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The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society
"The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism in these organizations and gender and identity issues, all of which are essential and important and valid, but those are not the pathways to mass awareness and mass unity. If you overemphasize those kinds of issues, it's a kind of sectarianism, which is the opposite of how you unify people to get political power. If you don't assemble majority support - majority sentiment doesn't mean everybody - it means majority, then you can't take power. And if you can't get power, guess what? You can't help the vulnerable. You can't help the oppressed. This is, like most things in life, a question of balance. If you overfocus on the legitimate feelings and plight of subgroups of the population, by necessity, you won't establish what Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition. And without the Rainbow Coalition, you don't win. So, what I hope is that the scientists and the activist community can pay as much attention to cognitive science as they do to climate science. And then we'll get somewhere definitely."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."So a lot has been corporatized. That is certainly true, but not everything. And it sounds like a cliche, but it really is true that history moves in pendulums and waves. And whatever is happening today is not going to last. It will change. So you have periods of concentrations of wealth and power, and then you have periods of rebellion. And I'm quite sure we're headed for another period of rebellion. You can see it a little bit now in the labor strife in the United States and the strikes. You can certainly see it in the massive demonstrations in France and Israel. Excessive concentrations of power breeds rebellion, and that's just inevitable. And the climate crisis is going to cause a lot of rebellion as people figure this out. And I think it's coming very soon, actually, because as you've noticed, the weather is getting very bad. It's become a non-linear accelerating phenomenon. And people will wake up to that. I just hope they wake up in time."https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."When I say 'Make America Great Again', everybody probably cringes and I do too, but we have to learn from that. That is actually how the brain works. It works through being exposed to the repetition of simple, easy-to-understand messages that have an emotional, moral aspect. That's how the brain learns. It doesn't learn from facts. It doesn't learn from figures. It doesn't learn from policy pronouncements. And it certainly doesn't learn from complexity. Here's an example. People need to be conscious of the difference between internal and external communications. So, if you want to say that you believe in intersectional environmentalism, that's valid within your group. But if you use that in your public communication, no one understands what the hell you mean by that, not at all. Second, you're branding yourself as an other. You're not part of their world. You don't understand them. You have some weird agenda of your own, and you're incomprehensible. I hope my book makes a contribution to helping activists learn the difference between what the communists used to call an internal line and an external line. You know, the communists had a lot of things wrong, but that they were right about.”https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"So a lot has been corporatized. That is certainly true, but not everything. And it sounds like a cliche, but it really is true that history moves in pendulums and waves. And whatever is happening today is not going to last. It will change. So you have periods of concentrations of wealth and power, and then you have periods of rebellion. And I'm quite sure we're headed for another period of rebellion. You can see it a little bit now in the labor strife in the United States and the strikes. You can certainly see it in the massive demonstrations in France and Israel. Excessive concentrations of power breeds rebellion, and that's just inevitable. And the climate crisis is going to cause a lot of rebellion as people figure this out. And I think it's coming very soon, actually, because as you've noticed, the weather is getting very bad. It's become a non-linear accelerating phenomenon. And people will wake up to that. I just hope they wake up in time."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism in these organizations and gender and identity issues, all of which are essential and important and valid, but those are not the pathways to mass awareness and mass unity. If you overemphasize those kinds of issues, it's a kind of sectarianism, which is the opposite of how you unify people to get political power. If you don't assemble majority support - majority sentiment doesn't mean everybody - it means majority, then you can't take power. And if you can't get power, guess what? You can't help the vulnerable. You can't help the oppressed. This is, like most things in life, a question of balance. If you overfocus on the legitimate feelings and plight of subgroups of the population, by necessity, you won't establish what Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition. And without the Rainbow Coalition, you don't win. So, what I hope is that the scientists and the activist community can pay as much attention to cognitive science as they do to climate science. And then we'll get somewhere definitely."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"When I say 'Make America Great Again', everybody probably cringes and I do too, but we have to learn from that. That is actually how the brain works. It works through being exposed to the repetition of simple, easy-to-understand messages that have an emotional, moral aspect. That's how the brain learns. It doesn't learn from facts. It doesn't learn from figures. It doesn't learn from policy pronouncements. And it certainly doesn't learn from complexity. Here's an example. People need to be conscious of the difference between internal and external communications. So, if you want to say that you believe in intersectional environmentalism, that's valid within your group. But if you use that in your public communication, no one understands what the hell you mean by that, not at all. Second, you're branding yourself as an other. You're not part of their world. You don't understand them. You have some weird agenda of your own, and you're incomprehensible. I hope my book makes a contribution to helping activists learn the difference between what the communists used to call an internal line and an external line. You know, the communists had a lot of things wrong, but that they were right about.”How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"The linguists and the cognitive scientists have established that as you're exposed to language from childhood and over your lifetime, it forms literal circuits in your brain. They call them frames. So in order to communicate successfully with people, the best way is to use language that activates existing frames. So for example, when I say we need to get to net zero by 2050, nobody knows what I'm talking about. There's no existing circuitry to process that language. What the hell is net zero? Is that less than zero? Now, if I say we have to stop pollution because pollution is heating the planet, we've formed a blanket of pollution around the earth that is trapping heat that used to go back out to space. And then everybody knows what I'm talking about because they know what pollution is. That's an existing mental frame. And by the way, no one will defend pollution. You won't find anyone that thinks pollution is a good thing. So it's a universally negative frame in all languages. And then when I say it's like a blanket around the earth, there's another existing mental frame. Everybody knows what a blanket is and how it works. It traps your body heat so you don't get cold. So that's what we're doing to the earth. And yes, all that trapped heat energy on Earth has to go somewhere. So it goes to create stronger storms and droughts and floods and melts the ice."