 So you're here and we can connect to celebrate your work. That's I think all I've got right Josh you want to flip to the agenda. All right so here's what we're doing today. First we're going to talk about what is visual strategy we keep using that term, and then three reasons why visual strategy helps you win with some examples for each. We're going to hear workers perspective from Bethany Meyer from Oakland Education Association. Yay. And then Josh and I will do a little more storytelling of inspiration solidarity, our work staging the movement for the Green New Deal. Hopefully we'll have at least 15 minutes at the end for questions, if not more super excited to hear what's on your mind. We don't have to drop off early we're just going to put in the chat for the first time right now. A feedback form we really are curious what is most useful and least useful to you all in the labor movement to our friends. Please fill that out if you have the have a chance. All right. Onward. We're going to start today with an image that I bet you have seen before. Yeah. I'm going to put a emoji in the chat if you have feelings about scabby the rat negative or positive. This is a very familiar image to a lot of the labor movement right. So, starting here, what is this what is scabby the rat do scabby the rat is a quick visual shortcut that helps call out bosses. It's clear to the public. It makes super legible that this site is a greedy Union busting company that and that workers will not be silenced about that. And it's also kind of fun. It creates a shared culture within the labor movement we can joke about scabby the rat and take pictures and he's weird and scabby but he's ours with the labor movement. So it's, it's one object but it does a lot of different things at the same time I'm seeing a lot of love for scabby here in the chat. We're doing a lot of things at the same time. And the things that make it work are very specific and concrete. For example, it would not be the same if we made a tiny drawing of the rat and put it in front of a building. It wouldn't work. If we were in a cultural context where people revered and celebrated rats it relies on the fact that there's some negative associations with rats in this country. And it wouldn't be the same if we set the same exact rat up in our neighbor's yard or around the corner or someplace else. So the location and how it's made and what it is, is what makes it work. This is an example of a visual strategy. It's a visual component of a larger strategy that includes negotiations and press and picket line and social media, if just putting the rat out in front of a business alone wouldn't do the job. So as we're moving forward, does this bring to mind people other examples of visual strategies from campaigns you work on. Just shout out if you have any associations coming to mind of a thing that you've seen in the labor movement of visual strategy. Picket signs clap. Thanks Alex for kicking us off. If people have just an image of particular picket sign come to mind or slogan all the same shirt, crowds of red t shirts, big countdown clock in a public square banners or tents for an occupation. Wow. Yeah, this is a crowd that knows the giant fight for 15 letters we're going to talk about those in a minute. One job should be enough for unite here versus marry up. Yeah, that was a great one. People know there's lots of visual strategies operating in the movement. Josh, you want to tell us about how we define this. Yeah, so we're going to spend this call talking about visual strategy. It's probably a new term, because it's fairly new term. And for us visual strategy is an off offhand way of talking about visuals as strategy so there's a lot of strategies operating in the campaign you probably have organizing strategies bargaining strategies communication strategies, which are all part of an overarching plan to get us where we need to go and we usually try and plan all our different strategies in conjunction with each other to work together, not to work you know one after the other or as an afterthought. So we're going to talk about what it means to think about visuals as strategy in that context. This is the working definition we've been using visual strategy is planning the images we're all going to remember it's creating the images are members and their communities we use to internalize our full power and taking control of the images we use to communicate ourselves to the public. Visual strategy is the tool that allows us to show the public who we are and visual strategy is the tool that allows us to show show ourselves who we are so we're going to be talking about a lot of how these different elements operate in this and how to think strategically throughout the images that make up the campaign. One of the ways to think through that. This is an example timeline of how that would happen for a campaign and how that's in stuff with the organizing in other ways of your work. So we've broken it down to four phases here that first phase we've got to develop individual identity. You know this is like what colors what shapes what slogans what tone of voice are going to help us get our goals, and you can develop a visual identity in committee in your union, or you can develop it with just a couple leaders. It's really up to how how that process runs the best. And it involves talking about your job, your demands, your target, and figuring out how to make them clear and palpable to yourselves and people who are seeing your organizing. Once you have your visual identity, you've got that's that number two production right there. So we got to start making this thing this is making the signs and banners. We're also making social media and email posts like we have to produce everything that lets people know who we are, which leads us to the third point number three there, distributing your identity, right once you have things that tell the story of who you are we need to actually get those out to our base and to the public. So using photos putting them online helping people to see the movement helping the movement to see itself or the union to see itself. I'll often default to movement just because we do a lot of trainings that are outside of the labor movement. Saying movement as a term. Usually this starts at the same