Calling all our U.K. friends and allies!

We’re honored to be hosted by the venerable creative action, arts and campaigning organization PLATFORM for a brief presentation and interactive workshop about smartMeme’s tools and strategic approach as documented in our new book Re:Imagining Change.

How to win ‘the battle of the story’ in campaigning, movement organizing and changing the world!

An introduction to using story-based strategy

When: Saturday 31st of July, 3pm to 6pm

Where: The Stephen Lawrence Centre, 39 Brookmill Road, London, SE8 4HU

Cost: Suggested donation of £3 to cover the room hire. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Reserve a spot: Places are limited. To reserve your place, please email your confirmation to [email protected] with one sentence about what group/project/organisation you are involved with. We are trying to ensure that there is a diverse set of participants/groups represented on the day.

Workshop Description:
Storytelling has always been central to the work of activists, organizers and movement builders. Narrative is the lens through which humans process the information we encounter, be it cultural, emotional, experiential, or political. We make up stories about ourselves, our histories, our futures, and our hopes.
SmartMeme draws from many disciplines, integrating practices from organizing, broadcast media, advertising, strategic communications, education and systems thinking into their strategy and training work. Their experiments have evolved into a set of tools they call story-based strategy — a framework to link movement building with an analysis of narrative power by placing storytelling at the centre of social change strategy.

This workshop on the 31st of July, given by smartMeme co-founder Patrick Reinsborough will introduce some of the basic techniques in how to use story-based strategy as a tool in achieving social change. The workshop is aimed at people involved in social movements, community organizing, direct action groups, progressive NGOs and anyone who is interested in engaging with them.

Join us to Celebrate the Release of smartMeme’s New Book!

Re:Imagining Change — How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements and Change the World 2010 PM Press

With co-author Patrick Reinsborough and Special Guests Sharon Lungo of the Ruckus Society/IP3 and Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project

Book Release: Reception & Panel Discussion
Tuesday May 4th 7-9pm
Women’s Building, Audre Lorde Room
3543 18th St. San Francisco, CA 94110

7:00 pm Reception with light snacks & wine
7:30 pm Presentation & Panel Discussion

Re:Imagining Change (published by PM Press) is an inspiring and accessible resource guide to smartMeme’s innovative story-based strategy tools and methodology. The book grows out of smartMeme’s work since 2002 training over 3,000 activists and collaborating with over 100 social change organizations on a wide range of critical environmental and social justice issues. Re:Imagining Change outlines how to apply narrative power analysis to effectively frame issues, provides intriguing case studies, and issues a passionate call for more creative movement building to face the intersecting crises of the 21st century.

SmartMeme co-founder Patrick Reinsborough will briefly share some of the insights from the book, and will be joined in a panel discussion on strategy and innovation in the emerging movements for fundamental social change by visionary local organizers and smartMeme collaborators Gopal Dayaneni of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project and Sharon Lungo of the Ruckus Society and Indigenous People’s Power Project.

Don’t miss this evening of celebration, strategy, and storytelling!

PS. If you can’t make it but want to check out the book you can order it online at http://www.smartMeme.org/book

NOTE: Major discount for bulk purchases are available (10 or more copies) for grassroots organizations.

[Drum Roll Please....]

smartMeme’s first book, co-authored by Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning, is being published this week by PM Press - and we’re headed to New York City to celebrate!

Join Patrick & Doyle (plus smartMeme Board leaders) for two exciting community events in New York City:

Manhattan

Sunday 3/28 7:00 pm
Bluestockings Bookstore & Activists Center
www.bluestockings.com
172 Allen St (1 block south of Houston & 1rst Ave.)
NY, NY 10002

Williamsburg

Monday 3/29 7:30 pm
The Change You Want To See Gallery
www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
84 Havemeyer St @ Metropolitan Ave

Brooklyn, NY 11211

Come out to hear some of the insights from Re:Imagining Change, chat with the co-authors and pick up your very own copy of the book! We’d love to see you!

The book Re:Imagining Change — How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements and Change the World is an interactive and accessible resource guide to smartMeme’s story-based strategy tools and methodology. The book outlines how to apply narrative power analysis to effectively frame issues and offers plenty of juicy case studies and analysis, including a call for our movements to innovate our storytelling techniques in the face of the looming ecological crisis.

