Just to listen to the other side, I listened to our local talk radio today. in Sacramento AM 1530.
The anti immigrant fervor was intense. It ranges from vigilante justice to advocacy.
These are the same folks who were able to recall Gray Davis as governor.
Duane Campbell
What should be our responses? Just ignoring them does not seem viable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
George Lakoff's recommendations I think are useful.
Also see below Nathan Newman's more proactive immigration policy agenda for human rights and economic justice as well.
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/howtorespond
How to Respond to Conservatives by George Lakoff
An excerpt from the book Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.
...
Progressive values are the best of traditional American values. Stand up for your values with dignity and strength. You are a true patriot because of your values.
Remember that right-wing ideologues have convinced half of the country that the strict father family model, which is bad enough for raising children, should govern our national morality and politics. This is the model that the best in American values has defeated over and over again in the course of our history—from the emancipation of the slaves to women’s suffrage, Social Security and Medicare, civil rights and voting rights acts, and Brown v. the Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Each time we have unified our country more behind our finest traditional values.
...
Show respect to the conservatives you are responding to. No one will listen to you if you don’t accord them respect. Listen to them. You may disagree strongly with everything that is being said, but you should know what is being said. Be sincere. Avoid cheap shots. What if they don’t show you respect? Two wrongs don’t make a right. Turn the other cheek and show respect anyway. That takes character and dignity. Show character and dignity.
Avoid a shouting match. Remember that the radical right requires a culture war, and shouting is the discourse form of that culture war. Civil discourse is the discourse form of nurturant morality. You win a victory when the discourse turns civil. They win when they get you to shout.
...
Be calm. Calmness is a sign that you know what you are talking about.
Be good-humored. A good-natured sense of humor shows you are comfortable with yourself.
Hold your ground. Always be on the offense. Never go on defense. Never whine or complain. Never act like a victim. Never plead. Avoid the language of weakness, for example, rising intonations on statements. Your voice should be steady. Your body and voice should show optimism. You should convey passionate conviction without losing control.
...
By the way you conduct yourself, show strength, calmness, and control; an ability to reason; a sense of realism; love of country; a command of the basic facts; and a sense of being an equal, not a superior. At the very least you want your audience to think of you with respect, as someone they may disagree with but who they have to take seriously. In many situations this is the best you can hope for. You have to recognize those situations and realize that a draw with dignity is a victory in the game of being taken seriously.
...
Avoid the usual mistakes. Remember, don’t just negate the other person’s claims; reframe. The facts unframed will not set you free. You cannot win just by stating the true facts and showing that they contradict your opponent’s claims. Frames trump facts. His frames will stay and the facts will bounce off. Always reframe.
If you remember nothing else about framing, remember this: Once your frame is accepted into the discourse, everything you say is just common sense.* Why? Because that’s what common sense is: reasoning within a commonplace, accepted frame.
Never answer a question framed from your opponent’s point of view. Always reframe the question to fit your values and your frames. This may make you uncomfortable, since normal discourse styles require you to directly answer questions posed. That is a trap. Practice changing frames.
Be sincere. Use frames you really believe in, based on values you really hold.
...
Stay away from set-ups. Fox News shows and other rabidly conservative shows try to put you in an impossible situation, where a conservative host sets the frame and insists on it, where you don’t control the floor, can’t present your case, and are not accorded enough respect to be taken seriously. If the game is fixed, don’t play.
Tell a story. Find stories where your frame is built into the story. Build up a stock of effective stories.
Always start with values, preferably values all Americans share like security, prosperity, opportunity, freedom, and so on. Pick the values most relevant to the frame you want to shift to.
...
Be prepared. You should be able to recognize the basic frames that conservatives use, and you should prepare frames to shift to. The Rockridge Institute Web site will post examples from time to time.
...
Remember once more that our goal is to unite our country behind our values, the best of traditional American values. Right-wing ideologues need to divide our country via a nasty cultural civil war.
...
Those are a lot of guidelines. But there are only four really important ones:
Show respect
Respond by reframing
Think and talk at the level of values
Say what you believe
-----
Nathan Newman's Proactive Immigrant and Labor Rights suggestions -
http://www.progressivestates.org/content/114/03062006-stateside-dispatch-eye-on-immigration
Protecting Labor Rights for All Workers
Stopping Immigration at the Source: Anti-Sweatshop Legislation
Failed Rightwing Solutions
Progressive Talking Points
It is time to stop protecting corporations that benefit from hiring undocumented immigrants. If immigrant workers can’t defend their rights, it only encourages unethical corporations to hire them as part of big business’s underground economy.
We have to address the problems that are driving immigration, including bad trade deals and third world sweatshops that drive immigration to the US. States can take action by changing their own purchasing practices to fight sweatshops, both at home and abroad.
Conservative solutions don’t save public funds. They shift costs. When we deny routine health care to workers, we only end up treating them in emergency rooms for the same cost. We’re better off solving the issue of immigration.
Post a Comment