time as recruitment starts. So if you're seeing it on the timeline there it's like halfway through production people are starting to recruit for that big action. Every time that we put up a photo in the email or the zoom RSVP form, people are seeing our movement and getting that that identity out there before number four there, the big action when we finally take action. And when we're in the streets. Visual strategy is considering what visuals we need to tell a powerful story in that moment of who we are, and staging and documentation are also an essential part of building power and telling that story making people you are powerful, and we'll get into the particular sub all of these with the various examples. So, when, when some people see the last slide with images of people creating ideas and making art and taking out into the street. Some people are like, Wow, this is going to be awesome. Art is so fun. And other people, probably not the folks on this call but perhaps your comrades are like, Oh, painting banners is fun but it's extra it's decoration I'm going to go get back to the real work. And we want to say that we're excited to talk to folks, regardless of what whether you think this is fun or not, because the point is, is it's extremely strategic. When we leave the creation of visuals as window dressing when we treat it as window dressing we leave a lot of power on the table. And here's three reasons why. One, visual strategy sways how much power bosses think we have to visual strategy helps us win because it demonstrates and strengthens workers unity. And three, it helps us win because it shows the public and the media who the labor movement is. So we're going to talk a little bit more about each of those pieces of visual strategy how it operates and give examples. Moving on. Number one, sway visual strategy helps us win because it sways how much power bosses think we have. What do we mean by that. Here's an example of a tried and true visual strategy in the labor movement. Make signs before the strike sharp starts show to show the boss how serious you are about the strike. Take a photo of all your signs to show them. Yatsu use the strategy really successfully just recently. That's what you're seeing on this image. I know I saw this tweet everywhere. It turned that they were gearing up to go on strike in our era of social media. This strategy is extremely potent. Because it wouldn't have gone all the news wouldn't have gone all over Twitter and Instagram, if there wasn't a picture of all those signs piled up, and it's a really beautiful picture right. And you can see all the signs and the composition is interesting, but most people didn't see this photo and think that it was staged it was candid but this is the theatrical stage hands union someone staged this photo really well. And that's part of why it was so resonant and it went everywhere and built the threat for a strike. Next. So this is the example of what you can do with the before the action threat from our friends in the climate justice movement. In 2014, the people's climate march was gearing up to be the largest climate market in history. And it was the first time many union groups were stepping out on climate justice, and we set up a warehouse to make art before the March, and opened that warehouse for stories of people making art. We went to the press a week before the mobilization, and tons of articles started coming out about what was going to happen at the March. In fact, some cameras came and filmed footage that got put in the back of the taxi cabs in New York City, which single handedly must have recruited at least another 50,000 people to this mass march. And I helped define the story of that moment that climate change isn't just an issue for people who like going hiking that it's an issue of justice and survival, and we told that story to the public before the march even happened. So when they showed up they were prepared to participate in the story. And also we primed the press on what story we wanted them to tell on the day of the action by having spokes people in this art space holding up the very props you're going to see. Next. So here's some data that backs up backs this point up one sociological study Josh and I like introduces the acronym wonk, which stands for worthy unified numerous and committed. And what's been proven is that politicians level of response to protest corresponds with whether or not the protest appears to be quote unquote wonk. So you show. So how do you show that you're worthy unified numerous and committed visuals really help you do that. Here you see some photos from a fight to cancel Amazon's plans for a headquarter in Queens which you might know we won. And this campaign shows us that one isn't just about corporate targets, or isn't just about political targets that that's really useful with all different kinds of bosses and corporate targets. So when the headquarters were announced. A lot of people were really mad and, as you can expect the fight against Amazon and Queens was a big sprawling messy coalition efforts there were four different coalition tables with many ideological tensions and politics between them and we were not showing up as a unified front all the time. And Amazon is a big boss we had to be unified to win. And we even made these started by making these 200 frowny faced boxes, and we took them out to all different kinds of actions where different different groups were holding could hold them. And it projected to the public, the underlying unity across New York City and made the level of activity happening visible. The week after we dropped the boxes they hired a new PR firm that started placing smiling photos of kids holding the smiling back boxes in the media, and it became a battle of the box is Amazon a friendly smile or sinister frown. A few months later, Amazon back down and one, and this image on the top right was the one that accompanied the breaking news update in New York Times so it communicated very clearly, the kind of people power that had just beat this international mega corporation, and the frown was used as the shorthand for that unified people power. Um, so we've covered a bit about the production of signs and banners and props visuals all of that, and we'll cover a bit more in minute but