Comments on Move Our Message
Move Our Message is the framing/messaging handbook for organizers. This book will help you write and speak Americanese to those audiences you want to reach. Try it, you’ll love it. I use its ideas when I speak to audiences who have just watched my film.
–Donald Goldmacher, MD, Producer, www.Heist-themovie.Congratulations on the book. I did pick up a copy, and I think it’s a great resource.
–Patrick Reinsborough, Co-Director, smartMeme/Center for Story-Based StrategyI found your book very, very interesting.
–Jim Cason, Associate Executive Secretary for Campaigns, FCNL [Friends Committee on National Legislation], (Washington, D.C.)Worth re-reading! I was at a MoveOn Council meeting last Sunday, and both of the members who had been at Susan’s American Framing workshop in Dublin, CA brought their copies of Move Our Message to hold up and tell people how valuable it was. One of them said he was about to start reading it for the second time.
–Cilla Raughley, Regional MoveOn Council Leader (Palo Alto, CA)This book teaches speaking to the heart. Susan Strong’s new book Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear is filled with information to help you get your point across effectively. Although rooted in scientific knowledge about human communication, the book follows its own principles by not belaboring the reader with pages of dry verbiage. Instead, the book gives brief and clear explanations and examples–lists–of words that work and why. This book will be valuable to anyone who wants to write effective letters to the editor or messages to elected officials or to give pithy presentations in public meetings. It can help you learn how to speak to the listener’s heart, which is the surest way to get through to your audience. With this kind of guidance, we progressives and liberals can get over our old habit of avoiding the very thing that works best.
–Judy Bertelsen, M.D., Activist, (Berkeley, CA)‘I’m learning a lot from your book.’
–Phoebe Sorgen, Activist Leader and Political Candidate, (Berkeley, CA)This book is a Must Read! With today’s world situation teetering on the edge chaos we need all the help we can get.This is such an important book, that it should be read by every high school, college student and anyone interested in finding some REAL solutions. Insightful, practical, thoughtful, and doable. I can’t recommend this one enough! Thanks, Ms. Strong.
–Ann Riley, Activist, (El Cerrito, CA United States)Every progressive should read this book! It’s a primer for getting the message out and fighting the force-fed fear environment we live in. Progressives need this book to recapture the message from the Republican owned media. A good read.
–Lou Kent, (East Bay, CA, U.S.)Help is on the way! We liberals and progressives need real guidance about how to fight back against those who hijack our way of life with deceptive language. We deserve concrete, practical help with finding language that tells the truth and works too. This book provides all of that and more; I felt very empowered and encouraged by Move Our Message!
–-Dale Zola, Activist, (Oakland,CA)Practical advice on progressive messaging! This book is awesome for progressives who want to implement the views of George Lakoff (the Don’t Think of an Elephant guy.) It contains concrete metaphors related to today’s issues. The author also talks about the importance of speaking American, meaning invoking cherished American stories about who we are as a people. Our country is drowning in propaganda, and progressives need to use language to espouse our truths and values. This book is an important tool.
–Eloise Hamann, Ph.D., Activist, (Dublin, CA)
Longer Reviews
Talking to the ‘mainstream’ about peace, justice, and ecological sustainability
by Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW Steering Committee Clerk
from BeFriending Creation May-June 2012, p. 3
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED to have a serious political discussion with family members, friends, or co-workers who have world views or opinions different from your own, only to rapidly descend into name-calling and raised voices? Have you ever written an op-ed piece or given a talk, only to be wildly misinterpreted and find yourself under attack?
Susan Strong of Strawberry Creek (Calif.) Friends Meeting has written Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear as a guidebook for those of us who call ourselves liberals or progressives and who often feel that communication is impossible with people who don’t wear that label.
Susan has been helping progressives and liberals mainstream their messages since 1997, via her nonprofit organization, The Metaphor Project. Susan has led workshops on “Friendly Persuasion” and has written two articles for Quaker Eco-Bulletin. … [Read More]
Mainstreaming the Progressive Message in 2012
by Sarah Hawthorne, with James Hosley
from WritingforGodot, ReaderSupportedNews.org
Anyone who has a passion to persuade will want to wear out the pages of this valuable handbook for progressives. Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear is revolutionary for its clarity in revealing the secret of successful messages. Noting that “throughout American history, ‘American Framing,’ or ‘speaking American,’ has been the only way to reach and activate large sectors of the American public,” author Strong’s goal in writing Move our Message is “to offer the most up-to-date, in-depth, and sequential presentation of what American Framing is, why it works, and how progressives can do it too.” She emphasizes the fact that American Framing done with integrity can get the truth into political debate dominated by distortions. Her background has prepared her well for unveiling these mysteries–serving as a consultant to many well-known activists, being an activist herself, and having taught in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley as well as in the Communications Department of St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA.
Strong notes that story-telling has always been one of the most powerful techniques for persuading others to share our point of view. Move Our Message identifies seven ideal American cultural stories that are essential themes in our political life – themes so embedded in our subconscious they are the invisible water we swim in. … [Read More]