Prefigurative Disaster Organizing by The Collective Story
Hemant Wagh Sep 3, 2014 01:35
Member
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Liked it, but transition to post-capitalist society would be feasible so soon? I have a theme..
Swami Vivekananda Fruit-Trees Expansion Mission for environment, peace, health. it shares some points with your theme...
https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300103/planId/1310401
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Pete Epanchin Apr 23, 2015 10:34
Fellow
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The innovative premise is to tell stories about community members helping each other in the face of climate impacts as a way to catalyze adaptation to climate change.
I'm looking forward to reading what you include in the section on what actions you propose.
Some of my questions are:
What are the story telling media you will use?
How do you give room for debate? How do you communicate with and influence people of different view points, including climate skeptics and deniers?
What is the audience size? How do you scale this to reach a larger audience?
Keep iterating on this! It could lead to an innovative communication and outreach program.
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Kate O. Sep 7, 2015 12:28
Member
| Your proposal is absolutely right that we can't wait for the next disaster to organize, so it's great to see this. Have you thought about expanding the potential pool of storytellers to Boston residents' friends and relatives who have either 1) actually suffered a climate-related disaster or 2) live in areas prone to such disasters now or in the future (e.g., drought, wildfires, hurricanes, coastal flooding) but haven't yet experienced them? That is, you could potentially recruit Boston residents into recruiting their far-flung contacts, who can then be trained into storytellers based on their direct personal experience or mentally visualized future scenarios. (The proposal as written seems to focus only on those who've already suffered a natural disaster -- an approach with advantages as well as potential complications, such as the challenges of approaching traumatized victims with sensitivity and care.) Another piece to consider is gathering personal stories from all states and congressional districts, or at least the most politically significant ones, so that elected leaders can easily look up their own constituents in a stories bank. (It could even be in the form of a Twitter account; during the implementation stage of the Affordable Care Act, for example, I had created the https://twitter.com/acastories account to act as such a stories bank that would be easily searchable by state.) Targeted outreach to national multi-issue and single-issue (climate change/environmental) organizations, which can then include those stories in their own work, can further enhance your efforts to promote and disseminate the project to policymakers and the broader public. Informing local media outlets could also be pivotally helpful since they are often looking for ways to provide a local face or example to national issues. Good luck with this proposal! |