And, If you can’t make it — you can now order a copy of it at www.smartMeme.org/book

ALSO: Major discounts for bulk purchases are available (10 or more copies)
for groups that want to distribute the book to their staff or members - email info (at) smartmeme dot org for details!

Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy Stephen Duncombe, New Press, 2006

Reviewed by Jen Angel

Stephen Duncombe’s compelling book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, analyzes the ways in which political groups engage the public and communicate their messages.

Duncombe is both an activist and a scholar, currently teaching the history and politics of media and culture at New York University. He has authored several books, including Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (1997), and edited the Cultural Resistance Reader (2002). A veteran global justice organizer, Duncombe co-founded the Lower East Side Collective and was one of the main organizers for the New York City chapter of the international direct action group Reclaim the Streets. Throughout Dream, Duncombe uses “we” to talk in an inclusive way about activism on the Left, coming across with sincerity as someone who is directly engaged in this work.

Duncombe’s central thesis is that we live in an age of “manufactured consent” (a term first coined by Walter Lippmann), where spectacles that appeal to our needs and desires win our hearts and minds. As progressives, we’ve failed to learn how to “manufacture dissent” because we think that it can only be done in a way that is manipulative and exploitative, in the style of Madison Avenue advertising firms. Duncombe, arguing that an ethical spectacle is not only possible but necessary, sets out parameters for spectacles that are neither manipulative nor exploitative

Duncombe writes, “What is spectacle? By default most people think of throwing Christians to the lions, parading missiles through Red Square, or maybe the Ice Capades. But spectacle is something more. It is a way of making an argument. Not through appeals to reason, rationality, and self-evident truth, but instead through story and myth, fears and desire, imagination and fantasy. It realizes what reality cannot represent. It is the animation of an abstraction, a transformation from ideal to expression. “Spectacle is a dream on display” (30). As an example, Duncombe cites George W. Bush’s arrival on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in a fighter jet to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech (28).

Duncombe sets the stage with astute observations about the failure of the Left to dominate political discourse in the US. He argues that American politics on the Left is based in empiricism – truth. As progressives, we feel that if we just tell the truth or expose the facts, people will be convinced and join our cause. This, however, is not enough, and anyone who sticks with this will, Duncombe warns, “be doomed to insignificance” (6). Instead of just teaching people how to critique messages, we need to create our own powerful messages.

What’s missing, he asserts, is a politics that embraces dreams and desires, the vernacular of our time (9). If we want our ideas to lead, we need to speak a language that recognizes these dreams and desires, and that means using spectacle, or simply making our arguments through stories, associations, and images. We need to admit that people are emotional and passionate, not simply rational.

Duncombe goes on to examine things that are wildly popular in American culture, like Las Vegas, celebrity culture, and video games. From these examples, he deduces several basic needs or desires that are not being met elsewhere in our lives. Take the video game Grand Theft Auto, for example. On the surface, the game is violent and has no redeeming social value. It’s a game where the player is encouraged to steal and kill, where the main character is a poor, black gangbanger. In all of its iterations, Grand Theft Auto has sold more than 21 million copies since 2001, earning $924 million in revenue (53). Duncombe spends a chapter dissecting the game, first by making analogies to outlaws who are popular and revered in Western culture such as Robin Hood, Butch Cassidy, and even Tony Soprano (50), and then by analyzing the base desires the game addresses, asserting that these are what really make the game wildly popular: the desire to rebel (though that rebellion is through crime); the desire to identify with what we are not – embracing difference – where identification with “the other” in a game like Grand Theft Auto is a pleasure, not a chore; the desire for autonomy and freedom of choice – Grand Theft Auto is played out in a “noninstantial, open-ended, well-realized world”; the play matters – how you play the game matters as much as getting to the finish line.

GTA is popular because the needs and desires it meets are not being fulfilled elsewhere in people’s lives. This leads us to the basic question that Duncome poses: what dreams or desires do things in popular culture fulfill, and how can those needs be otherwise met? (105).