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"The linguists and the cognitive scientists have established that as you're exposed to language from childhood and over your lifetime, it forms literal circuits in your brain. They call them frames. So in order to communicate successfully with people, the best way is to use language that activates existing frames. So for example, when I say we need to get to net zero by 2050, nobody knows what I'm talking about. There's no existing circuitry to process that language. What the hell is net zero? Is that less than zero? Now, if I say we have to stop pollution because pollution is heating the planet, we've formed a blanket of pollution around the earth that is trapping heat that used to go back out to space. And then everybody knows what I'm talking about because they know what pollution is. That's an existing mental frame. And by the way, no one will defend pollution. You won't find anyone that thinks pollution is a good thing. So it's a universally negative frame in all languages. And then when I say it's like a blanket around the earth, there's another existing mental frame. Everybody knows what a blanket is and how it works. It traps your body heat so you don't get cold. So that's what we're doing to the earth. And yes, all that trapped heat energy on Earth has to go somewhere. So it goes to create stronger storms and droughts and floods and melts the ice."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
"So a lot has been corporatized. That is certainly true, but not everything. And it sounds like a cliche, but it really is true that history moves in pendulums and waves. And whatever is happening today is not going to last. It will change. So you have periods of concentrations of wealth and power, and then you have periods of rebellion. And I'm quite sure we're headed for another period of rebellion. You can see it a little bit now in the labor strife in the United States and the strikes. You can certainly see it in the massive demonstrations in France and Israel. Excessive concentrations of power breeds rebellion, and that's just inevitable. And the climate crisis is going to cause a lot of rebellion as people figure this out. And I think it's coming very soon, actually, because as you've noticed, the weather is getting very bad. It's become a non-linear accelerating phenomenon. And people will wake up to that. I just hope they wake up in time."How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism in these organizations and gender and identity issues, all of which are essential and important and valid, but those are not the pathways to mass awareness and mass unity. If you overemphasize those kinds of issues, it's a kind of sectarianism, which is the opposite of how you unify people to get political power. If you don't assemble majority support - majority sentiment doesn't mean everybody - it means majority, then you can't take power. And if you can't get power, guess what? You can't help the vulnerable. You can't help the oppressed. This is, like most things in life, a question of balance. If you overfocus on the legitimate feelings and plight of subgroups of the population, by necessity, you won't establish what Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition. And without the Rainbow Coalition, you don't win. So, what I hope is that the scientists and the activist community can pay as much attention to cognitive science as they do to climate science. And then we'll get somewhere definitely."https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."The linguists and the cognitive scientists have established that as you're exposed to language from childhood and over your lifetime, it forms literal circuits in your brain. They call them frames. So in order to communicate successfully with people, the best way is to use language that activates existing frames. So for example, when I say we need to get to net zero by 2050, nobody knows what I'm talking about. There's no existing circuitry to process that language. What the hell is net zero? Is that less than zero? Now, if I say we have to stop pollution because pollution is heating the planet, we've formed a blanket of pollution around the earth that is trapping heat that used to go back out to space. And then everybody knows what I'm talking about because they know what pollution is. That's an existing mental frame. And by the way, no one will defend pollution. You won't find anyone that thinks pollution is a good thing. So it's a universally negative frame in all languages. And then when I say it's like a blanket around the earth, there's another existing mental frame. Everybody knows what a blanket is and how it works. It traps your body heat so you don't get cold. So that's what we're doing to the earth. And yes, all that trapped heat energy on Earth has to go somewhere. So it goes to create stronger storms and droughts and floods and melts the ice."https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."The linguists and the cognitive scientists have established that as you're exposed to language from childhood and over your lifetime, it forms literal circuits in your brain. They call them frames. So in order to communicate successfully with people, the best way is to use language that activates existing frames. So for example, when I say we need to get to net zero by 2050, nobody knows what I'm talking about. There's no existing circuitry to process that language. What the hell is net zero? Is that less than zero? Now, if I say we have to stop pollution because pollution is heating the planet, we've formed a blanket of pollution around the earth that is trapping heat that used to go back out to space. And then everybody knows what I'm talking about because they know what pollution is. That's an existing mental frame. And by the way, no one will defend pollution. You won't find anyone that thinks pollution is a good thing. So it's a universally negative frame in all languages. And then when I say it's like a blanket around the earth, there's another existing mental frame. Everybody knows what a blanket is and how it works. It traps your body heat so you don't get cold. So that's what we're doing to the earth. And yes, all that trapped heat energy on Earth has to go somewhere. So it goes to create stronger storms and droughts and floods and melts the ice."https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator."So a lot has been corporatized. That is certainly true, but not everything. And it sounds like a cliche, but it really is true that history moves in pendulums and waves. And whatever is happening today is not going to last. It will change. So you have periods of concentrations of wealth and power, and then you have periods of rebellion. And I'm quite sure we're headed for another period of rebellion. You can see it a little bit now in the labor strife in the United States and the strikes. You can certainly see it in the massive demonstrations in France and Israel. Excessive concentrations of power breeds rebellion, and that's just inevitable. And the climate crisis is going to cause a lot of rebellion as people figure this out. And I think it's coming very soon, actually, because as you've noticed, the weather is getting very bad. It's become a non-linear accelerating phenomenon. And people will wake up to that. I just hope they wake up in time."https://davidfentonactivist.comwww.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668https://fenton.comX / twitter @dfentonIG @dfenton1 facebook.com/davidfentonactivistwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastAll photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
David Fenton lives in Berkeley. His book, The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator, came out on November 1, 2022. It's about how to be a better activist communicator.
