We had such hopes.
In late May, 2020 America gasped and screamed with COVID and rage, and no city screamed louder than my new home, Minneapolis. But after the fires burnt out and the nighttime battles stopped raging, many of us perceived a moment of grace and possibility we hadn’t seen before. Maybe this time could be different—would be different, than all the times before when Minneapolis police killed black people, and walked free. Maybe we could overturn the system that had turned our supposed guardians of public safety into freelance executioners.
All we needed was a plan and the words to rally people to its banner, and the plan already existed. A very decent, dedicated and diverse group of people had been working on it for years, and refining it as the body count increased. Few had wanted to hear their proposals before the civil unrest of May 2020, but after that, many did. I still recall my excitement when I read a politically engaged Facebook friend announce that this new plan for rethinking public safety resources was here about to go public.
She told us its name: “Defund the Police.” and my heart died inside.
I gently suggested that the slogan didn’t do justice to the plan she’d described, and would be misunderstood by people who misunderstood things and grossly misrepresented by those who just liked to trash liberals. My friend got mad and indignantly pointed out the diversity, dedication and subject matter expertise of the people who came up with the plan. I didn’t doubt that and had no desire to mansplain over such distinguished company, but deep down, I knew this slogan didn’t just not hit the right notes, it hit more wrong ones than I thought possible in just three words. But the right people made it while thinking all the right thoughts about the right things, and what could be wrong with that?
We soon found out. People remembered the name and believed whatever lies other people told them about the plan. Those three words became a drive-in-sized screen on which Right wing disinformation outlets projected every fear that uninformed and bigoted white Americans had ever had. The people who coined those unfortunate words should have gotten more credit for an excellent plan or at very least some royalties from Tucker Carlson, but no.
Our dismal words hurt us
To be a progressive in the first decades of the 21st century is to endure insipid slogans and off-base messages galore from the very people you agree with, while watching the worst sort craft verbiage that Orwell could only envy. Biden promised to Build Back Better but forgot to tell us what or why. Forced birth opponents shoehorn inclusive but unfamiliar phrases like “pregnant people” into warnings about the Dobbs decision assault on the rights of America’s uterus owners. But by using that valid and worthy term, which nonetheless demands a lot of rethinking on the part of its audience, we place an obstacle in the way of our abortion rights message. Do we need to use inclusive language about trans people? Absolutely. Do we need to introduce that language to people who might not understand it, right in the middle of an urgent message about abortion rights? Only if we don’t care how those people might receive it. When we tailor our message to get more “Amens” from those who agree with us already, it’s called preaching to the choir, and that’s not a flattering term.
Though I love History, I’m not going to spend any time in this essay trying to parse out how Democrats and progressives got to be so shitty at communication, but Brothers and Sisters, we are there. And we need to get somewhere better, and quick.
We can, and must use better words
Language can be the salvation of our movement or the millstone that drags it under for good. When we liberals and progressives use words and make arguments that appeal to people who already agree with us, we reach the very people we don’t need to reach. When we use deeply nuanced new terms that we approve of but others don’t understand, we erect verbal checkpoints between our stories and the people we need to convince. When our messages focus on “us” instead of “you,” we just sound selfish. And when our slogans that tell people how we plan to do things without telling them why we should, we instruct our opponents on how to hurt us even more.
History instructs us how to think and speak
Think of the great progressive speakers of the past, from Soujourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to Emmeline Pankhurst, FDR and Martin Luther King. You’ll find people who told stories full of simple, vivid and concrete images:
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?
— Soujourner Truth
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
— Frederick Douglass
Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
There’s a word for speech like this. It’s called poetry: an old, old oral tradition that communicating what matters across generations with the right mix of sound and sense. Martin Luther King understood this when he spoke of a dream, not a policy statement. When we understand the power of words to honor what’s best and denounce what’s worst in societies of people, we can weave those words into stories that invite people to share our vision of a different future, and make it theirs. Of course we must “use our words,” but unless we choose, craft and combine those words until they feel as real as the touch of skin on skin, they will never fire the hearts of those not on our side.
So let’s begin.
Great piece! Also, Jim, I'm sorry to post this here but I don't know how to reach you directly. You recommended my newsletter but in your blurb called me Jennifer instead of Jessica. If you would kindly fix my name I would include your blurb on my page! Thanks, and again, great newsletter!
So True !