If you look at how we ask individuals to participate in politics on a mass scale, it usually involves signing a petition, giving money, or sitting through a boring meeting. No wonder masses of people aren’t flocking to our causes. We have failed to set up structures that facilitate true engagement and participation. Though there are great examples of true engagement, such as Reclaim the Streets, Critical Mass, and large-scale direct actions, by and large the public as a whole is not engaged or asked to participate by activists. Groups that embrace participatory democracy while increasing in size and number are still the minority outside of dedicated activist spheres. Politics, in a mainstream sense, has been moved into the realm of professional politics, with individuals asked to participate just by voting. Of course people feel alienated and disengaged. What more do we offer them? Rallies? Duncombe insists that we need to model the world we want in our activities, and long boring rallies are not part of the world we want (67). He puts that claim into perspective by citing contemporary groups that truly engage the public, such as the Reclaim the Streets movement or Act UP, and by contrasting them with groups that do not engage the public, like the Sierra Club or the Democratic Party.

What is important is how we “do” politics. Duncombe cautions that there is danger in focusing on the means as much as the ends, considering that this could lead to valuing means more than ends: “In her study of the antinuke movement of the 1980s, social movement scholar Barbara Epstein tells the story of one small protest group that blockaded an isolated, unused access road to a nuclear power plant even though the action had no impact on the facility’s operation nor any chance of media coverage. What mattered to the activists was not efficacy but the principle of putting their bodies on the line – even if that line led nowhere” (70). Not all goals can be prefigured, Duncombe reminds us, and not all necessary political work is a street party.

Duncombe concludes the book by deconstructing what an ethical spectacle would look like, and how it could be created in a way that is not manipulative. He starts this discussion by saying that ethical spectacle needs to be grounded in progressive beliefs: “A progressive ethical spectacle will be one that is directly democratic, breaks down hierarchies, fosters community, allows for diversity, and engages with reality while asking what new realities might be possible” (126). He goes on to establish criteria based on these beliefs, concluding that ethical spectacles should be:

1. Participatory beyond just observing – in terms of leadership, organizing, and other dimensions. As well, ethical spectacles should inspire action that is “transformative” to the individual and to society. Traditionally, spectacle is anti-democratic and created by the few for the many.

2. Open and responsive to input. Though there are leaders/organizers (because someone needs to set the stage for participation), ethical spectacles should have many interpretations or possibilities, just as modern art is open to interpretation. Good examples of this are Critical Mass and social forums. This responds to desires for autonomy, exploration, and modification.

3. Transparent. It should be obvious that it’s a spectacle and not trying to pass off illusion as real. Bertoldt Brecht chose to alienate the audience instead of drawing them in so they wouldn’t forget they were watching a play. This doesn’t mean the spectacle can’t be enjoyed. Billionaires for Bush is an excellent example.

4. Based in reality. Cindy Sheehan is a spectacle. She is immensely popular and well known because her story is true and compelling. It is what it claims to be. The goal of ethical spectacle is not to replace the real with spectacle, but to reveal and amplify the real through spectacle. Dramatize the unseen and expose the elusive.

5. Dream. Imagine a future world that we want to get to. Is there a problem with the Zapatistas’ imagined future because it is impossible? No, Subcomandante Marcos provides us with visions and realms that we know are impossible – there is no illusion. They are part of the spectacle.

After reading the book and several interviews with Duncombe, I had a few lingering questions, which I posed to him over email. First, I asked for his thoughts about the assessment that certain elements of commodity culture are only wildly popular because the public is given limited options for entertainment by mainstream media.

Duncombe responded, “I would probably agree, in part… If commercial culture is the only game in town then of course people will flock to it and that’s why we have to play the game. But I also have a problem with this argument because I think one, it overlooks the fact that most commercial culture fails and thus two, that people are not idiots: they “buy into” certain commercial culture because it touches them at some deep and profound (or perhaps necessary light and frivolous) level. Again, this is why my argument is not about embracing commercial culture, but about understanding why it is so popular and then providing a progressive equivalent.”

I was also interested in his use of the word “leader,” and the way in which he relates leadership to activists and organizing. While many radicals talk about the concept of leadership and vision, the term “leader” is often eschewed by leftists who think this connotes hierarchy. I wanted to know if Duncombe felt that hierarchy is implicit in leadership. Duncombe echoed what many activists with whom I have spoken say – that denying that leadership happens leaves you vulnerable to informal leadership. The way to counteract this, he suggests, is by “consciously undermining hierarchies through constantly revolving leaders, training new people to lead, being open to contingency and context, ‘leading’ the situation but letting go of what happens within that situation, and so on. In brief: if you don’t recognize leadership then you can’t combat hierarchy; once you do you are free to deconstruct and rebuild the whole concept.

