Resource Library

Emphasizing a shared identity improved engagement with social media advertising among Illinois farmers, and may have doubled action taking, compared to standard messaging. Social scientists have developed a model for social movement participation known as the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA). This model suggests that shared identity is one of the key elements motivating people to participate in collective action. Testing of Facebook ads targeted at Illinois farmers found those emphasizing shared identity had a higher click through rate, lower cost per click, and may have had a higher action taking rate compared to ads that did not emphasize shared identity as strongly.

The Climate Advocacy Lab is excited to pilot a 4-Day Workweek because we believe in the sustainability of our people as well as the planet. The Lab team feels deeply privileged to do work in service of our mission: to equip the US climate movement with the evidence-based insights, skills, and connections needed to build durable power and win equitable solutions.
However (as you all know well) working in the climate movement means we absorb an extreme level of anxiety-provoking news and grapple daily with existential questions about our place in this world and long-term viability of our planet. These threats and anxieties are even greater, of course, for our friends and colleagues working on the frontlines, dealing with the pain and trauma of too many intersecting crises. The ongoing pandemic has forced all of us to re-evaluate the boundaries between work and rest — as well as the balance between professional development and professional sustainability. As a result of exploring different models for how the Lab works toward our mission that allows us to consider the long-term health of our team, we have decided to pilot a Monday-Thursday four-day workweek (4DWW).

This new series at The Forge will engage organizers with a deceptively simple question: what’s your power analysis? Powerful actors and institutions are creating and purposefully maintaining unjust political and economic systems for their own benefit. This article series aims for sharper and more shared approaches and language across our movements for describing, measuring, and analyzing power. In this series, this author will talk to organizers and movement leaders — including Doran Schrantz of Faith in Minnesota, Andrea Mercado of Florida Rising, leaders at the New Georgia Project Action Fund, and others from across the progressive movement — about the power analysis that guides their work and their organizations, the power they’re trying to build and exercise, how it’s going, and how they know.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling on oil and gas companies’ price gouging; clean energy investment as part of potential new economic legislation in Washington; the links between climate change and public health, pollution, and extreme weather; and Americans’ emotional responses to climate change.

The world can be a dangerous place, especially when you’re trying to solve a climate crisis. Disinformation – from the fossil fuel industry, conspiracy theorists, or their partisan accomplices – pollutes the discourse and draws attention away from actual climate solutions. Unfortunately, we’re now all responsible for pushing back against lies, dirty tricks, and bad-faith arguments in order to protect our audiences.
Building off of our March webinar on Fighting Digital Climate Disinformation, we want to arm advocates with what they’ll need to fight disinformation in their work, whether that looks like organizing volunteers on social media to amplify inoculation messages, debunking misleading information in frontline communities, or building a dedicated program to conduct anti-disinformation research. Participants will leave this webinar equipped with the knowledge and instructions to protect their organization and their base.