messaging: i’m obsessed.

Posted: July 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Went to a really interesting event this morning at the Economic Policy Institute on “Engaging Younger Voters on Social Security.” I learned so much about the Social Security program, what it stands for and how it works. I’m pretty much an expert now; watch for a new post on IWPR’s Social Security Media Watch Project blog summarizing the event and what it meant to me. In the meantime, check out “A Young Person’s Guide to Social Security,” co-written by one of the panelists, Kathryn Edwards, who was an extremely impressive economic policy researcher (and probably like three years older than me, sigh). Her guide, and her effective way of framing Social Security as relevant to young people, was totally inspiring. Seriously, check it out.

But this post isn’t about Social Security itself. It’s about how fascinated I was by one of the other panelists’ presentations. Celinda Lake is a hugely established Democratic strategist, advisor and pollster who recently conducted a study on younger voters’ feelings about Social Security with her group Lake Research Partners.

While most advocates believe younger voters have little investment or interest in Social Security, Lake’s survey surprisingly found that voters under 30 are almost as likely as retirees to value Social Security. She speculated that this result is related to the youngest working generation’s difficulty in finding work in a struggling economy throughout their early careers. They realize the necessity of a safety net, a retirement insurance program that helps them rest assured they’ll be able to maintain a stable lifestyle as they age.

The most interesting part of Lake’s survey to me were her results on which messages in favor of strengthening Social Security were most effective for younger voters. Some of her findings:

  • Younger voters responded well to the framing of Social Security as a “promise” made to all generations to provide a basic and reliable retirement
  • Younger voters overwhelmingly sided with a candidate who would close the Social Security payroll tax loophole (it exempts those making over $106,800 from paying Social Security taxes on their income above that threshold) over a candidate who wants to raise the retirement age to 69 and make other cuts to Social Security
  • A whopping 73% of voters surveyed found the following statement to represent their views extremely well: “Social Security money belongs to the people who have worked hard all their lives and contributed to the program, not to the government. We must protect Social Security from cuts that will hurt beneficiaries, we cannot let Congress try to use Social Security as a piggy bank.”
  • Other successful messaging themes: Congress should have other priorities, like regulating Wall Street; Congress should try revenue increases rather than entitlement cuts; cutting Social Security is a broken promise; the government should prioritize paying back the$2.6 trillion it took from the Social Security trust fund, just like it prioritized bailing out Wall Street

This survey was interesting to me mostly because I kept thinking about my experiences volunteering with Planned Parenthood in grassroots activism efforts like phone banking and canvassing. At all of these events I’ve been handed a list of “talking points” instructing me how to frame my viewpoint most effectively to voters. I always knew these talking points were researched by some outside consulting group that probably conducted focus groups and phone surveys, but the event this morning was my first detailed view of this type of research.

Planned Parenthood has been very effective in framing its recent right-wing attacks as attacks on family planning services, necessary for everyone, as opposed to a dialogue about the morality of abortion. Polls have shown that Americans understand Planned Parenthood’s services are primarily focused on unplanned pregnancy prevention and education, and they reject efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. Reading about this successful messaging is why I wasn’t too surprised to see that Planned Parenthood’s most recent campaign is in favor of eliminating co-pays for birth control (sign the petition!) under the new health reform guidelines. What a great strategy – Planned Parenthood realized the dialogue about its services had turned in its favor, and decided it was the right time to go for it with another push in favor of protecting reproductive health.

Love it! This type of messaging/strategic communications research is really interesting to me. I’m known to be a person who loves to talk about feminism to, say, my random beer pong partner on a Friday night in a way that’s simple and identifiable. As a peer educator, I love experimenting with how to best help participants understand the culture of violence and get inspired to take action to help change it. I’m hoping to do a little investigating as to how I could possibly translate those small-scale interactions to my career.

Again, every day I’m amazed at how much I’m learning about myself and my future in this city.

new faces, more voices sessions 4 & 5 (career development advice)

Posted: July 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Just wanted to share some of the information I gleaned from last week’s New Faces, More Voices session, which was a salary negotiation and resume workshop with Pamela O’Leary, executive director of the Public Leadership Education Network, successful D.C. career coach Alyssa Best and members of the executive committee of the Women’s Information Network (of which I’ve recently become a proud member!).

