Arizona Together, Part Two

In this video, I discuss how our Arizona Together campaign focused on the real loses that the initiative implied - domestic partner benefits that would be lost for 100,000 straight and LBGT Arizona residents. By focusing on this we formed unlikely allies, including Arizona Fire Fighters, the residents of Sun City, the Arizona Association of Retired Americans and educational institutions, and some likely allies such as the LBGT community.

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Report Card for Farm Sanctuary: A

Farm Sanctuary recently teamed up with Causecast to help get their message out about reducing our consumption of meat. They kept the shockingly cruel footage to a minimum and decided to focus on something else instead.

That thing? A value. No, it wasn’t mostly compassion; it was sustainability. The organization also communicates values such as compassion and equality on their website, but obviously learned what not to do from PETA since they keep the horrifying images to a minimum, always maintain an approachableness, focus more on what you can do (and not what you shouldn’t be doing) and focus more on success stories.

For stepping outside of the norm, communicating values and reaching new audiences, Farm Sanctuary gets a pretty decent grade.

Report Card for GLADD: A

GLADD takes its name to heart.

The issues they are fighting for are incredibly serious, and when it’s called for, they always utilize that tone. But, they also know how to have fun—which, if you’ve been in the good graces of our community, you’re well aware that we get an A in social studies :)

And for their hard work and sense of humor, they get an A, as well.

Check out their blog and you’ll see that topics range from media favorites that are a part of the LGBTQ community and news about hate crimes. It’s important to have this sense of balance because it’s more attractive to others. No matter what the issue is, no one wants to work with someone that is somber all of the time. They want to work with someone that takes what they do seriously, but at the same time can dish about Ariel and Maria, the two bisexuals on Miami Social, and (the ever fabulous and adorable) Stephen on Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.

So, all in all, if you want to Unite and Conquer, you need to be GLADD.

The often forgotten key to coalition success: Have fun

Of course, every coalitions goal is to create change. And it’s often not an easy task.

So, how do you ensure that people remain excited and passionate about what you’re trying to accomplish? It’s simple: Have fun.

Encourage people to have a sense of humor, find people that work hard but also have class clown tendencies, make sure the people you’re working with have a good attitude and aren’t the type to stress everyone out. It’s good to have people with type A tactics, because, after all, you do want to get some work done, but don’t leave out those with type B attitudes because they’ll help keep a positive, approachable vibe.

If it’s all work and no play, people are going to get burnt out. It sounds cliché, but try and build your coalition with people that play as hard as they work.

Being able to Unite and Conquer often means finding the source

It’s tempting try and convince everyone and their mother why your issue matters and why your policy or change is essential, but in order to really unite and conquer, it’s often more effective to find a central source.

With issues with religious undertones and debates, it’s important to educate the person who has the most control: the church, congregation or temple’s leader. This video shows how the HRC is reaching out to these people. While the video has a powerful message of people of traditional religious convictions changing their minds, the most exciting part about this outreach is the effect it is going to have. By reaching one religious leader, the HRC is reaching hundreds of people that those leaders have influence over.

Whatever change your are trying to make, find out if there are any influencers that you can educate in order to increase awareness and spread your message to a larger audience. By spreading this message, you’ll be able to unite and conquer much more effectively.

Report card for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition: A

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition does an amazing job of promoting their cause and getting people to take action. Through their actions they have helped pass a bike plan that will make San Fran one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US. The plan includes 45 new bike lanes on city streets.

Instead of focusing on lofty goals, like getting everyone to ditch their cars (but, hey, I drive a hybrid!) and ride bikes instead, they’ve focused on values like safety, community, sustainability, and the environment. They also did research and found out what people wanted and needed in order to make their goal (by 2012, 25% of San Franciscans will use bicycles as a frequent mode of transportation) become a reality. What did they find out? That in order to make the streets safer for biking, they needed to get more people out of their cars and onto bikes. How would they get them to do this? Well, they had to make the streets safer for bikes.

By promoting safety, community and sustainability, this group has been able to make strides in legislation in order to help citizens get the safe, bike-friendly streets they need.

And these values and strategies have paid off, because of their efforts, the number of people using bikes as a form of transportation has doubled in the last decade. Now, “over 30,000 San Franciscans use bicycles as their primary mode of transportation.”

Report card for ONE: A+

ONE does an amazing job of appealing to all kinds of different people. How do they do this? They screaming from the podium that we need to pour all our resources into education—they’re promoting values that we all can share. Like equality, hope, life, health and economic stability.

For instance, while the offer shocking stats, like “75 million children are out of school around the world, a figure equivalent to the entire primary school-aged population in Europe and North America,” they always bring it back to what these statistics truly mean. In the case of education, it allows all these children a better way of life and the ability to escape poverty—and it also helps out future generations by positively affecting health care and the economy.

