Notes from Feednet, ed. 5: What does ‘un-cooptable’ narrative shift look like?

key questions in the August edition of Feednet:

+ wtf is ‘narrative shift’?

+ can you actually measure ‘narrative shift’?

+ is it possible to create ‘un-cooptable narrative shift?’ is that a worthwhile goal for organizers/anyone?

+ why does Rahm Emanuel have a podcast and should this concern us??

The other day my barber was telling me a story about a woman they knew: this woman, also a barber, cut hair for 40 years but never learned how to use a buzzer.

My barber’s takeaway: “You can suck at your passion for your whole life if you never take the time to learn to do it right.” Damn.

‘Organizing communications’ (or if you’re really feeling yourself, ‘movement communications’) is not exactly like hair styling — for one, it is usually a lot more pretentious.

But since ‘organizing communications’ is a skill set transplanted from corporate PR, only loosely a genre of organizing, communicators on the left as a whole could be ‘sucking’ at it without any indication that we’re doing anything wrong. (With the exception of hideous societal inequity, complete decimation of our planet, and white supremacy so blase that corporate benemoths don’t even bother to pretend they’re fighting it anymore.)

Enter ‘narrative shift.’ (Please enjoy the stock photos that appear when you Google Image…