🌱 Friends Help Friends Vote | Relational Organizing

Welcome Back! 👋🏼

We wrap up our series on changing minds through conversations with a topic closer to home. Talking to strangers is great, but have you tried talking to your friends and family about the election? We dig into relational organizing and techniques to help you prepare for "change talk." Read on for more...

In Case You Missed It: 🌱 Talking to Strangers Builds Radical Hospitality

Radical hospitality is the secret ingredient to creating change and talking to strangers! The more we come into a conversation with openness, the more we can change society. That sounds like a big statement, but in reality, it's what we as humans are meant to do. It's easy to forget, but everything we do has a ripple effect. I might have an impactful moment with a stranger on the street that might then ripple to their family and out from there. When we have negative interactions that can ripple out as a bad mood, but positive conversations have the power to do the opposite. We can build a ripple effect for a collective and liberatory world just the way the right has seeped negative, hateful energy into our society.

We are the ones that make up a society. Individual people are what shapes our current worldview, so it would reason that we can change it. Contrary to the popular opinion of change, change work requires deep work at the individual level. The last thing I want to leave us with in this series on changing minds is the deeply personal. We've talked about talking to strangers, but we haven't talked about the power of talking to friends!

Truth is Tribal; Storytelling Connects

The latest presidential election polling shows just how true this statement is. One thing that we often miss about "truth" and "changing minds" is that we are all brilliantly unique creatures. Our truths are based on our own lived experiences. I've come to realize just how true that is as I've moved and travelled across the country and the world in my short 35 years on this planet. Belief structures are different in my birth state of Texas and my now home state of California. It's not because one is more right or wrong. It's just that we are shaped by our surroundings. As I've shared in the past, that can include both people and institutions (which are made up of people) as well as the land.

If you look at the latest polling of institutions that people trust, the government is naturally pretty low on the list. What perks to the top are our closest connections! Our friends and family are our biggest influencers. They help shape the activities we do, the types of products we buy, and our belief systems.

"The personal is political" because political decisions have real, personal consequences, but also because we create the political will. Our collective efforts to imagine something better is how we create the political will to make that a reality. This is reflective in Anand Giridharadas‘s reflection in the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign.

“It wasn't that Sanders had turned away from talking about the rigged system. But a campaign under new leadership seemed to realize a need to connect more humanly with voters about those evergreen themes. The new format highlighted the psychological, even spiritual, ramifications of a rigged system, more than just the rigging. As one staffer explained, Sanders was "assigning an emotion" to the rigged system. He was, in this way and other ways, learning to be personal, but in keeping with his deepest commitments."

Our current Western cultures shy away from deep conversations. There is a presumed rudeness that asking questions is prying into someone's lives. In reality, we all want to be known and seen. While it may at first feel unfamiliar, I encourage everyone to try talking to one of your people about the election or an issue you care about. use the techniques and questions we’ve shared here and see what comes from that conversation. The results may surprise you. They usually do for me!!

We are Gardeners Watering a Dream

No matter what you're talking about, changing minds requires some big work. The current status quo is very stuck and it will take a large coalition of dreamers to imagine a new way of living.

To end our series, I want to offer a list of common questions that are helpful if you find yourself in a conversation with a friend, an uncle, or a random stranger. Each of these questions has been tested through the motivational interviewing and deep canvassing techniques that we've discussed thus far. Try a few out this week and see what conversations the questions evoke!

Questions to Evoke Change Talk:

1. Interesting, tell me more about that? - According to Elizabeth Chur, "this is one of my all-time favorite phrases, and one that works in almost any situation. It's nonjudgemental, and signals that I'm curious about their experience and want to know more"
2. How did that ____ impact you/make you feel/affect your life? - Open-ended questions also allow the person to bring out emotions and the impact of a certain issue or campaign. We make decisions based on emotion far more than through fact.
3. Where did you first hear that? - An effective way to getting to the root of why someone believes what they believe is to ask them how they come to a belief. When people unpack the origin, they can better articulate why that belief might no longer be serving them.
4. What if anything have you heard of ___? - Rather than asking have you heard of this candidate or this advocacy issue, reframe the question to be open-ended. Open-ended questions are part of the principles of motivational interviewing.
5. If you were in charge, what would you change? - This and the next question brings in "main character energy" to a conversation. Politics can often evoke helplessness and these questions help redirect to conversation to the person's agency.
6. If you could change two to three things about the country, what would you change? - This is also helpful because you are showing deference and seeking their expertise on their lived experience.
7. Do you have a plan to vote? - This question opens up the conversation around knowing how and when a person will vote. Will you be voting early, by mail, or on election day? Do you know your polling location?

Sources to Explore More Deeply

And that's it! You're completely prepared to go out and evoke change in your everyday conversations. I'm being slightly sarcastic, because deep canvassing is about always being in learning mode. If you're hoping to brush up on these skills, I recommend browsing The Bay Area Coalition's video library of past trainings. One of our podcast guests, Natalie Burdick, just hosted an amazing session on Messaging To Win Voters' Hearts & Minds.

