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utsfl:classroom:seminars:pbs200h [2015/10/03 01:25] – No2Trudeau balleyneutsfl:classroom:seminars:pbs200h [2016/07/20 03:40] (current) – moved to PBS200Y balleyne
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 ====== PBS200H: The Challenge ====== ====== PBS200H: The Challenge ======
-===== The Problem: Theory of Action, or just Action ===== +Replaced by [[PBS200Y]].
-FIXME CCBR document Part I? +
- +
-Too much pro-life activity is based on a theory of action; we just do whatever we can think of doing, without much though to how it will accomplish our goals, whether or not it will be effective, or even what our goals are. +
- +
-Pro-life political campaign to spend $10,000 printing posters and postcards that RTL groups and campus clubs would distribute in public places encouraging people to contact their MPs about a motion before parliament on abortion. +
-  * Who's the target audience? The general public, who need to be converted? Or the already-converted, who need to be activated and motivated to contact their MP? //Nobody// in the mushy middle is going to see a poster and suddenly feel compelled to talk to their MP about a contentious issue like abortion. +
-    * What's the messaging, and who is it designed to appeal to? +
-  * What's the distribution plan? How do we know how much money to spend and material to print? +
-    * Do any of these groups have experience with these projects? +
-    * Do we have any operations guidance, or are we just giving them materials and hoping they can effective manage volunteers, look up information on by-laws, train volunteers for dialogue, handle media requests, etc.? +
-  * Nevermind the website and blacklisting and awkwardness and unprofessional approach... +
- +
-===== Theory of Change ===== +
-We don't need a better theory of action; we need a theory of //change//.((http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theoryofchange)) +
-  * Theory of action: you work forwards by looking around at the things you know how to do and picking one that might accomplish your goal +
-    * let's march +
-    * let's hold signs, write clever slogans +
-    * let's write newsletters, hold dinners, have conferences, run ads +
-    * let's print thousands of posters and send them out organizations to put up somewhere +
-    * let's poll people to see what they think about a smattering of vague questions related to life issues +
-    * even worse is cargo cult copying... +
-  * Theory of change: work //backwards// from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it +
-    * goal: to abolish abortion (long-term), to save as many lives as possible (short-term) +
-      * make abortion unthinkable, so people won't choose it +
-        * make people more horrified by abortion than by its alternatives +
-          * make the injustice of abortion visible +
-            * show people photos of abortion victims +
-              * use "Choice" chain to bring photos to the streets and campuses +
-              * use the truck to bring photos to drivers +
-              * use victim imagery in presentations +
-          * have conversations about the morality of abortion with people to convince them its a human rights violation +
-            * develop effective rhetorical strategies +
-              * ... +
-          * make the humanity of pre-born children visible +
-        * implement ultrasound laws and waiting periods to stress humanity of victims +
-      * make abortion illegal, so people can't choose it +
-        * are there any legislative initiatives that would have political support already? +
-        * public public can't change until public opinion changes +
-          * to change public opinion, we need to reach the public with a message that will influence their view +
-      * make abortion inaccessible, so people can't choose it +
-        * shut down abortion clinics +
-      * make abortion unnecessary, so people won't need it +
-        * alleviate the economic pressures that lead people to choose abortion +
-          * fund more social programs? +
-            * convince parties to put these social programs in their platforms +
-              * convince candidates/MPs to advocate for these policies +
-              * pass policies at party conventions +
-                * get more pro-lifers registered and active with parties +
-        * prevent more unwanted pregnancies +
-          * better sex education? +
-        * improve medical technology so pregnancy is easier, or so there are non-life-ending ways to end pregnancy +
-          * too science fiction, no short-term leads here, but maybe long-term scientific research opportunities +
- +
-===== A Better Approach ===== +
-The #No2Trudeau campaign.((Here's a good mid-election take: http://www.poletical.com/pro-life-liberals.php )) Set the political question aside for a second, and think about it in terms of strategy. This campaign wasn't just saying "vote pro-life." Campaign Life Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform teamed up to accomplish two very specific strategic objectives: +
-  - "we wanted to expose Justin Trudeau’s position on freedom of conscience because we genuinely believe that a lot of traditional Liberal voters are pro-life and they need to be alerted to the fact that the Liberals are not only not pro-life, but that they now disallow pro-life members from their caucus. Which is something most people are unaware of outside of the Ottawa bubble. Our target audience are the enormous numbers of Canadians who haven’t been exposed to abortion, who have no idea what’s going on and furthermore were not aware of the fact that if they vote Liberal they are de facto voting for the status quo." -JVM +
-  - "The second goal was to show Canadian citizens the reality of abortion and what abortion does to the victims and we accomplished that to the tune of one million Canadians. So the goal was political and educational." -JVM +
- +
-Then, think about the media coverage they earned. It didn't really matter what the angle was of the story. Their goal wasn't to get //journalists// to change their minds on abortion, and even "negative coverage" and controversy furthered their strategic objectives of getting out the political and educational message to a broader audience that otherwise wouldn't have heard about it. +
- +
-> One million households received these anti-abortion flyers with this information on the back. Lot’s of earned media was produced, but most of the stories from the blitz resulted in “outrage at the images” angles like this one on Global television. Volunteers worked incredibly hard to reach their goal of delivering these brochures before the writ was dropped and third-party advertising laws dropped into place. They garnered even more earned media with Canada Post refusing to deliver the last of the bunch as the election started. Amongst all the media noise, the main purpose of the campaign was forgotten by reporters: criticising the Liberal position and informing the electorate about abortion. +
- +
-Also, at a //tactical// level, the postcards weren't a shot a in the dark. They were a deliberate tactic that had already been used, tested, measured: +
-> "We have internal polling that shows that people in the ridings that receive the postcards are tremendously impacted on the issue of abortion. We tested this project multiple times before we took it to this big of a scale. We delivered just shy of 500,000 postcards between 2012-2014. Pre and post campaign polling showed that 42.3% of people who received the postcards found their view of abortion had been negatively affected. Because of the success we saw on a small scale we were able to take it to the biggest scale that we were capable of with the resources we had at our disposal." -JVM +
- +
-This project was developed strategically using a theory of change, not a theory of action. +
- +
-How can every pro-life project be given the same strategic consideration?+