Similarly, power is often a scary term for leftists. Duncombe notes, “Progressives worry about abuse of power before we have it – this is a sign of our reluctance to pursue it” (125). When asked to expand on this point, he replied, “Power is scary. With it comes responsibility. As with leadership, if you don’t acknowledge that power is necessary then you won’t do anything about re-imagining it. I think leftists have gotten very comfortable being critics of power. Criticism on the road to power may be useful, but criticism by itself, in our day and age, is actually an attendant to dominant power. ‘Look,’ the powers that be argue, ‘we have critics, that means you have freedom and democracy, right?’ Criticism, by itself, is just self-serving politics: it makes the critic feel better about their non-compliance but changes nothing. Therefore I’m interested in moving past criticism and really thinking about what is necessary to win power. For without power you can’t change things. And I’m in this game to change the world, not just comment about how bad it all is.”

I left the book thankful for Duncombe’s thoughtful and sincere work, and happy to add another title to the list of books that challenge activists to imagine a future world and to reexamine our current strategies and tactics. Duncombe says it best: “Again, this is what I’ve learned from successful commercial culture (and from being a community activist): you got to give people a vision of what they can become, and then open the door and let them in.”

The NY Times is reporting an interesting shift in the Democrat’s messaging around the economic crisis. Apparently “stimulus” is out and “recovery” is the new meme of choice. Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is quoted as saying “Stimulus is Washington talk and ‘economic recovery’ is how the American people think of it.” Nancy Pelosi apparently even clarified at a press conference that “We’re not using the word ‘stimulus’.”

It’s always worth paying attention to coordinated efforts to shift the framing of a critical issue but particularly in this case what does it mean? Will the Democrats start getting to the real roots of the problem or is it just new language for the same polices of denial and distraction?

The financial crisis provides us a unique opportunity to fundamentally change the way we conceptualize our economy and what makes an “economic recovery”. We are long overdue to recognize that the economy is merely a sub-system of an even more important and threatened system — the planet’s ecological operating system. Just as our economic system is sagging under the weight of toxic debt, our global environment is suffering from the debt industrialized nations have run up on the planet’s life sustaining natural systems. This uncalculated natural debt stems from the destruction of ecosystems, over-consumption by the wealthy, over extraction of limited resources and the dumping of massive amounts of pollution into the air, water and bodies of all living things. By continuing to ignore the true ecological foundation of our economy we are jeopardizing not only our economic well being but our entire global civilization.

Collectively, we must be very clear that whatever the Democrats mean by “economic recovery” it can not be the same-old, unfettered and indiscriminate “economic growth” that has created so many of our problems. It’s time to let our values and our common sense guide our economic policy. What do we want to grow? More billionaires or more organic vegetables? More strip malls selling disposable plastic crap or more just, resilient communities? More coal fired power plants or more local, renewable energy solutions? It’s time to change our thinking and change the story about what defines a healthy economy. Our movements need to demand that this economic recovery is part of a broader transformation of our economic system away from unlimited economic growth based on extraction, destruction and exploitation and towards a steady state economy based on ecological restoration, justice and equality.

There are lots of great resources out there for folks looking for the roots of this crisis and for real solutions. One of the best compilations has been put together by YES! magazine. You can also check out the new report from the Institute for Policy Studies Skewed Priorities: How the Bailouts Dwarf Other Crises which documents how that the U.S. and European governments are spending over 40 times on bailing out the financial system than they are on fighting global warming or poverty. Another resource is Break the Bailout an emerging “transpartisan coalition” that is challenging the massive taxpayer hand out to Wall Street and proposing alternatives.

Movements are the world are rising to the challenge of not only reframing the policy debates around the bail out of the financial industry but also questioning the underlying assumptions that are driving our current pathological economic system. At the recent G-20 meetings, hundreds of civil society organizations from around the planet produced a statement outlining an agenda to create an economic system that works for both people and planet. But this is just the beginning — there’s lots more work to do to make sure that the power of money works in the service of life. What are you doing to change the story around unlimited growth and create a more just, ecologically sane economy? Leave us a comment or drop us a line and let us know.