David Fenton is the author of the new book The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator. David earned the moniker “the Robin Hood of Public Relations” from The National Journal for creating the first PR agency for social change organizations to adopt corporate PR tactics to win major victories for freedom, democracy, and the environment. Through his firm, Fenton, he has spear-headed history- making activism, including the campaigns to free Nelson Mandela and end apartheid in the late 1980s, the No-Nukes Concerts in 1979 with Bruce Springsteen, banning fracking, and legalizing mariuana. He's now working exclusively on bipartisan efforts to address the climate crisis, co-founding organizations like Families for a Future and Science Moms.
The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.
Today we salute the actions of the progressive activists who paved the way, focusing on one who was in the thick of it all. David Fenton's new book is "The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from Fifty Years as a Progressive Agitator". We'll discuss the history he was part of, and try to get to the bottom of why things are as they are now... David Fenton was there, working on the No Nukes concerts, in the campaign to free Nelson Mandela and end apartheid, legalize marijuana and end racist drug laws. He worked at High Times and Rolling Stone Magazine, and hung out with Abbie Hoffman and other legendary activists. I'm thinking our conversation will be part memories and reminiscences, and part primer to light a fire under the people who should carry the torch today and going forward.
In the late 1960s David Fenton was a photojournalist, for Liberation News Service while also publishing in the NY Times, Life, Newsweek and others. In 1978 David was the director of Public Relations at Rolling Stone magazine. He was co-producer of the "No Nukes" concerts with Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor and many others in New York City, 1979. In 1982 David founded Fenton Communications to promote issue-oriented public relations campaigns focusing on the environment, public health and human rights. Since founding the company, he pioneered the use of professional P.R. and advertising techniques by not-for-profit public interest groups in the United States and around the world David also co-founded three independent not-for-profit organizations including the Death Penalty Information Center, which helps journalists cover evidence of innocence and racial bias in the death penalty system. David has just released his latest publication "The Activist's Media Handbook, Lessons From Fifty Years as a Progressive Agitator" which discusses how to organize social media campaigns
David Fenton has just released a new book — The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from Fifty Years as a Progressive Agitator — that is a combination biography, photo journal, and accounting of lessons learned in the PR business. He tells the stories of his numerous campaigns over the years (alongside pages and pages of vivid images) and tries to boil down what works to capture media attention and advance progressive causes, and what doesn't. I chat with him about it. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe
Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew is joined by David Fenton, author of The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons from Fifty Years as a Progressive Agitator. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential P.R. people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health and human rights. Over four decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s. His book Shots: An American Photographer's Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly Director of Public Relations at Rolling Stone magazine and Co-Producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and other artists. David is a native of Manhattan where he lives with his wife and children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Fenton is the Founder of Fenton Communications, the first public relations firm dedicated to progressive social change. David has written a new book, The Activist's Media Handbook: Lessons From Fifty Years as a Progressive Agitator, based on his extensive experience working with politicians and celebrities. While the channels and styles for communicating political and advocacy messages are changing, the basic principles of communication remain the same. The way the brain processes words and images does not change though there are critical differences in how different individuals perceive a message. Currently, David is focusing his efforts on the climate movement and taking advantage of the web to drive action. We talk about: The underground anti-war protests in the '60s Keys to mobilizing the public to support a cause The differences between crafting a message for Republican and Democratic voters The problem with "Woke" language Biggest campaign surprises and most inspiring and challenging clients Limitations of fragmented news sources and social media for activism and mobilization Advice for young activists to unify larger groups of people @DFenton #DavidFenton #ClimateChange #Climate #ClimateJustice #Activism #PoliticalActivism #Democracy #Progressive #VoterMobilization DavidFentonActivist.com