When faced with challenges to their power, social movement organizations can revise their structure in different ways to solve different problems. For example, the Sunrise Movement has engaged its membership in an attempt to decentralize some power from its national staff to local hubs. Color Of Change expanded its staff-driven approach to create events and local groups for social engagement and localized projects, in addition to refocusing its campaign goals to local elections. United for Respect has experienced member and staff growth, experimenting by organizing staff by campaign and by role, settling on a hybrid structure, utilizing both. Other organizations—ISAIAH, New York Working Families Party, and Florida’s Statewide Alignment Group—have also re-structured in illuminating ways. This report employs useful metaphors to describe different group structures, including “boat”, “big tent”, “Rubik’s Cube”, “house”, “stool”, and “fractal”.             

California and the US are increasingly beset by climate-fueled disasters like wildfires, extreme heat, and power blackouts. These events put additional stress on frayed hard and social infrastructure systems, and disproportionately impact working-class communities of color. To adapt to these changes, society must update our notion of disaster response to increase resilience in these systems before disasters strike. This report offers two models for this response: 1) building and normalizing resilience hubs where community members gather and organize both in good times and bad, and 2) increasing in-home resilience by recognizing homecare workers as effective agents for assisting vulnerable populations and bridging authorities and the frontlines. The report goes on to recommend specific ways to set up resilience hubs, train care workers, and develop forward-thinking emergency response plans to avert human disasters after natural disasters.

The We Make the Future Messaging Guide is for campaigners, researchers, and all people who want to persuade others to take action to confront the challenges of a changing climate. The guide is based on rigorous research into perception and persuasion, and provide specific recommendations to engage base constituencies and persuade the middle (or people who haven't spent a lot of time thinking about specific solutions). The core of this work is the Race Class Narrative, an approach that weaves together economic empowerment, racial justice, climate justice, and gender equity, using language proven to work to mobilize and persuade people to take action.  

This is a how-to guide. It provides guidance on:

• What to say and, crucially, what not to say
• How to weave together the rights words and the right narrative
• How to link related issues such as racial justice and climate justice within all your communications and calls-to-action 
• Specific ways to use these messages on email, social media, and via text message  

This research illuminates ways to build authentic and effective connections with outdoor enthusiasts around climate change. Though outdoor enthusiasts highly value natural areas for recreation, their temperaments are not immediately conducive to advocacy. Nonetheless, athletes are trusted lifestyle messengers, and a “motivation map” of decision-making pathways related to climate change activism points the way to one simple framing message that works across the board.

How did the alliance behind the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) move a visionary idea from concept to groundbreaking reality? In this webinar, the Climate Advocacy Lab was joined in conversation with members of the PCEF Steering Committee for an "under the hood" look at the campaign's insights, challenges, and lessons learned –– also captured in a new, interview-based report that captures the "anatomy" of the campaign. This campaign secured a landslide ballot measure victory in Portland in November 2018, establishing a multi-million dollar municipal fund that will address climate, economic, and racial justice by providing funding for renewable energy projects, job training and apprenticeship programs, and regenerative agriculture.

Under-resourced communities face a disproportionate share of societal burdens and lack access to many of the benefits other communities enjoy. Participation in the solar economy can help ease these burdens and provide low-and middle-income households with economic relief.

As communities and advocates worldwide work to respond adequately to increasing climate disasters, where can climate advocates find resources to advance just, equitable, and community-based disaster recovery?

In this webinar, Climate Advocacy Lab teamed up with Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) to discuss CJA's recently released multimedia report Our Power Puerto Rico: Moving Toward a Just Recovery (a project completed with support from the Lab!). During the conversation, authors, experts, and frontline organizers who contributed to the case study and report highlight tools (including the 'Just Recovery framework'), practices, and experiential lessons learned from applying a participatory model of "Just Recovery" to disaster response in Puerto Rico following hurricane María. 

People turning out to recent marches in Washington, DC on climate and other issues are 1) overwhelmingly people who voted for Hillary Clinton, 2) well-educated, 3) 25-30% first-time protesters, 4) broadly motivated in response to the Trump administration, but 5) increasingly diverse in their specific reasons for marching (racial justice, the environment, women's rights, etc.), and 6) continuing to show up to multiple marches. Those are the initial conclusions from sociologist Dana Fisher, who has been surveying march attendees at DC marches since the November election.

When Kentucky’s leaders failed to do their job of writing a state implementation plan for the Clean Power Plan (CPP), Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) realized that this was actually an opportunity to bring together residents from all over the state to share their vision for what Kentucky’s energy future could look like, generating shared, aspirational political will for a new economy powered by clean energy.

Political parties influence how people engage with the political world, shaping their political preferences, beliefs, and behaviors. Using motivated reasoning as a theoretical lens, the authors argue that a person’s political party affiliation (in particular the idea that partisanship becomes an identity unto itself) can dominate how certain people interact with and process information.