Exciting news from the campaign to restore the Klamath river basin! Last week the campaign came one step closer to removing four of the destructive dams that have so negatively impacted the environment, economy and traditional cultures of the basin.

The owner of the dams — the PacifiCorp power company (a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway corporation) — announced an Agreement in Principle (AIP) with the Federal government and the governments of California and Oregon to begin a process that would remove the dams by 2020.

The non-binding agreement is only a first step but it is being welcomed by diverse groups in the basin as a first step in the right direction towards what could be the largest dam removal in history. Read more about the Campaign: New York Times, National Geographic and the San Francisco Chronicle.

A joint statement from the Karuk, Yurok and Klamath tribes, the Klamath Water User’s Assosciation , the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Federations and several environmental groups said, “The signing of the AIP is welcome news to the Tribes, conservationists, commercial fishermen, farmers and ranchers who see dam removal as the missing element of the more comprehensive Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement released earlier this year.”

The federal government’s statement and the text of the Agreement in Principle can be found on the Department of the Interior’s website.

The campaign’s coalition building has allowed tribes, commercial fisherman and irrigators to move beyond fighting each other as the impacts of the crisis roll from community to community to uniting all stake holders to restore the basin. SmartMeme has been supporting this campaign since 2004 with strategy facilitation, messaging, advertising and design. We are honored to have helped these groups change the story in the basin from one of crisis and division towards a unified vision of a restored basin with intact cultures, economies and ecosystems.

SmartMeme offers our heart felt congratulations to all our friends and colleagues, both native and non-native, many of whom have worked for a lifetime to protect the river, maintain their cultural traditions and win environmental justice for their communities.

There is still lots of work to be done and no doubt the road ahead will be long. But this agreement will hopefully mark a turning point when PacifiCorp and the state and federal governments act responsibly and in good faith to restore the Klamath basin.

BRAVO to the Alliance - and VIVA SALMON NATION!

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like this economic meltdown moment is a game-changer. The recent firestorm over the “bailout” is the beginning of a whole new conversation about our economic system, the role of the state, and extreme wealth and inequality. It is also clearly not the end of our economic woes, and things are likely going to get worse before they get better.

The recent revelations of economic trouble have produced a barrage of memes in the media and popular culture: meltdown, bailout, rescue package, and Wall Street vs. Main Street. Now, leaders tell us that we are in the midst a new economic reality – a credit crunch, foreclosure crisis, a recession, or another Great Depression.

Even as lawmakers struggle to reframe the $700 billion package as a “Rescue,” the “Bailout” meme remains more potent. The story of free market fundamentalism is unraveling, and the story has changed – but to what?

What does all of this mean for progressive strategy, and what are the stories we can tell about the real impacts and alternatives?

We’ve been glued to the news and talking to friends at partner groups like the Working Group on Extreme Inequality, the Design Studio 4 Social Intervention, and the Rainforest Action Network about what’s happening and what can be done. We’ve been inspired by efforts by groups like City Life/Vida Urbana and the Greenlining Institute. Last week I gathered with members of the Progressive Communicators Network at United For a Fair Economy in Boston to analyze the battle of the bailout story. At the PCN gathering, we also discussed what may come of the bailout and efforts to sway government, and listed the following Possible Outcomes:

• Lives are repaired: Meet needs of impacted people (people in foreclosure get refinancing etc)
• Political change: Obama is elected as a result of Bush’s economic bungles
• Changes in economic systems: Regulations are put in place, rules are changed, new definitions of economic progress are adopted
• Movement Emerges: Grassroots social movement gains ground

We had widespread agreement on these as potential goals for work in this period, and specifically discussed how these goals are not incompatible. We agreed that if we get into debates about which of these should be the most important goal, we lose sight of the gravity of this moment. All of the above is on the table. Everything could change.

The following is a rough narrative analysis of the landscape around the economic crisis using the battle of the story tool. We’re obviously just scratching the surface. I have also created a PDF VERSION battle of the bailout story for easier printing. PLEASE use this work in ways that are useful, and let us know what you think!

________________________________________________________________________________________________

PART I:

Power Holder Story: Collapse vs. Rescue
* This story uses fear to motivate action, and uses the “blame the few bad apples” frame to gloss over systemic problems.

