Our Strategy
Building Support for an Active and Inclusive Government
By celebrating concrete improvements in people’s lives and communities as the result of recent legislation (especially the Inflation Reduction Act), we will increase the number of people who support an active and inclusive government and are therefore harder to target with racialized ‘divide and conquer’ rightwing messaging.
Our North Star: The Value of an Active, Inclusive Government
One of the most successful, and therefore dangerous, appeals by the right in recent years has been a set of racialized divide and conquer appeals intended to undermine progress toward a future in which all of us can thrive. Some politicians have told a false story about government handouts for some in order to cover up a true agenda of seizing control of our politics and our economy for the wealthy few. And it’s been devastatingly effective.
Building long-term power to counteract this false narrative requires inoculating larger segments of the population against these racialized divide and conquer attempts, and building durable support for an active and inclusive government that delivers for a bigger, multi-racial “us.” We have to successfully tell a more truthful, more compelling, more hopeful, and more united story of an active government that invests in communities in ways that help all of us, and more people need to connect government action to tangible improvements in their lives and their communities.
When we look toward the thriving just society we all ultimately want, we believe we can’t just leap there; we have to build a pathway that starts from where we are now. A majority coalition that can sustainably reject fascism and build a better livable future for all of us requires a larger share of the population on our side than we have today. That means that we need a lot more folks who believe in and embrace the value of inclusive, active government; who see material benefits in their lives; and who aren’t as easy to target with dog whistle politics.
For that reason, the ultimate audience for this body of work are persuadables–people who are susceptible to but not fully bought in on racialized divide and conquer politics. While it can be frustrating to meet these folks where they’re at, inoculate them, and then try to shift them over time, we’re committed to experimenting in how to do it effectively.
While the Indivisible movement includes activists and volunteers from all walks of life, our activists and volunteers are disproportionately white, and disproportionately likely to be in relationships–either through their family or community–with folks who are most susceptible to these kinds of racialized appeals from the right. That makes us particularly well positioned to do this work.
Powering Progress in 2023
Our Criteria
Celebrating what’s Meaningful and Popular
It polls well with a persuadable audience. We can show the receipts (data/polls/etc.) to prove that it's popular.
It’s timely. We’re celebrating the progress from the last couple of years, with a focus on things that are being implemented right now.
It’s tangible for communities. We’re focused on things that people can feel and see: new jobs, new training programs, and more money in their pockets. And of course, the bigger the better.
Our Focus
In 2023, our hypothesis for how to build support for an active and inclusive government is through celebrating the individual and community-level investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, a generational achievement that was signed into law last Congress.
There are a few strategic reasons to focus on the Inflation Reduction Act:
Public awareness of the details of the Inflation Reduction Act remain very low. If people don’t know what’s in the IRA, don’t know how it benefits them and/or don’t credit the right sources (government rather than the private companies some of the investments move through), we’ll lose out on a huge opportunity increase support for the legislation and for an active and inclusive government more generally.
The IRA is vulnerable to being defined by its opponents, especially by racialized divide-and-conquer messaging. We’ve seen the opposition win the messaging war on other significant pieces of legislation that improved people’s lives, like the Affordable Care Act, and we don’t want to let that happen again. (While we haven’t seen this kind of opposition messaging break through yet, we anticipate that it’ll become more prominent as more things are implemented.)
The good news is that many components of the bill are wildly popular when the public learns about them. But overcoming that ignorance gap, particularly in the time period between when investments are announced and when they’re fully implemented and tangible in communities, is extremely hard.
Guided by data (see below!), we’re particularly focused on the Clean Energy Plan (especially the billions of dollars improving our grid and bringing jobs to communities thanks to the transformative Inflation Reduction Act!) and lowering healthcare costs (especially the caps on insulin under Medicare).
Our Messaging
Strategic messaging is a core component of Powering Progress. The campaign has three messaging pillars:
Race-class messaging. Our messaging has a race-class orientation to proactively counter bad faith attempts to seed racist narratives or other divide-and-conquer frames about who benefits from government action. We will draw from WMTF/ASO’s guidance and ongoing consultations to emphasize how the Clean Energy Plan benefits all of us, no matter your race or place. One of the guiding ideas for this work is to universalize threats and opportunities wherever we can, so that as much as possible we're asking folks to fight for themselves and other people. This doesn't prevent us from acknowledging who is disproportionately impacted, but our best chance of moving persuadable people comes when we lead with a universalized frame.
Data driven. We will follow robust polling from partner organizations (like Climate Power/ LCV’s recent research) that help us assess what components are most popular, and the most effective frames to use and benefits to uplift. For example, that means talking about the energy components of the IRA as the “Clean Energy Plan” and consistently highlighting the health, affordability and energy independence benefits--core concerns that consistently rise to the top when polling persuadables. It also means emphasizing new jobs and an upgraded grid, which are the most popular benefits of the Clean Energy Plan.
Make it simple. Make it personal. We will follow communications best practices, using simple language – not technical or legalistic – and considering our audience. We’ll also make the benefits as tangible, specific, and personal as possible – emphasizing local wins folks can see/feel, as well as individual stories of value folks receive, specific jobs gained, energy bills decreased, etc.