Multiple Issue Strategic Initiatives

A Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative is a plan in which a change in one carefully chosen area has dramatic and far-reaching effects in many, many other issue areas. Currently, most progressive groups focus on a single issue area, forwarding separate goals with tactical approaches that tend to be short-term, single impact, and program based. This approach can be expanded to be truly strategic so that a range of single issues can fit within a broader overall movement that shares visionary, far-reaching, and long-term goals.

The idea is to look at a single issue and craft it as a door-opening proposal that leads to bigger and bigger effects. Short-term tactical goals then automatically advance long-term goals. The key is for a single initiative to be concrete, cumulative, coordinated, and create coalitions across groups.

A well-chosen Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative naturally builds coalitions, and helps to build a long-range progressive values movement. Different groups who have experience and expertise in many issue areas can then work within a Big Picture to achieve goals that extend well beyond a single program or issue area. By operating with a shared long-term vision that elevates progressive values, different groups can create a strong foundation for ongoing cooperation, collaboration and coordination.

A Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative has five elements:

1. impacts across issues, constituencies and geography,
2. elevates powerful connective frames,
3. creates new alliances and new political possibilities,
4. divides and puts opponents on the defensive, and;
5. is solution-oriented.

This can be remembered with the mnemonic, MENDS:

• Multiple impacts
• Elevates frames
• New alliances and political possibilities
• Divided, defensive opponents
• Solution-oriented

The best example of a new Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative by progressives could be called "New Energy for America." New Energy for America is based on the work of the New Apollo Project that proposes to spend $30 billion a year for ten years to develop alternative and sustainable energy sources. The single issue area for the key proposal is increasing alternative energy investment, but the effects are far-ranging, span multiple issue areas, creates new alliances, and leads to a long-term, visionary solution: a clean energy economy.

Using New Energy for America to illustrate the mnemonic MENDS, we have the following:

Multiple Impacts: With a single initiative focused in one area, New Energy for America is so much more than an "energy bill":

• It is about jobs - creating millions of new, high-wage jobs, reinvigorating the American industrial sector, and the industrial unions.
• It is a health initiative: alternative energy means less air pollution, alleviating health problems like childhood asthma, and lung cancer.
• It is an environmental issue: more clean water and clean air by reducing or eliminating the entire chain of environmental degradation associated with dependence on fossil fuel - from extraction, to transport, to refining oil, to burning coal.
• It protects species and wildlife by cleaning up the environment and preserving natural habitats.
• It is a global warming initiative, lowering greenhouse gase - a bonus since there is no need to enact a separate proposal.
• It is a foreign policy issue, ending our reliance on Middle Eastern oil.
• It is a development policy, offering a way for less developed economies to provide for their energy needs in healthy, sustainable ways, and to become energy producers rather than oil consumers.

Elevates Frames: The frames, or concepts, used to talk about New Energy for America include ideas such as the following:

• Another way is possible, and we have it within our power to choose that way. Frames: possibilities and choices.
• Aim American ingenuity and resourcefulness at a problem, no matter how big, and watch out. We're going to solve it, and consistent with our true national character, we're going to share what we know to make things better for everybody. Frames: American ingenuity and problem solving.
• This is the country that put a man on the moon, that defeated fascism and put the world back on its feet, that invented the light bulb, telephone, TV, interstate and internet. Frames: American ingenuity and pride.
• Acting together, we can do anything. Frames: unlimited possibility and success.

New Alliances and Possibilities: The Apollo Alliance is building a coalition of partners across issue areas and regions of the country, and among diverse constituencies, to work toward clean energy and good jobs. Groups in the Alliance include seventeen national unions representing over 10 million workers, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, the National Resource Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Republicans for Environmental Protection, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, and many more. Together, this coalition has the potential to create an entire movement dedicated to creating a clean-energy-based economy.

Divided, Defensive Opponents: New Energy for America is about hope in a political environment characterized by fear and division. This big, bold, inspiring initiative connects groups working together on individual issues, and forwards new ideas about how to solve problems that relate to jobs, the economy, the environment, national and international security, foreign affairs, third world development, and community health. New Energy for America thus has the potential to draw support among many business sectors, populist-conservative politicians, and rural white communities since its appeal to good American jobs, energy independence, and American pride and ingenuity is something many conservatives would support. If done well, this would split the traditional conservative base to win support for a progressive strategic initiative.

Solution Oriented: New Energy for America is so clearly superior for the vast majority of people that the solution practically speaks for itself - the language used to talk about a clean energy economy naturally forwards a progressive vision. Handled well, speaking about the solution means there is no need for a direct critique of the fossil-fuel economy and its proponents (and thus it is less likely that you inadvertently step into their frames and hurt your efforts).

A Successful Strategic Initiative on the Left:

The Endangered Species Act is an example of a Strategic Initiative that could be called a "Snowballing" initiative because the single issue addressed in the law "snowballed" into a set of new, far-reaching environmental protections across a wide range of industries and human activities. Although it was not consciously intended to be a Strategic Initiative, it was a very effective one for progressives. It has been very successful in promoting protection of the environment by requiring environmental impact reports, ongoing environmental surveys, and the monitoring of habitat destruction to support the renewal of national forests and wildlife habitat. A small change - the requirement to list and monitor endangered species - had far-ranging effects over many issue areas, created new coalitions, elevated frames about protecting and preserving the natural world, and started a long-term, ongoing environmental movement.