Some of Pam’s resume advice:

  • Put your educational background at the bottom of your resume, not the top! Your work experience (paid and unpaid) is most important, especially when applying in DC.
  • Don’t put references on your resume
  • Send all attachments as PDFs
  • Use months for time periods, not semesters – you’re not a student any more!
  • Make your resume about accomplishments and skills, not responsibilities. Quantify your accomplishments as much as possible.
  • Use a local mailing address, even if you have to “borrow” one from someone else. Your resume might be thrown out if you don’t seem easily accessible to potential employers. For legislative positions, use a DC mailing address but mention your constituency in the state of office you’re applying to in your cover letter.
  • Resumes and cover letters should be only one page for a young professional! One resume page to every seven years of experience. (After the workshop, I resolved to work on shortening mine significantly!)
  • In cover letters: SHOW, don’t TELL. Instead of, “I’m highly organized,” mention that you coordinated 200 volunteers, email correspondence for a membership list of 10,000, etc.

This week, NFMV coordinator Ashley of the National Council for Women’s Organizations, suggested that we ask DC professionals for informational interviews (a.k.a. “meet me for coffee!”) while we’re here in the city and have the special status of interns. These short 15-20-minute meetings give interns the opportunity to ask questions that aren’t appropriate for job interviews – questions about entry-level salaries and personal information about folks’ career paths. Ashley said it was acceptable to send cold emails to people asking for these kinds of meetings. We’ll see if I can identify some people with interesting jobs within the feminist community and convince them to meet up with me before I head back to Chapel Hill! Let me know if you happen to know anyone who might be a good resource!

Soon I’ll be writing a post about salary negotiation, the gender wage gap and pay secrecy, which was addressed at last week’s session but really deserves its own discussion! I’ve continued to develop a lot of opinions on equal pay (and pay secrecy in particular) since I’ve been in DC at IWPR, time that also coincides with the Wal-Mart v. Dukes Supreme Court decision. But props to Sheila, former assistant director at NC Hillel back home, for originally sparking my interest in this topic!

walmart v. dukes rally @ supreme court

Posted: July 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Just wanted to share a few photos I took from the rally last week at the Supreme Court in support of the women employees of Wal-Mart who experienced systematic discrimination at the workplace. They suffered both pay inequalities and lack of opportunity for promotion as compared to their male counterparts.

Unfair pay has serious consequences for women throughout their lifetimes, and I’m pleased to be learning a lot about these and other economic justice issues at IWPR. Not only do women make 77 cents on a man’s dollar on average in the U.S., causing them more economic hardship in the short term, fewer wages mean less Social Security funding upon retirement. Thus, more older women are poor than older men.

The women in the Dukes case attempted a class-action suit to hold Wal-Mart accountable for its illegal management decisions but were denied class-action status by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote.

The rally was empowering and achieved a lot of visibility. Plenty of press attended to cover the event, and plenty of passersby were supportive. It’s so amazing to be able to leave my internship for just an hour during the day to participate in an event like this. So much activism is constantly happening here in DC, and it’s usually only minutes away.

I’ve also enjoyed running into some of the same people at multiple events I’ve attended. I haven’t been in this city for very long, but I’m already starting to identify the community that I’ll become a part of someday if my life leads me here.

Two fellow IWPR interns and I were featured in an Associated Press photo taken at the event – see if you can spot me in AOL’s collection of AP photos of proud angry feminists here 😉

Also, here’s a video some awesome fellow New Faces, More Voices interns edited from their footage of the protest.

I'm in this one, looking kinda awkward. Leah and candid don't go too well together (but there's no room for vanity in activism!) Photo courtesy of Carley Shinault

Rally participants (most from feminist orgs around DC, but some from labor unions) and their signs. IWPR interns are toward the far right on the front row.

Close-up of IWPR interns at the rally June 21.

new faces, more voices session 3

Posted: July 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The most recent session of New Faces, More Voices focused on organizing for international women’s issues. As always, the two speakers were inspirational.