Another example is with the issue of Water and Sanitation, they let people know that, “Across the world, 884 million people do not have access to clean water and 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation,” but they also focus on the fact that safe drinking water and sanitation prevents thousands of child deaths, but also allows children to go to school (because they aren’t spending hours each day getting water).

All in all, ONE does an excellent job creating awareness of the urgency of these issues, but they also always bring it back to values—which makes it a lot harder to argue.

We need a doctor

DJ Rekha: Give Me Health Care.

DJ Rekha, a hip-hop DJ with Reggaeton and Bollywood influences, has a good point. I can ask for affordable health care until I’m blue in the face (and in need of an oxygen mask at the rate of hundreds of dollars), but until a solution is presented that’s both affordable to everyone and profitable to the medical system, there’s likely to not be a whole lot of movement.

Trying to pass legislation that such as universal health care, or even trying to just keep health care the way it is, isn’t going to fly anymore. Compromises need to be made, the good of everyone involved needs to be recognized and kept in mind, and solutions need to find a common ground where everyone will benefit.

One way to ensure success is to let go of outcomes. If you’re so focused on a single outcome, you often will lose touch with the other’s views and you’ll end up just preaching to the choir.

With health care, it’s just as important to focus on business sustainability and profits, as it is to focus on providing affordable solutions to appeal to all those that are concerned with the issue. Letting go of specific outcomes (such as health care for everyone) and working towards common goals (such as affordable, yet competitive  health care) will only aid in uniting and conquering.

Report card for the Alliance for Climate Protection: A+

The Alliance for Climate Protection does an amazing job of convincing anyone that switching over to clean energy is a no brainer. They touch on solving three very top-of-mind issues, all through implementing clean energy solutions. As seen in the PSA, clean energy will help improve the economy and job creation, national security and will help stop global warming. Even if someone isn’t as concerned with global warming, national and economic security is likely to hit home.

And it shows, throughout all their projects, Repower America, We Can Solve It and This Is Reality, they have over 2.2 million supporters, including President Barack Obama and Will.i.am, who even made a song and music video to show his support.

Unite and Conquer was in The Arizona Republic Today

As it appeared in The Arizona Republic today:

State representative writes book on building coalitions

If you can't beat 'em - invite 'em to join you.

That's the message of a new book by Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, whose "Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win - and Last" comes out in July from Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

With a forward written by former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a 32-year-old state legislator could do worse.

But for Sinema, one of the youngest members of the state House of Representatives, necessity was the mother of invention.

After being elected in 2004, she says she spent her first months complaining about the injustice of her opponents' bills - or, in unofficial lawmaking terms, being a generally ineffective "bomb thrower."

"People were mostly polite to me and complimented my outfits," she wrote in her book of her first legislative session, "but no one wanted to actually work with me."

Miserable and disillusioned, Sinema spent the summer re-evaluating her approach and returning to her roots as a social worker.

In her second session, she says she forced herself to empathize with even her most radically different colleagues and slowly built the first of many coalitions that changed her career.

"A coalition can be me and one other person working together," she said in an interview with The Republic. "Rather than focusing on what we don't have in common, we seek to find areas of common ground."

This year, Sinema became the assistant House minority leader. She is perhaps best known for leading Arizona Together, a coalition that defeated Proposition 107, a same-sex marriage ban, in 2006. It was the only ballot initiative of its kind in the country that did not pass that year.

It was Sinema's ambition for progressive change that struck Johanna Vondeling, an editor with Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Vondeling met the legislator last January at a political conference in Washington. Vondeling had dropped in on a session at which Sinema was a panelist; by the end of the day, they were discussing a book proposal.

"As soon as she started speaking, I was just blown away by her energy and her enormous heart," Vondeling said. "To me, she just had 'rising star' written all over her."

Sinema is unapologetic about her unique style, and unabashed in her admiration for another young Democrat who embraced coalition-building.

She nearly jumps when talking about one of President Barack Obama's speeches.

In her office, quirky paper lamps illuminate the colorful "Si, Se Puede!" posters hanging next to a leopard-print bulletin board. A copy of "The Audacity of Hope" is propped up on a side table.

With chapter titles such as "Letting Go of the Bear and Picking Up the Buddha," Sinema hopes "Unite and Conquer" will appeal not only to politicians, but also to those who are interested in becoming politically engaged in other ways.

"That doesn't mean they have to want to run for public office," she said. "Maybe they want to organize around an issue, or volunteer for a campaign. There's a really broad range."

And despite literally seeing the world through rose-colored glasses - she sports a pair of dark pink Chanel frames - Sinema rejects assumptions that her generation is overly idealistic.

"I think we have deeply held beliefs," she said. "But we're not interested in sitting around and talking. We just want to get stuff done."