I also encourage you to pick up a copy of one or all of the books I used to write this series from your local library. My friend, Elizabeth Chur, will be on the podcast next week talking about her new book so be on the lookout!

• How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney
• The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridharadas
• The Joy of Talking Politics with Strangers: How to Save Democracy, One Conversation at a Time by Elizabeth Chur

Enjoying our newsletter? Subscribe to get our resources and support in your inbox weekly. I created Roots of Change Media to help busy communicators and activists practice intentional activism through a decolonized lens.

Last Week's Flowering Deep-Dive

📚 Regenerative Practices for Your Email Campaigns

🤖 Stop Your Content from Training AI

Big Tech has been extracting our content and data on social media platforms and other places for years. Now with AI, they are using our intellectual property to train their profit-making machines, often without our explicit consent. LinkedIn is the latest to explicitly add an opt-out option for AI training.

There isn't a ton of easily accessible information about this and social media companies certainly want to keep their AI models training! So with the lack of one source, I thought I would share how to turn off AI training for the main social media sites (if you're able!).

• LinkedIn: to turn off AI Training go to Settings > Data Privacy > Under “How LinkedIn uses your data” > Data for Generative AI Improvement > Toggle that malarkey OFF.
• Instagram/Facebook: Meta currently doesn't have a good way to turn off AI training unless you are a private account. Cool, cool! If you do want to go private, you can go to your Settings > Account Privacy > toggle the Private account button
• TikTok: There is no way to opt-out of AI on TikTok. They've been early to the generative AI race. Assume almost anything you're doing on TikTok is being used to train AI or advertising services.
• YouTube: you can adjust your data and privacy settings by visiting your account.
• Discord: Go to Settings > Privacy & Safety > and toggle the "use data to improve Discord" and "use data to customize my Discord experience" off
• Twitter: My advice is to just not share your content with Elon Musk, but if you must, go to Settings > Data sharing and personalization > turn off Grok

• 📚 The Inequity of Rising Heat - This summer was the hottest on record, just as 2023 was before it. While extreme heat is universal, the ability to escape it and live comfortably does discriminate. This investigation outlines how even in cities, the neighborhoods with higher poverty also experience higher heat indexes and how local and state government decisions have impacted communities. (source: High Country News)
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - One of my first newsletters I wrote was on the Texas Snowstorms. We knew then that these extreme events would only accelerate and that many governments were designed for economic growth, not the protection and support of its people. The case for reforming democracy continues and our activism can allow us to move beyond this period of government inaction.
• 📚 Amazon CEO Demands Full Return to Work - Andy Jassy has announced that all Amazon office workers will be required to return to a 5-day workweek in the office starting in January 2025.
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - Work culture shifted when the pandemic requires many office workers to work from home. Many CEOs and businesses took this shift hard because it took away from their ability to micromanage and surveil its employees. Unsurprisingly, this is extremely unpopular with workers.
• 📸 The Environmental Cost of the Growing Data Center Problem - with the rise of artificial intelligence, Big Tech has a big space problem. Beaker and the Intersectional Environmentalist breakdown what data centers are and how they impact the planet.
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - Data centers alone now have the carbon footprint of the entire aviation industry. As we increasingly move online, our offline world is impacted negatively. Big Tech hopes to feed an allusion of zero carbon, but the opposite is true.
• 🎬 Missouri GOP Almost Takes Abortion Initiative Off Ballot - This video from Abortion Everyday journalist, Jessica Vallenti, showcases just how far the GOP will stoop to keep women from voting for their bodily autonomy. Luckily, the Missouri Supreme Court has approved the ballot initiative to be on this year's ballot.
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - The GOP have been trying to keep abortion off the ballot because they know that abortion has won every single time it's been on the ballot since Roe fell. Yes, even in red states like Kansas. Abortion is a winning issue and that's why the GOP is trying to suppress the vote so much.

And that's a wrap on this week’s newsletter! We hope you found this helpful in your work to cultivate lasting social change. Forward this to a friend and help democratize communications!

• Donate to support our work
• Book time with Sam
• Explore our upcoming workshops

If you have any topics you want covered or have any questions, please reach out and let me know.

In Solidarity,
Sam Chavez
Roots of Change Founder

🌱 Seedling Member Zone

Let's talk about the GOP's aggressive voter suppression against Latinos! The GOP is very scared of voters exercising their constitutional rights. Texas and Greg Abbott are just one example of how these tactics are targeting marginalized communities, especially Latinos who are growing to become one of the bigger voting blocks in the south and southwest states. Find our latest videos on our 🎬 Quick Bites page.

Get alerted as soon as a new video is uploaded. Follow the 🌱 Seedling Member Zone playlist on YouTube.