The US way of life is threatened, and so we must act immediately. Democratic capitalism is the greatest system, and America is the greatest nation, and so even though we believe in the free market, we must intervene to save our economy. We must put partisanship and electioneering aside and make this rescue deal now – or face economic collapse.

Yes, there were some greedy individuals on Wall Street and some rouge lenders who went too far. Liberals like Barney Frank and big government caused this problem. With laws like the Community Reinvestment Act and the quasi-public Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government forced banks to make risky loans to minorities and low-income people who had no business buying houses. People irresponsibly borrowed to buy big houses that they just could not afford, and were living far outside of their means. Now these mortgages are troubled assets for the nation’s major financial institutions, and this means that everyone is in danger in this financial crisis.

This is not just a bailout for Wall Street. There is a crunch in the credit market, and so we are all in the same boat now. Small businesses that borrow money for payroll or holiday inventory are having trouble getting loans they rely on each year. The Dow is dropping by the day and the trading floors are reeling. Banks are hoarding cash and we’re facing the highest inter-bank overnight loan rate ever. Markets in Asia and Europe are affected. We cannot listen to these constituents who don’t understand the complexities of the economy and are mis-interpreting this plan. We all need access to credit and if we don’t pass this rescue package, the experts say that the gears of the economy will stop turning and you could lose your job. The US could lose our standing in the world as the major economic power, and our nation could be thrust into an economic recession akin to the Great Depression. Besides, since the package is to buy these securities at a low rate, the taxpayers can even make the money back when the housing market rebounds.

Conflict –
Collapse vs. Rescue
The US way of life is threatened
Things just got out of hand, and we must act now

Characters –
A few greedy, corrupt Wall Street bankers
Irresponsible borrowers living outside their means
Ignorant, reactionary taxpayers
Expert Economists
Bush-Paulson-Bernanke
Barney Frank & Nancy Pelosi: Bipartisans = Heroic selfless politicians
Warren Buffet
Liberal Congressmen: forced lenders to lend to people who shouldn’t be borrowing

Images –
Lehman Bros offices closing – bankers with cardboard boxes of their stuff packed up
Bad Paper = Toxic Waste
Banks in Crisis – hoarding cash
“Black Box” of investments
Meltdown
Desperate chaos on the Trading floors
Graph of market going down by the hour
DC gridlock around the clock– lawmakers up all night with pizza and Thai takeout

Foreshadowing -
Great Depression
Economic Collapse
We’re all to blame, we’re all in this together, and we’re all going to benefit

Core memes –
Meltdown
Rescue (or Bailout)
Economic Collapse
Crisis
Buy in (not Bailout)

Underlying Assumptions -
We need Wall Street
It’s Now or Never!
The market will fix itself (after the $700 billion)
This is a crisis of confidence, and the rescue will reestablish confidence
It’s everyone’s problem now
It’s like a natural disaster, coming out of nowhere; no one could have predicted it
US is entitled to be a superpower and take drastic action to protect our privileges
You’re either with us or against us
A bunch of poor people/people of color/stupid people had no business buying houses and ruined everything

________________________________________________________________________________________________

PART II: Change Agents Story
Casino Capitalism (risk) vs. American Dream (security)
Greed Economy vs. Green Economy
* This story attempts to explain why the crisis came to be, and tie solutions into a larger progressive agenda. It’s a little long, and repetitive, but attempts to offer some ways to explain the situation in a larger context.

While a handful of billionaires have been getting very rich playing in the Wall Street casino, real wages for the rest of us in the real economy have stagnated, and personal debt has ballooned. The economic growth of the last several decades has been bubble/debt driven, rather than based on real increases in wages – and this has been Washington’s policy. While honest people have been borrowing to get by, Wall Street has been seeking high returns on speculative high risks, and has been biding their time in a dangerous game of game of chicken. Bear Sterns cried out first, and by the time AIG said “uncle”, Bernenke was there with a $700 billion bailout for the entire financial sector.

But our livelihood is not a game, and this crisis didn’t happen overnight: the $700 billion dollar bailout of the bankrupt banks was a predictable outcome of decades of policy driven by greed and an ideology that says “government, get out of the way.” Drastic action is needed – but we can’t throw a trillion dollars at the people who made the problem and expect them to fix it. We need to modernize our economic system and launch the next (green) new deal – a massive reinvestment in job creation, clean energy, and opportunity that can save the American dream from foreclosure.

