sell the campaign for inheritance tax reduction.
Holly Jarman :Yeah, we don't like death panels, either. That was another creative use of, well, very creative interpretation of something in the UK health system. So you can commission your own research, and polls, if you have money. The other thing you can do is run an ad campaign. So you can pay for media time, essentially, we talk about paid media, what are some examples of that? Scott,
Scott Greer :any political advertisement. So any campaign usually you see them and they're often a bit weird, where So and So Senator, this and that representative, such and such, is pursuing a bad idea that will destroy our planet or kill our children, call them at this one 800 number and tell them that you're opposed to what they're doing. Now, that's not a lobbying tool, they don't expect to get a meaningful number of people to pick up the phone and ring that number. But what they're doing is getting the attention of the legislator or getting the attention of their potential members and amping them up.
Holly Jarman :Yeah, so I'm being bombarded online right now with lots of different ads for the presidential campaign. So that all of that stuff is paid media,
Scott Greer :and the standing joke that Washington DC metro, one of the most expensive places to buy ads in the metro is Pentagon. And all the ads are for weapons systems, because the Pentagon is one of the few places in the world where people buy multimillion dollar weapon systems multibillion dollar. So what they're doing with those ads is they're just trying to get into the subconscious of all the staffers who ride to work on the DC metro, and get them familiar with some kind of a project and its virtues. So lobbyists will have a slightly easier time when they show up.
Holly Jarman :So the one thing I want to mention, before we start talking about this, these different tools, is thinking about the intelligent use of social media. Because I think sometimes people think, okay, I'll promote myself or my issue on Twitter, and then I'm done. So you need to think about the different types of social media who they connect to. So Facebook, for example, is a huge organizing tool. There are lots of people who mobilize by joining Facebook groups. And that is a very distinct way to communicate with people that's different from for example, using Twitter, which is full of like political elites, basically a ton of academics on there. And that is different again, from using WhatsApp, which is really popular, I think, more popular globally than it is in the US because people tend to have a mobile phone and can communicate with each other directly that way. So you might want to think about the range of social media and traditional media together and think about particularly your audience and who connects with that platform.
Scott Greer :And who wants things out of it. Right. So Twitter is great if you want to know about national politics, but it's terrible if you want to find out when and how you attend a demonstration that you know is going to be happening. And that's really important now that you don't have local media putting out a newspaper that says meet at noon at the diag. And then for example, famously organizing on Instagram doesn't work because people don't go on Instagram to be told about politics.
Holly Jarman :I'm really interested in tik tok, I think there's so many different people are using tik tok to mobilize politically, that's been actually quite heartening to see young people engage in that way. And so I'll be interested to see how that platform develops in relation to to the existing social media platforms that we already have.
Scott Greer :And bear in mind, though, that all social media has the risk that you end up actually just being allowed spectator, because it doesn't necessarily influence anything. If you just follow Twitter, you would have be completely unable to predict pretty much anything that's happened in the last couple of years. Because for example, Twitter is full of very loud partisans of fringe candidates. So if you're just watching Twitter, or just watching YouTube, you're not actually getting what most people's political behavior is like. So don't confuse social media activism with activism. Which actually leads to the last big question I had for you, Holly, which is, who do I target?
Holly Jarman :Oh, my goodness. Um, it really depends on who your intended audience is. But I think there's a couple of really key things here. Like, just knowing the political system. And knowing who has power within it is super important. And I think that goes for whatever kind of advocacy or organizing, or lobbying you're trying to do. So, you know, think about what your intended audience can and can't do, like your governor in your state can and can't do certain things. And those lines are pretty clear. Understand what they can do understand what they probably can't do for legal or political reasons. Same goes for your federal federal agency, or for department at the state level, try to understand what their authority is. And things like within the legislature, try and understand your committees know your committees, who has responsibility over an issue? Where are the roadblocks? Is there a committee, it's quite often called, like regulatory oversight, or something where the bills go to die, and then they just never get voted on and don't progress through the legislative process, figure that stuff out. And that's part of what we're here to do in these classes is help you figure out that political system. And so I think also, you need to know who are going to be your champions? Are they allied organizations? Are there certain legislative members of Congress or legislature who are going to be your champions because they care about an issue, and maybe they've built up a profile of a time of voting in a certain way. Similarly, maybe there are figures in the executive that play a similar role, who are your champions, you need to have people in relative positions of power, who are going to push for your issue, verify to others in the same group, so other legislators, for example, that your organization is legitimate, and help build up your reputation, reputation. So thinking about targeted action, I think is key. Even if your goal overall is really big societal change, I think you have to within that, think about the individuals that you also have to persuade so that they're not low blocks to your journey of social change. And hopefully, they're going to facilitate it.
Scott Greer :Here. I was just about to ask what are the key big picture things to end with?
Holly Jarman :Oh, my goodness. So this was a lot everybody. And so feel free to come at us with questions, comments, and so on. But I'm going to try and wrap this up quickly. And think of a few things to to focus on. So, so when I'm talking about targets for change, targets vary with the politics of the situation, and they also vary around the issue. So you need to pay attention to the targets for your specific issue and area. And as I said, make sure you're making a clear ask for to somebody who can actually act on that.
Scott Greer :So don't write to the senator, if you're mad at the governor,
Holly Jarman :please don't do that every year people write policy memos and other assignments in classes and write them to the wrong person don't do that. It's good to make that mistake in class rather than in real life, I suppose. Secondly, coalition part politics, you have to build good relationships with the other people who are your allies, regular communication, that means and form common positions form platforms, it's important to remember that coalition politics mean that you do not get your way all the time. But maybe by working with others and by compromising a little bit, you can actually create bigger change than you could on your own or with your own group. Timing is key. So when you are doing all of this, you have to have a good sense of the calendar year. So when are the legislative sessions, when are the term limits when or elections, maybe when a bureaucratic timelines like consultation periods for certain policies, or if you're doing more mass mobilization, thinking about the new cycle, putting your message out at the right time. And so thinking about the course of the year, and what news events you can predict and capitalizing on those. So if it's Labor Day, you might want to vote on a key industrial action, for example. Finally, you need to build a personal reputation for being straightforward. And build those relationships. You need to kind of hear aim for the long game, you might not get the change you want to see today. But you might by working hard on building relationships, mobilizing people around your issue, and understanding the system, be able to get the change eventually that you really want to see and so sticking with it is a message that I hear from professional advocates, professional organizers. Well, I hope some of those were really helpful tips. Please, like I said, come at us with questions and comments, and we'll see you in the next podcast.