part of visuals is how we can feel in the street. Because raw attendance at our actions doesn't automatically translate into an experience of power at the rally or on camera there's a lot of factors for this and one of the reasons that we have signs and banners is that they help our members feel powerful and but where we stand how we stand also has a big impact on how we look and feel industry. So if you've read the last labor notes magazine these diagrams might look familiar this we have an article in there about the specifics of this example. But this is one of the techniques that we use with rallies. If you look at the little mannequin on the microphone, you can see him on the left and right side on the left. That speaker is standing apart from the crowd, they're talking to the crowd, and on the right side they're standing in the crowd and talking to the class and the rest of the world. This is two classic setups for how people do rallies, and there's good reasons to do both the left and right side, especially once you get to a large rally with amplification. One of the things that we really experience is that people very often do the left side setup, when their members would feel more empowered and look more empowered if they did the right side. I'm going to reach through. So one of the big reasons for doing the right side besides members feeling powerful is also that it looks much better on camera. One of the best images you'll be able to get from both of these rallies is what's going to show up in the paper but also what's going to show up in internal sort of streaming via how people are going to see themselves afterwards, in their own posting. And if you look at these two images, you know which image makes the rally look larger that bottom one really shows the attendance in a way that the top doesn't, which one makes the event look worker run. One of the things about staging is it shows a hierarchy between the speaker and the workers and whether workers are in fact centered in the event. Which event makes the speaker feel more trustworthy. I certainly see that bottom right one and and identify with the speaker much more because they're being physically vouched for by the people standing next to them. And these are, this is the same event. This is the same number of people and vastly different stories through the images. So if people want to share an action with our membership afterwards or share an event with another union, our experience is going to be heavily mediated by these factors of where we stand how we stand how we stage the rally. And there's all kinds of staging techniques for rallies for marches for strikes that help our members feel and look powerful when we're in the street. So this is part of thinking through the visuals is thinking through making an event that people will feel powerful and here's some real world examples of this from sunrise. It's hard to get an exact like a test on this but this is the same location, same group of people. And you can see that the left and right sides just have very different feelings as an event you know that right side image it puts you in the event you're picturing yourself being part of it the left side image very much like pushes us back as an as an observer. And there's really just a few staging techniques that are changing that whole thing. So, visual strategy in the street with staging, it helps us conceive of ourselves as a larger movement and helps change how many people think attend and it really helps clarify relationship between it being worth the run, or just speaker doing the start Michelle. And yes, we can share these slides. One of the easiest tips that we have on how to stage more powerful actions in the street is to read some version whatever works for you specifically of this script at the beginning of that. And that script is, most of our people can't be here today. They're stuck at home, they're stuck at work, maybe they don't even realize that they're part of this yet. They're watching us through the news and social media and through an isolated alone. So I need all of us to reach through the camera to everyone that's out there. To everyone at home. And let the people watching know that you're part of this and the key for us is that line of reach through the camera that we've seen that it rallies it can very dramatically change the presence that people have there and how empowered they feel about being seen in public space and reaching out to broader movement and just the people who showed up on the window. Rachel back to you. So, thanks. The reason why that was why visual strategy helps us show bosses how powerful we are. And now we're going to talk about the ways visual strategy helps us show ourselves how powerful we are by, as we say, demonstrating and strengthening workers unity. Next, let's start with this example from the fight for 15 is there anyone who's been part of the fight for 15 on this call I'd love if you shouted out I'm curious. I'm sure there's many of you who are familiar with this on the call probably much more familiar than I am. Yep, William says the fight 15 was started by fast food workers, like many campaigns before it to raise wages. And one thing that was different was that there's a visionary demand 15 for literally everyone, express in a poetic way, the fight for 15 at the center of this campaign. And to me it's an example of how poetics are not window dressing that workers who are able to see themselves in demand and get jazzed about it and active more visionary ways, and we had many more wins than many less ambitious minimum wage campaigns under the heading of 15. I see Jackie raising her hand to. So how did visuals help with this. On the left is a giant prop that I was on a team that helped create for a day of action in New York City that we knew would get a lot of press coverage. And within a few months we started seeing people mimic it in all different places. We saw 15 that hovered above the crowd and were sharp and tough and easy to photograph and memorable and fun. And it happened completely without a coordinated plan. People saw the examples and started doing it. Center right you see this image says 15 a union. Josh and I snapped this picture. A few years later when we were supporting of a small rally in Detroit. We saw it