The cascading implosion of major banks is the result of decades of flawed policy based on the myth that greed on Wall Street is good for everyone. This myth has shaped the economic policies of Regan and Bush, and drove Clinton to deregulate investment banks to link mortgages to the stock market and repeal Depression Era reforms designed to protect us from the risks of financial speculation. It is tempting to blame the financial crisis on a few greedy hedge funders, or even on the millions of debtors in over their heads with sub-prime mortgages. But the culprit is an ideology that has had a death grip on our country for the last 20 years, and allowed this pyramid scheme of predatory lending to spiral out of control under the Bush Administration.

The problem is more than “no one was minding the store.” The fat cats bought off their friends and Washington and turned the store into a casino. There was so little government oversight that they could shred the rules, and make up new ones as they went along. In a capital-induced frenzy, they invented new games, new ways to bet, and gambled other people’s money to profit hand over fist. The government not only let this happen – it made it all possible and celebrated it as progress.

Now the Wall Street casino has been exposed as a house of cards atop mountains of debt. As their pyramid scheme comes crashing down it threatens to devastate the real economy that provides jobs, food and opportunity for the rest of us. Bailing out America means more than buying banks – it means keeping Americans in our homes, offering a health care system that doesn’t bankrupt our families, building thriving local economies that provide honest work, and retro-fitting our nation to deal with the energy crisis.

We face an economic crisis in the midst of two wars, global warming, and a health care system in desperate need of repair. As the proverb goes – in crisis there is opportunity. Now is the time to change course: re-regulate, re-invest, and re-finance to build a green economy that houses, insures and employs every American.

Conflict -
Casino Capitalism (risk) vs. American Dream (fairness & security)
Reckless Speculators vs. Honest everyday Americans
Greed Economy vs. Green Economy
Out-of-control/recklessness vs. stability/responsibility
Crisis vs. Opportunity
Wall Street vs. Main Street (this frame is about who gets the money, not about why the crisis is happening)
Real Economy (Life Values and Community Needs) vs. Speculative Economy (Money Values and Corporate Greed)

Characters -
Wall Street - Greedy Hedge Funders
Predatory mortgage brokers
2 million people in foreclosure
Impacted people: unemployed, uninsured, over stretched, in debt
Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II

Images -
Game of Chicken
Saying Uncle
Casino / games / gambling
Liquor cabinet of capital
Top-heavy system falling over
Implosion
Debt bubble: House as ATM machine
Families forced out of homes
Imaginary money
Foreclosure Pickets
House of cards
Mountains of debt

Foreshadowing -
Next New Deal – people working in jobs that matter: energy overhaul (windmills, weather stripping, solar, rail)
Real Economic Recovery
Turn the Countrywide office into a job training facility
Micro credit lending; tell stories about people investing in people; micro-enterprises that create good jobs in local communities

Core Memes –
Next New Deal
Green New Deal
Pyramid scheme
Casino capitalism
Predatory lending
Honest work
House of cards
Crisis = Opportunity

Underlying Assumptions-
This is a crisis of capitalism
This crisis embodies institutional racism, and the predatory sub-prime market targeted communities of color. Efforts to lay the blame on borrowers is a play on racist assumptions.
People in power always manage the economy – this was deliberate mismanagement
We share collective responsibility for the well being of all – solutions must address the needs of everyone
This is a pivotal moment that could mean opportunity to overhaul the financial system and change stories on related issues: global warming, health care, ending the occupation, economic inequality, etc.
This crisis is also an ecological wakeup call. If we don’t change the real bubble that will pop is our planet…

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Brainstorm: Possible Points of Intervention for nonviolent action

Production: Organizing workers in the financial institutions

Decision: Action in Washington, Protest at the Capitol, Birdogging on the Campaign Trail, Appearences by financial industry execs

Destruction: Picketing foreclosure proceedings

Consumption: Action at the storefronts of major banks

Point of assumption: Telling a new story on Wall Street (dramatic actions at the Bull). Transforming sub-prime lender storefronts into something more helpful for communities. Launching major people-to-people micro-credit exchanges in public spaces. Exposing the assumption that hard times are the result of individual circumstances—bringing people together to share stories and find common experiences, forming alliances of mutual aid.

?