Examples of Strategic Initiatives on the Right:

Tort Reform is an example of an indirect, misleading type of Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative - indirect because the stated reason for the initiative is not the only goal, or even the most important one. For instance, supporters say they want "tort reform" to cap awards to prevent "frivolous lawsuits", but what they really care most about is other effects that follow from this: to allow corporations to weaken public protection laws which guard the public's health and safety, to weaken environmental regulations that restrict their business operations, and to eliminate an important fund-raising base for Democratic candidates by limiting the income of public protection attorneys who overwhelmingly donate to Democratic candidates. Although "frivolous lawsuits" is the catchphrase, it's about many other goals that go unstated in the public debate.

Tax cuts are another misleading Multiple Issue Strategic Initiative on the right. Tax cuts may seem straightforward and self-explanatory, but by intentionally creating long-term deficits, the important strategic right wing goal is to make sure there will not be enough money to pay for government programs such as education, environmental protections, or social programs that ensure the welfare of people. These are programs that conservatives object to strongly. It is important to realize that most conservatives are not simply against spending money on the government - they spend quite freely on corporate subsidy payments, prison systems and the military - but they prefer to spend on programs they view as moral. Conservatives used to try to get rid of social programs one at a time. Now the goal is to get rid of all social programs at once, using tax cuts as an intentional way to de-fund the part of government conservatives do not like and find immoral. It is this all-at-once character that makes the tax cuts a strategic initiative.

Slippery Slope Strategic Initiatives

A Slippery Slope Strategic Initiative is so called because the first step is intended to be only part of what you want, but is a step that opens the door to further steps on the way to your ultimate goal. This works by making the first step on the slippery slope so attractive or palatable that traditional opponents have a hard time countering it.

For instance, the issue and ideas behind a Slippery Slope Strategic Initiative are presented in such a way that you put your opponents on the defensive, placing them in a difficult spot, and making it more likely that you will succeed. Critically, the first step puts a new frame in place. Once the first step is accomplished, the next step is easier because the new frame can be elaborated once it is in place. Using the same reasoning, you continue down the slope step by step, gaining momentum toward your final goal.

An important feature of both a Multiple Issue and a Slippery Slope Strategic Initiative is that they divide your opponents by operating as wedge issues - each drives a wedge between members of your opponent's usual coalitions.

For example, conservatives are using the "Partial Birth Abortion" initiative to drive a wedge between progressives, splitting off the support of Catholics, who traditionally oppose abortion but who also tend to favor progressive policies for the poor, from other progressives who generally support women's reproductive freedom.

And, "Partial Birth Abortion" is a first step down the slippery slope to end abortion entirely. In this case, no misleading is needed since an end to all abortions is the direct, stated goal of its proponents. The procedure is so rare that hardly any are needed (and if needed, it is a crucial medical intervention to save the life or health of a pregnant woman). Conservatives are, therefore, not likely supporting it to "save lives," but intend it as a strategic first step to attack women's reproductive freedoms generally. The emotionally laden term forwards a new framing that demonizes abortion providers in order to make the public and policy makers more sympathetic to further attacks on reproductive freedoms. This keeps abortion rights proponents on the defensive so that they have no time or resources to advance an alternative agenda.

Wedge issues also carry an important feature that helps to uncover hidden goals and intentions of their proponents, if they are not obvious at first: wedge issues stand in for the whole of a moral system. In the case of abortion, conservatives seek to impose Strict Father Morality on society in general by asserting greater control over women's lives. They view this as a part of preserving the natural moral order of things, which includes accepting a moral hierarchy that places men in a higher position than women and gives men control over women's lives - husbands over wives, fathers over daughters. In addition, in this view an unwanted pregnancy typically results from irresponsible or immoral behavior outside the supervision of a male protector, and therefore must be punished accordingly. Women must not avoid responsibility for their actions by being able to end an unwanted pregnancy. This aspect of conservative morality is often reinforced by religious values that support the role of punishment and discipline to promote moral behavior. For many conservatives, there is also a religious element in valuing the life of an "innocent" child over the well-being of a woman seen as straying, yet who still has the potential for moral redemption through proper discipline.

The No Child Left Behind law is a Slippery Slope Strategic Initiative to introduce elements of Strict Father Morality into the public schools. For instance, a standardized curriculum can be more easily controlled to educate people as conservatives, privatize education, and increase support for private companies engaged in the standardized testing business. Standardized tests promote competition over cooperation, and create "deserving winners" and "undeserving losers." By starving "failing schools" of funds, it will eventually lead to a two-tier system that will greater segregate society by class and race. The language used to talk about the proposal elevates frames about restoring discipline and accountability to the classroom, and inappropriately imposes free market rhetoric on what is a moral and social endeavor, to educate our children.