pop over the crowd and said hey that looks like just like the one we made in New York City and we went to go say hi. So, next slide. The work here's what the back looked like the workers holding the signs were like oh yeah we saw the photos of the big 15 in New York and it's inspired us to up our game and make these big visuals. And it was really working years later. So as an aside, this happened at an action day that was very busy and we don't know who these people in this photo are so if you do or if we have anyone in Detroit here like please let us know. We'd love to connect. Josh, you want to take on from here. Yep. Oh, I'm sorry. There you go. I'm going to jump back to that example in a minute, but one of the things with visual strategy, and especially for you out there who are interested in organizing end of this, less than the actual colors and shapes under this. Our experience with coaching is that coaching is much more effective when we can show people images. If we can show people an image of the action that we're asking them to take it really boost the trainees confidence, and it makes people more comfortable being seen and doing the action. This is especially helpful for actions that involve the level of personal risk, which I think is very interesting. And as a result, it dramatically reduces the amount of time that we spend training someone to have that image of the action they're trying to take. If you are say, coaching a contract action team leader, and you need them to lead an action at their work site that they have no experience of previously being part of. And that may involve some risk to their job, being able to show them imagery or video of people doing this powerfully that they can see themselves in that they can imagine being in that space. So our experience is that those kinds of things dramatically reduce training time and can scale up and this is especially not only that but after they take action, if you're hoping that the strategy is to have other work sites see that action and be inspired by it. If the action is spread that way, then showing people actions is a great way to give them time to then be share the action that they are taking in a way to actually organize that speed and scale. And one of the great examples of this is that fight for 1515 like these these groups were not talking to each other this did not happen through direct training, people saw it. And they went and did it. That was the training are another good example of that is the way that bread picked up in at a larger scale than the mass calls because people could see it. They could identify with it, and they could be ready to go out and do it purely through the image sharing. And so this for us is a big part of where the strategy comes into visual strategy is planning your movement in a way that the union and the broader coalition of unions can see themselves and can share this stuff through imagery in, especially for circumstances where direct training cannot go back. So, what's unique about this story, as Josh said that this is a replicable things have been all the time to answer why moments like this are powerful we're going to get in a little bit to the mechanics of production. We like to think of ways that you can make art as being kind of on a spectrum. So after the screen, here's an image from the movement for black lives, and it's a really clear example of what we call a decentralized approach, everyone shows up at the rally with their own stuff with makes their own slogans and their own visual choices and you show that you're paying attention to the movement by mirroring the words and the layout and the colors that you see online are in public. It's an essential way the mass movements grow and and build power. And it really takes on a lot of power at a massive scale. On the other side on the right is a fully centralized approach, these are signs from 32 BJ, and they communicate a pretty clear flex of power are signs say who we are in full color and they're a little glossy and perfectly round cut not cheap. And it says, we got this handled, we got time and money to show you who we are. And it's a clear flex, but for the workers it's a pretty passive experience, you show up you hold signs. There's not anything on that sign that helps deepen your connection to the story of why you're part of your union necessarily. Now there's this middle ground that we like to call collective production and that's what we saw in the teacher strikes read for Ed and fight for 15. That's what we're going to bring about from Bethany soon and we want to talk a little bit more about to. Next. In collective production, we're using techniques like stenciling silk screening, projecting and tracing and painting in banners that work best in a group. They require some preparation. You learn the skills that you need really fast so you don't have to be quote unquote good at art to help. And making art together this way mirrors the ethos of the labor movement, because it's a way that we're all working together to achieve our goals, and the most important thing is not what I say, it's what we say what we want to say together in this artwork. This is a work that require preparation so the message gets determined before you're in the room painting, and the art production itself is a community event that's about celebrating and building pride and who we are as workers what we're fighting for why our unions matter. So this kind of work opens up a huge avenue for connection between workers. I'm going to drill a little bit into why this works, even if it might seem obvious or just palpable. So you have more language to help persuade other people to do it with you if that's why you're here. So in this moment as we approach the two year mark of the pandemic, people are screaming for connection, right, and they're craving structure and purpose to feed for why we feel connected to each other. And in the years ahead we know that we need unions to be a place where people find that meaning for the science brain amongst us, what happens in an art build is an example of what you can call midline integration. The tasks you're doing on the left and right side of your body that helps sync up your feelings and your thinking and help you have a grounded and whole experience. And we