Learning to talk to "'these' folks..."
Those who dwell in the nation's progressive oases must learn to communicate and connect with a much broader swath of Americans. Our panel* of progressive thinkers tackles the problem.
* A standing-room-only book panel in San Francisco for AlterNet's new book, Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. The panel included Van Jones (executive director of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights), George Lakoff (linguist and best-selling author), Wes Boyd (co-founder of MoveOn.org), Adam Werbach (executive director of Common Assets Defense Fund), Lakshmi Chaudhry (senior editor of AlterNet) and moderator Holly Minch (director of the Spin Project).
"learning how to talk to" a broader swath of america is a bogus exercise... we liberals and progressives talk just fine already and, h-e-l-l-o-o-o-o, we already ARE a broader swath of america... we don't just live on the coasts and we don't just live in blue states... ya gotta drop this red state/blue state crap... it's another artificial divide we plain don't need...
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i spend a fair amount of time talking with folks who support bush, with folks who support fundamentalist christian values, and with folks who support conservative government policies and i have no difficulty whatsoever being understood... (please note: i deliberately used "talk 'with'" and not "talk 'to'...") what i have found time and time and time again is that the vast majority of these folks don't WANT to be "talked with" and they DEFINITELY don't want to be "talked TO..." for whatever reasons - political conviction, religious faith, bigotry, bias, preconceived notions - they have imbibed the "kool-aid" and nothing, and i mean NOTHING, is going to change their minds... sitting around, wasting our time talking to each other about how to talk to THEM, is an empty exercise and besides, it positively stinks of elitism...
speaking of elitism, reading about a conference where "those who dwell in the nation's progressive oases" sit around and jerk each other off, leaves me ice cold... that's precisely the nose-in-the-air crap that turns everybody off - including li'l ol' progressive me... Submit To Propeller
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* A standing-room-only book panel in San Francisco for AlterNet's new book, Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. The panel included Van Jones (executive director of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights), George Lakoff (linguist and best-selling author), Wes Boyd (co-founder of MoveOn.org), Adam Werbach (executive director of Common Assets Defense Fund), Lakshmi Chaudhry (senior editor of AlterNet) and moderator Holly Minch (director of the Spin Project).
"learning how to talk to" a broader swath of america is a bogus exercise... we liberals and progressives talk just fine already and, h-e-l-l-o-o-o-o, we already ARE a broader swath of america... we don't just live on the coasts and we don't just live in blue states... ya gotta drop this red state/blue state crap... it's another artificial divide we plain don't need...
(more)
i spend a fair amount of time talking with folks who support bush, with folks who support fundamentalist christian values, and with folks who support conservative government policies and i have no difficulty whatsoever being understood... (please note: i deliberately used "talk 'with'" and not "talk 'to'...") what i have found time and time and time again is that the vast majority of these folks don't WANT to be "talked with" and they DEFINITELY don't want to be "talked TO..." for whatever reasons - political conviction, religious faith, bigotry, bias, preconceived notions - they have imbibed the "kool-aid" and nothing, and i mean NOTHING, is going to change their minds... sitting around, wasting our time talking to each other about how to talk to THEM, is an empty exercise and besides, it positively stinks of elitism...
speaking of elitism, reading about a conference where "those who dwell in the nation's progressive oases" sit around and jerk each other off, leaves me ice cold... that's precisely the nose-in-the-air crap that turns everybody off - including li'l ol' progressive me... Submit To Propeller
Tweet
posted by profmarcus at
6/07/2005