I’m sometimes concerned that what often feels like an exclusive focus on the struggles of women in developing nations draws attention away from domestic problems in our own backyards. For example, at his UNC speaking engagement this year, Nicholas Kristof dismissively said the “only problems” U.S. women have to worry about is sexual harassment at work, not seeming to think that feeling sexually threatened was much of a problem at all.

But the speakers at NFMV drew an interesting parallel between their work on the international stage and at home attempting to ratify the CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) treaty. The United States is one of only seven countries that has not yet ratified the treaty (others include Sudan, Somalia and Iran). The speakers explained how the treaty would positively affect women in all socioeconomic conditions.

Barbara Ferris is a feminist activist who helped start the International Women’s Democracy Center, which teaches women how to run political campaigns and originally targeted women in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Her organization assists with campaign management and coordinates a community leaders forum. It also has established a pipeline project for U.S. women ages 18-35 to encourage and train them to run for office. This project has recently expanded its focus to include outreach to LGBTQ-identified individuals. Ferris talked about the struggles feminist organizations face in finding funds from donors. “If you really want a ton of money, do babies, trees and animals,” she said.

The second speaker was Erica Swanson, field director at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. She shared her career history – having started out in social work, she became more and more concerned with the systemic challenges that made her job so difficult. She transitioned to political campaign work after being encouraged to do so.

Swanson is young, soft-spoken and kind. She assured all of us that a happy, secure life in this city was a dream within reach. She is pregnant and married to a man she met in undergraduate school.  Swanson encouraged us to translate our idealism into our life’s work.  “Let that inspiration help make life decisions for you,” she said.

This discussion session was interesting for me, especially because I related to Swanson and was very interested in her career path. But it was also difficult; I’m already getting disillusioned with the partisan political process here.

It’s devastating to me that a woman as passionate and committed as Ferris can work for 40 years toward a goal and see so little progress. I’m incredulous that the U.S. still hasn’t signed a treaty ensuring equal rights for women after all this time.

Working toward progress, and thinking of politics in terms of real people’s lives rather than as a game, can be demoralizing.

I’ve often felt that kind of frustration and helplessness on a smaller scale through my activism on campus, and I think sometimes it IS necessary to allow a few minutes to feel sorry for yourself. Fixating on those feelings probably isn’t healthy, but I think recognizing injustices and feeling them to your core – and sometimes feeling genuinely sad – is necessary to maintain your passion.

welcome to DC, rep. kathy hochul!

Posted: June 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Unfortunately blurry photo of me, a fellow IWPR intern and new Rep. Kathy Hochul! (camera was malfunctioning, oh well)

I was lucky enough to attend a reception at the PPFA office Monday night welcoming New York Rep. Kathy Hochul to Washington, D.C. as another strong pro-choice voice in the House! Not only were there heavy hors d’oeuvres and free booze, I got to meet Rep. Hochul, who was a smart, funny woman with a strong political background.

She spoke to the crowd, which was comprised of advocates from progressive and women’s interest groups who all contributed to her campaign effort. For the first time ever, Planned Parenthood “embedded” one of its field organizers into a political campaign, ensuring that a reproductive rights expert was advising Hochul on strategy. Hochul said she knew the huge, supportive network of women’s organizations that threw its support behind her was a key factor leading to her important victory, and that she wouldn’t forget that support. “I was getting checks from states I’d never been to before!” she said.

Another grainy photo of Rep. Hochul speaking to the reception attendees.

Hochul recounted her very first vote – rejecting the controversial budget proposal of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, whom she said still won’t meet her eyes on the House floor.

Hochul was at one time a legslative aide for former New York Sen. Daniel Moynihan and recalled an era when she’d often be sent to Republican Senators’ offices to collaborate with their staffers on bipartisan solutions to policy debates. She said she hoped to use that philosophical mindset to work with all members of the House to achieve compromise. But one issue Hochul didn’t seem willing to compromise on was health care – she ran her campaign on her commitment to protect Medicare and Medicaid, her surprising success in a typically conservative district interpreted by some to be a public referendum on the Ryan budget plan.

I met a fabulous UNC alum at the event, too – she was a policy adviser for PPFA and told me all about her career path (which was definitely indirect) and invited me to stay in touch. Networking is so much easier when you’ve had a couple glasses of wine…