also know that groups doing activities with their hands and bodies together operate as kind of co regulation of each other's nervous system, and it creates the physiological conditions that allow people to be persistent to take risks together in fighting, and wow do we need that right now and in the years ahead. The result of this kind of meaningful process makes physical things that build a sense of ownership over the union we literally made them together they belong to us. So this is all to say setting up a committee or a crew in your union that leads a collective production is a way that you can really deepen the connection to your unions campaign and connect those feelings of participation and the union in a very genuine whole way. So we've talked about how visual strategies ways how much our bosses think you have how it demonstrates the strength of work. It demonstrates and strengthens worker unity. Now we're going to talk about how it shows the public and the media is with a couple quick examples here and then talk to some of the teacher strike. And this right here is. These are signs and banners and pins that we made with carrying across generations carrying across generations is a coalition of elders with disabilities and care workers who provide care for each other. This is at a summit in Detroit that's why you're seeing the labor meal in the background. So what we produced here care works traditionally excluded, not just from labor organizing but can be think of as a worker. There's a lot of gender and history in that. And we're all also contesting stereotypes about elders as you can pass it. There's a number of these pins that say, I've worked expletive hard that elders could wear to also position themselves as former workers in this context. So what you're seeing are modeled after suffrage banners you can see in the top right there's a finished ones with the fringe on them. I know really trying to pull that long history of getting gender work seen as labor and deserving of rights. And you can see here how the visuals are shaping a story of who we are and that the images of people producing those signs and banners is furthering that identity of care workers and elders and people with disabilities as workers. The art bill itself is functioning to actually perpetuate that story of powerful labor happening powerful labor that isn't protected or respected. And these images because they're happening before the action right because they're happening when comes the calm strategies doing recruitment for an action or the organizing recruitment strategy doing recruitment, having these show up before an action and helps to also align with the other strategies of a campaign. This is a second example right here. This was actually developed from a pipeline fight in southern Pennsylvania. The media was largely covering this fight with images and machinery and instruction they were very much making it about the machines and other people. And the way the story was being told invisibilized both the local county that was involved those, but also that most of the labor and the companies were coming in from out of state. And by creating a visual identity that was rooted in the local county itself and local pride in this way. It forced a story about the quality and honor of local people's lives, and of how the labor on this pipeline is actually being done, and two of the takeaways I think here that might be most appropriate for people in this audience is that turning our into community potluck events. That was a big part of successfully organizing the numbers including workers. One of the things for us is to really question the like what is the visual idea of what your normal functions as a union as an entity should be, because it may not be the most powerful story to just talk about them in the boring procedural ways. A large number of our core volunteers had house painting and construction experience that's where they were coming from. And so the art production style you're seeing is adjusted to be things that they would be empowered producing. And one of the key things without many movements, perhaps most movements, five freedom in painting their own individualized images on on the visuals. But these volunteers really found painting in assembly line styles and producing at scale something that was already designed was their power and where they found the five of being able to like precisely make something that was a pre made design, which was an consideration of changing the production to match the base that we were organizing. Oh, I was on mute. So this work visuals, it projects what's possible. It super charges moments of possibility. It helps unions grow. It helps workers grow. It helps the public understand what's going on and stand with us. And so of course, it makes bosses more scared of us. One of the most powerful examples of all this recently that I don't need to tell you all about was read for Ed movement. So I'm really excited to get to hear more about this from the ground. And I'm going to pass it back to Sarah to introduce Bethany Meyer. Thank you so much. And I just wanted to interject really quick too that I was so excited when look loud came to labor notes because I had the chance to work with the Los Angeles teachers when they had their massive strike I was working for a teacher's student during the red for Ed wave and was in Oklahoma and got to go to LA and was just so moved by the sort of imagery and particularly in LA the way that people talked about the art build and the way the experience of being in the street with this like beautiful, both beautiful images. And the specificity about the messages that was it just was so clear on the science and in the way people talked about it I had never heard such unity of message among like 10s of thousands of people, and it just all felt like it was reflected back through the art and so that just was an extremely powerful experience for me. And so I, you know, I'm excited to help like spread this message and was so excited to have to connect with Bethany at the Oakland Education Association which was one of these locals that took on the art build as a model and so I have a couple of I'll actually let Bethany Meyer, Secretary of the Oakland Education Association introduce herself and then I'm going to have some questions for her to kind of tie this in. Hi you guys thanks so much for having me here. I just want to say look loud your work is beautiful. I love seeing all the work that you've done. It's such a pleasure. Everybody hi my name is Bethany Meyer, I am a special education teacher at Fruitville elementary school in Oakland. I'm the secretary and communications director of the Oakland Education Association. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Oakland teacher strike me a little strike y'all might have heard about I love how that picture of Dolores where to I'm in it and I'm cut out of that picture, I swear I march with Dolores. Okay, so some of these pictures might be recognizable to you, or you might be seeing them for the first time but we had a really powerful experience with our art build in Oakland. We first brought the idea of an art build to OEA was Kampala Taze Rancifer, who is an amazing teacher and organizer who is organizing right now. And just like the folks from look loud we're saying. When this idea first came to us. Kampala brought this idea, and we thought it was nuts. We're like we're getting ready for a strike, like we don't have time to be painting a million signs and then she's like oh we're going to do it for an entire weekend. We're going to do this for like 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday and I'm just, it was like okay whatever you say come on right. So it was a lot of work. I'm not going to lie, but that collective experience of creating art together I can't tell you how powerful it was for us in in building the unity we needed for a strike in projecting that power so the boss could see it. I did hear from school board members that when they saw. We had media there at the art build, right. So what she said when we saw you racking up those signs is when we knew you guys were serious. So, Sarah, did you have any questions for me about this or I'll just keep going like this. Well, I mean, you're you're hitting on them but I guess that's one question is you know sort of who you mentioned Kamala Kamala brought this to you but you know who brought how did they get decided was it a decision that sort of went to, you know the stewards or the executive board and sort of then how did the message get out and how did you, how did you find the group of people who are going to, you know, organize it and get it together. And Kamala wasn't even on the executive board but she's completely undeniable and when she decides she's going to do something that thing is going to happen. So like a lot of the like reparations for black students work. Community coalitions. She's carried a lot of that was visionary and bringing that to Oakland. So I really want to give her credit, you'll see her in some of these pictures. And there she is in the purple shirt down there and bottom. She learned about it after taking a trip to Milwaukee. And she learned about it. And we didn't have anything to look at to really even know what she was talking about. We really just kind of went on faith. I'm just in this meeting with her and two other people. Right. We're all together everything from we need to order burritos to here are the artists who were making the silk screens and here are the images that we're using that like, really putting together, having images to choose from, and realizing like what images are most powerful to us which in Oakland that is a fist, right. We're not playing around with just a fist on everything like it was like oh like the one with the fist. And this, the red and white banners were and those are hand painted by members in our garage, like we thought we had another space come through for us and we're really worried that we couldn't read to space but have doing this in our union hall was a beautiful beautiful experience just having it full of life or it had never been like that before. How many people do you think it took to put it together. How did you have did you build a committee or was it sort of just Kamala wrangling everyone. Honestly, a lot of the times in OEA it's two or three people, or that that time it'd be like me Kamala and Shelby planning an entire art build I don't recommend necessarily doing it that way. Kamala and I were at an art build at OEA on Mother's Day for 12 hours once. I mean like don't live that way is what you know when, but sometimes it just starts with one person who believes in it. It gets another couple people to believe in it. And then once you pull it off one time now sometimes our members are doing their own art builds. Oh cool. Yeah, how many, how many members in their families do you think came to the first one. Oh, I don't, we probably kept track of the time it's been a couple dogs. It's been a couple years and a whole pandemic since then so I would guess like a couple hundred people came through that weekend. Wow, the union office was very full I had like some of my students and their families come through and visit and, and I like what would you had to say earlier about that that experience of being next to each other that sort of co regulating or collective experience is like really powerful emotionally. Could you talk about then how you use the art so you had all these beautiful banners beautiful signs. What did you use them for. We've used them. I mean, we had during our strike we marched every single day we had different actions every single day. We had those came like that big long banner you saw us with Dolores like we had different ones all the time where it's just the only a leadership holding the banner, taking over the street marching like marching to on the private street marching to the district offices, marching across East Oakland to a school that was slated for closure. And here in the crowd you can see like a couple of like beautiful oe members that's Andre there on the top is one of the teachers is on the hunger strike to save West like middle school. Yeah, like he's on a hunger strike right now. There's, there's always something happening in Oakland. We use some of those images there on the left you can see we use them when we started sharing our strategic plan with members members get excited when they people really respond to these images. People remember the experience of either creating the art together