Links from this episode

• The Empower Project — https://empowerproject.us/

• Amanda Brink on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brinkamandal/

• Amanda’s bio at the Empower Project — https://empowerproject.us/amanda-brink

• Amanda’s essay, “The Rules of Engagement Have Changed” — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rules-engagement-have-changed-amanda-brink-krfgc/

• Marquette Law School Poll on trust, July 2026 — https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2026/07/07/marquette-law-school-poll-finds-a-steady-decline-by-age-in-trust-in-other-people/ — Americans trust their immediate family (92%), coworkers (79%), and neighbors (72%). A stranger knocking on the door: 11%. A stranger calling to sell something: 6%.

• Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why, by Steve Martin and Joseph Marks — the book behind Amanda’s argument about trusted messengers

Dana founded Strategic Movement Collective after years running national advocacy as Senior Director of Strategy and Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. She thinks about campaigns the way a builder thinks about load-bearing walls, and this episode is a rare look at how she actually does the work — from the first “big sky” objective all the way down to the question she keeps returning to: what’s missing from this conversation, and who’s missing from it?

We get into her design process, why she starts “selling” a strategy before it’s finished, and the moment at WE ACT when she realized a whole emissions-modeling conversation was incomplete until they hired someone who could take it down to the level of regions, states, and communities. From there we go somewhere harder: how the advocacy toolkit has changed under real pressure, why she thinks the movement “missed the mark” on solidarity, and what the people of Minneapolis taught the rest of us about infrastructure that outlasts a single fight. We close on what it would actually take to rebuild — not the way things were, but for the next fifty years.

What you’ll take away:

• A working method for designing a campaign from objective to messenger to the gap

• Why solidarity is a tactic, not a sentiment — and what the research on authoritarianism says about going it alone

• How organizing infrastructure gets built in one fight and repurposed in the next

• A “both/and” frame for rebuilding institutions instead of just restoring them

Dana Johnson is a movement strategist and founder of Strategic Movement Collective. She previously served as Senior Director of Strategy and Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice and sits on the board of Green 2.0.

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If The Campaign Strategist is useful to you, subscribe and pass it to someone who’s building something.

Here’s a clean example from this week.

On the biggest podcast in the world, Joe Rogan and bowhunter Cameron Hanes spent a minute defending the Roadless Rule — the policy protecting 45 million acres of national forest from road-building and development. Rogan’s framing wasn’t environmentalist boilerplate. It was about ownership: public land is your land, it’s unique to this country, and once you start selling it off, they don’t stop. “Not one acre.” “Once you lose something, you don’t get it back.”

That reframes the whole fight. Not left vs. right — public vs. private.

And it matters right now. 99% of public comments opposed repealing the rule, but it’s moving through the Senate anyway, slipped in as a last-minute rider on a wildfire bill. The vote is coming up, so check out the clip below, then find your senators and call: senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

The whole public-lands conversation is worth it — full episode here:

Francesca breaks down the layered structure of narrative using a Jaws-and-sharks example that sticks, explains why rigor and resonance are an "and" rather than a trade-off, and makes the case that trusted institutions are having to rethink who gets to be the messenger. She also argues that the work belongs to everyone, not just consultants: as she puts it, "guess who narrative practitioners are? Everyone, we all are."

For anyone trying to talk about hard things in a way that actually lands, there's a lot here on landscaping narratives, building local capacity, and meeting people where they are.

Learn more about the Narrative Initiative here.

Connect with others and fight back at Allroadsleadtothesouth.com, www.866ourvote.org,MoveOn.org, and Indivisible.

Learn more about Anna’s work and the Economic Security Project here.

In this conversation, we don’t spend much time on the doom. We spend it on the strategy.

**What you’ll hear in this episode:**

- Why energy affordability — not carbon policy — is the entry point for reaching persuadable voters right now

- How LCV is running AI-assisted, neighbor-to-neighbor video ads in a Michigan congressional district to hold Republicans accountable for higher utility bills

- Why the movement needs to think culturally, not just politically, to break through a fragmented media landscape

- How public lands became a rare piece of genuine bipartisan common ground — with MAGA hats showing up at LCV rallies

- What it means to defend democracy as a prerequisite for environmental progress

- And why the goal after Trump can’t just be to restore what existed before

Pete’s closing piece of advice, passed on to him early in his career, stayed with me: ”Everybody needs hope and heroes . . . We have to believe and we have to give people belief. And if we do that, people will show up.”

This is exactly the kind of conversation The Campaign Strategist exists to have — candid, strategic, and focused on what it actually takes to build power and win.

If you find these conversations useful, please share this with someone who’d benefit. It’s the best way to help the show grow.

Get Spitfires’s Planning Guide here.

Thanks again, and see you soon!

Pete

From confronting fascism to channeling public anger into action, this conversation is a guide to narrative power in dangerous times. “Narrative is about the words, but it’s also about the visuals,” says Jiggy. “It’s also about the stories. It’s also about the feelings. And we don’t...on the left, take that holistic approach to narrative.”

Subscribe to Jiggy’s newsletter here.

Jenifer shares how she went from journalist to movement strategist — and how that journey shaped her understanding of what it takes to compete in an attention economy dominated by emotion, culture, and decentralized media. She explains why campaigns must merge organizing and media instead of treating them as separate worlds, and how creators, storytelling, and cultural authenticity can move people in ways policy briefs never will.

If you care about how progressives can break through the noise — and build real narrative power — don’t miss this one.

To be clear, we are in what’s called competitive authoritarianism, as Tara Buss recently explained (here’s the full episode):

We can see the legitimation function right now, as Democratic leaders try to cut a deal with Trump to restore funding for health care and not shut down the government. But you can’t negotiate with an authoritarian, as many have noted.

All of this has emphasized for me one of the key points Anat Shenker-Osario made in our recent interview: we have to call things what they really are.

Anat provided several examples of what she means, and I thought these are worth bundling together. We should all take pages from Anat’s book, and make sure the language we are using reflects the reality of what is going on. (Here’s the full episode.)

But this is something we all need to pay more attention to, and Anat provided several more examples:

On government abductions/kidnappings:

Or the illegal concentration camp that Governor DeSantis built for the Trump regime:

And then there’s the reconciliation bill that passed this summer, the one Trump kept describing as beautiful. That bill does a lot of harm to Americans, and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University estimate that over 50,000 Americans will die each year due to the radical cuts and other changes the bill makes to our healthcare system. Here’s Anat’s take on what we should be calling it:

This is important because, as Anat points out, sticking with polite language isn’t going to cut it. The left is already way behind in its ability to reach and persuade people - and sugar-coating or playing down what is going on just makes it harder.

And as important as it is to name what’s happening, its also important to name what we want. I really liked how Tara Buss put it:

Saying what we want the next version of our country to look like is important, because we have to look forward. Too many people felt let down and left out by how things were working, and if we want to get rid of the authoritarians and build the America we want, we have to lean into what that looks like. Michael Podhorzer made this really clear in our interview, and its a good one to end on (full episode):

Follow Anat's Substack Words to Win by and check out her firm's work: ASO Communications.

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