It is hard to inform and mobilize the public about hard, scary issues such as nuclear weapons, the climate crisis, and Trumpism’s escalating fascism.
Typically, we throw facts at people, but people too fearful and powerless to open themselves up psychologically to hear those facts, let alone act upon them.
The document I wrote and linked below can help the public empower themselves to work on serious issues, including the hardest and most frightening issues.
In order to really engage the public on these hard and frightening issues, we must deliberately strategize how to address the public’s fears, feelings of powerlessness, and other psychological barriers that inhibit them from learning about and acting on these issues.
In order to make progress, we must pay at least as much attention to the public’s psychological factors as we do to the issues’ hard facts.
I wrote this one-page flyer to help us understand this and devise smarter strategies:
Outreach Ideas for Hard Scary Issues