carrying the art, being on strike together and we reuse images and compile more images all the time. The ones that you see on the right are very recent. They're very recent from our school closure fight, we can see safe and racially the safe and racially just schools that Oakland students deserve, but that no cuts no closures in that sense of strike. That was one of the first ones we ever made. So they all live in the OEA garage. And we do pull them out and then create new ones, and those tall vertical ones that you see those are 17 feet tall. Wow. And we one time had for those that compal and I put on top of a truck and took to Sacramento, which was bananas don't do that. I love how tall they get on that building in the bottom right, you know, I mean you're really sort of like it's this real physical shows. Yes, it is like it's really impressive when you see those in person. And yet it makes a really powerful statement that's why I love seeing that big 15 something about going vertical is. You know, it's very thrilling in person and makes for great photos. Now we see because I do the media work for OEA, two things I think about is like the having that visual consistency, and sometimes just the fact that if people didn't see it it didn't happen. You can have the most amazing march with all of your friends and if you didn't get media coverage or if there's not a great photo. It's like it didn't happen, except for your, your target experiencing it. So really kind of help build OEA profile in the community and helped members to believe in their union. I'll never forget talking to my dad and my uncles were all transit mechanics, and they had and my uncle told me oh you're going on strike will do you have signs. And I was like, will we make our we make signs because we were there with our poster board or teacher poster parties like no you'll they'll know you're real when you have signs, like you work for the muni right you work for bar together, printed signs, and I could I was so excited to show him what we actually did. This is what we did on Mike. That to me is more powerful than that that mass produced sign. I love that you said that because I think we hear from a lot of folks who like struggle for their members to understand, you know if they're not already part of the core or part of you know the supporters that they, it's not easy to reach them and let them know sort of what work they're doing. I think people are always struggling for like social media content like they want to be thriving they know their members are on social media they know that they're an email you know they know that they're engaging with visual places but they don't have good photos right or we're using the same ones over and over again. So to be able to have this like wealth of images that I think it's powerful because they're not only, you know they're not only like rad shots of an action that you know that you're fighting and trying to, to improve the lives of your students and your members but it says exactly what you're fighting for in such a clear and quick way that message gets through and so whether it was, you know a member or somebody in the community. I just think that's that's a cycle that really seems to build on itself so I'm glad you spoke to that. I wanted to highlight that story you sort of dropped before that the school board member didn't said something like she didn't know that you all were serious about striking until she saw the sign production is that right. Oh yeah she, and it was on the news where it just showed us moving giant stacks of signs, putting them all against the wall, and are hanging up silk screens and it's just like repetition repetition repetition and she's like a school board member in the labor movement. She knew what that meant. She knew what she knew what that meant. This one on the left is from an action we did with SCI you that street mural Oakland schools, students deserve safe schools we do like sort of variations on on themes we've used that's right in front of this. They went to district offices, which they rent very very expensive offices, while we are you know we're in poorly ventilated window list classrooms. So bringing that to where they have to pass it, you know, every day. That was, that was pretty, pretty wild and we did another one just recently, like we're all over them constantly. The right is one that we did at the county board of education, you can see like a street mural there and we're with SCI you black organizing project reparations for black students campaign. It's a it's a big show of unity, and put in putting them all together like that we had a good photographer, one thing that we work with a lot getting them together like that people. People get excited, they do. Just one last question I see this coming up on the chat which is sort of a question about what if you've got small budgets or small sort of comms teams, you know, do you think this would still be replicable and we'll have Rachel and Josh answer that too but I was wondering is somebody who is in your union leadership, you know what, how would you sort of think about that in terms of budget and staff. The thing right now is me, I'm like the entire comms team and I'm a full time teacher I think they're going to start hiring some pros for some of the social media and like press release type stuff, but we did like Impala's good at getting the money. Like, all this money wasn't sitting here on our local. It's figuring out how to for us working with the National Education Association to get grant money to fund like our work with some of our partners like the art, the art build workers and the local artists we work with a lot David Solnit, right. It doesn't come from the sky, obviously money. So it's it's building connections with with your, if you have like a affiliate larger affiliate to figure out what kind of grant money might be available to do this kind of work. You use these images to show them what's possible. You continue to use these images to show them how powerful your work is to get more money to do more work. When Kapala is like asking for grant money she's like you're like either like art build stuff or like general social media stuff that we've created is what her reports are full of so that they can see what we do. So it's not