Report card for the National Coalition for the Homeless: B-

Based on this video and their website, the National Coalition for the Homeless does a good job of appealing to progressives and republicans alike. The video features former homeless individuals that look like everyday people – those that look like they could be one of your neighbors.

While most progressives would immediately be in any support of helping the homeless population, the coalition does a good job of appealing to conservatives by showing that they’re not for offering homeless people monetary handouts, but they are for giving them the tools to get sober, cure illnesses, find a job and get their own home.

Also, on their website, they make it clear that the reason most are homeless is NOT due to laziness, but due to the fact that there is a shortage of affordable housing (over 5 million families use over half of their income to pay for just housing alone) and a simultaneous increase in poverty due to a lack of jobs. They also continue to dispel the myth that they are lazy by letting people know that over 17.4% of homeless adults in families are employed while 13% of homeless single adults or unaccompanied youth are employed.

Give me your tired, your poor

La Bruja: Cowboys and Immigrants.

La Bruja, a poet, hip-hop/reggaeton artist and activist from the Bronx, makes an excellent point: our recent immigration policies often are hypocritical. After all, the statue of Liberty makes it pretty clear how we once felt, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now, that doesn’t mean I think the entire global population could be supported within the United States, but as La Bruja points out, these people often risk their lives to come to the U.S., work back-breaking jobs, only to get deported. While people are very divided on this issue and there are many different possible solutions (but few that, so far, would appeal to everyone), it’s important to remember why immigration is so important, and why it has often fueled our country—and it’s something we all can agree on.

Immigration, and more importantly diversity, allow us to see the world in a new perspective. It brings new thoughts and ideas to the table. America isn’t a country that runs on a plan, it’s a country that was founded on an idea: freedom. And the beauty of an idea is that it is ever changing, it ebbs and flows with the times and with each influence a mind has on it. If history has taught us anything, it’s that great ideas can come from unexpected people.

So, you’re shaking your head yes, and wondering, “But how do I convince people that don’t agree with me?” Well, a sad, but very true principle in marketing is that you sell people their pain, meaning you find out what their problems are and tell them how your “product” will solve them. So, most unprogressives (yeah, I made that up), are most likely pretty sore about the economy (as are most of us), allowing bright, promising minds and people with tenacious work ethics to immigrate to our country will actually help America keep it’s competitive edge in the global market. Also playing into values is key to winning people over – we all can disagree on certain issues, but it’s much harder to argue about freedom, equality, innovation and opportunity.

Report Card for The Set America Free Coalition : A

The group ranges from extreme environmentalists, a former head of the CIA, republicans, democrats and leaders of religious movements. The value that they all share is prying America from its dependency on foreign oil, no matter what their underlying reason is. Viewpoints ranging from Gary Bauer, President of American Values, stating that “…we’re all aware that there are evil people feverishly working on ways to kill us. We are dependent on our energy resources from people who worship death and have drawn a bull’s-eye on our back,” to Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council stating that, “…we face immediate threats in terms of security in the environment. We need to do something now. The deficiency in alternatives to oil is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity to make this shift.”

The formed together to develop legislation that will reduce our dependence on oil and encourage fuel-efficient vehicles. And, based on their message, it’d be nearly impossible to find a politician that wouldn’t support it. Anne Korin, Chairman of Set America Free, states that, “…every major national security issue has roots in oil.” The wars and battles Iran and Pakistan are waging, within their own countries and against our own, are all funded by oil. As she points out we are at war with an ideology, radical Islam, and we cannot win the war as long as we are funding the other side.

They take the stance that investing in alternative fuel sources is good for the environment, economy, democracy and national security. I dare you to find a single American that won’t get behind improvement in at least one of those areas.

The Set America Free Coalition could have easily tailored their messaging to appeal to just tree-huggers or to appeal to the makers of Hybrid cars, but they understood that in order to be successful, they needed to appeal to a broader audience. And they do, as the former Director of the CIA, R. James Woolsey, says it is, “…a coalition of tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, cheap hawks, and evangelicals.”

And for that, they get an A.

The Funny of Die version of “Prop 8: The Musical” actually lays out pretty decent ground rules for Coalitions

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

Neil Patrick Harris is well suited to run any successful coalition. In this video, he appeals to the conservatives by showing them the impact gay marriage will have on the economy. While it might be an exaggeration of the truth (come on, we all know that no self-respecting lesbian would choose a lavender wedding hall), it’s actually a very strategic way to appeal to people that wouldn’t normally be for gay marriage.

Some people may view communication like this as selling out. Which, yes, in a perfect world everyone would agree that it’s ludicrous to deny such a basic human right as marriage to two people in love, but unfortunately, not everyone is there yet. So, with most political issues, appealing to the masses is the only chance a lot of groups have at winning.