just a bunch of words. Thank you so much for being helpful. Thank you. And it seems like there's a whole range like, of course, if you if you're able to like pay local artists for original art. You know that's an incredible expenditure but some of these two say no cuts no closures you know it's that some of them are. There are still screens by Fabiola Ramirez and like known artists. That was like dope that was amazing. But these are the ones the main ones you see right here that is just muslin really inexpensive muslin that we were like, like splitting and laying out and using pencils to, you know, I mean like just laying it out and painting it. Great. Thanks that's helpful to get the inside Union take on the financial side. Anything else Bethany I should ask about or anything else you'd want to say about how this, how integrating art changed the culture of OEA or the membership or your. From the moment we did the art build was the beginning of like having like our union office came to life. Before that I would go for an executive board meeting or you'd go there at a random time to pick up t shirts for your site. And then after that I would go in and there's like why the five meetings happening right now, like it became a place that was actually alive to people that people started to see it as their home. When you're when you have that experience of like being next to people and painting with them and meeting workers that you didn't know before. It's amazing so as much work as it is I would totally encourage people to, even if you're just starting small give it a shot and do it. It's beautiful. Thanks Bethany love these images and thanks for speaking to it was really excellent. My pleasure thanks for having me. Will you stick around. If folks have questions, no pressure if you can't. I can I'll stay around for. Yeah, we'll do. Whenever you have to go no worries. Thank you so much. And I'll hand it back to you Rachel and Josh. Hi again everybody thanks so much for that Bethany I was just nodding along I turned the camera off for a few minutes but thank you so much for giving us a little bit more of the inside scoop. It's been beautiful to watch the work in Oakland just like take over the media time and time again. We're going to share a little bit more now about the work that Josh and I have done in the fight for a green new deal. Josh you want to go on to the next slide. And we want to share this because it's an example that gives us some helps us see some of the different possibilities of visual strategy from teacher strikes and opens up our imagination in even wider to different options. So we'll talk just about this for five or 10 minutes and then use the rest of our time for questions I'm seeing some really awesome get right to a questions already in the chat. So some context. All the slides were about to show you took place in the few years before COVID hit when the green new deal went in a course of months from an obscure concept to basically a household name or a thing that was getting chanted in the street. And we obviously didn't win a green new deal yet yet. But the session is not a political briefing about the status of climate justice legislation thank goodness. But we feel that there's a lot to learn from this case study so we want to bring it to y'all. And for some context of Josh and my role. We spent about two years working very closely with sunrise movement, who are a youth led climate justice movement that we've mentioned a few times with hundreds of chapters around the country that played a major role in putting the green new deal on the map. They'll also working very closely with other movement groups that Josh and I ended up supporting in the process. And here you can see Raven and Brian to awesome youth sunrise leaders that we worked with in their t shirts. I'm passing it to you for the next one right Josh. Um, Oh, great I'm off me. Oh, we lost Josh. I bet he'll be right back this has been happening a couple of times. Otherwise. Hmm, maybe we can answer a question while we wait for him. How does that sound. Oh, oh, thanks for your patience. Well, that was great. Oh, technological point was what makes us human to each other through the screen. We were the screen. And this is doing something weird. Sorry y'all bear with technical difficulties. Be back in one second. All right. Can you see that now. Yeah bump up one slide before that though. All right. So back to it. This is an image of the national speaking tour that sunrise led to pressure politicians to commit to back in the real deal. This is in the spring right after the real deal is announced is still very much like DC legislation. That's representative pressly speaking there. And what you're seeing here is that this backdrop is built from demonstration science. Things that could be taken out into the street. And what that does is it makes sure that this event is larger than any speaker that's on the stage and Bernie was on the stages so like it needed to be it needed to make the movement more powerful. And when the politicians would walk out on here it was clear that the star of the show is regular working people. The audience could feel that empowerment out of it. And footage off of this tour got used in articles on the green deal for years because it was quite a while after the green deal isn't it. And because sunrise spent a lot of time working on coalition actions a side effect of really emphasizing the visuals as part of the strategy was that leaders who have been trained in staging techniques, we're then lending their skills to coalition actions they were part of like really giving young people a space to help overall movements feel more power by having all kinds of really sharp, your media genic events like you're seeing a DC rally up here on the top right, but sunrise kids were the people who are most effective at being the most staged that. And a lot of those groups were then coming to sunrise to get that very disciplined look whether or not it was in any way the look was related to some rise of the event was related visually to some of us. What you're seeing here, this is an example of using local imagery to build power for a broader coalition. This is a collaboration we did with artists who live and work in Detroit shout out to Nick Pozzan and Darius paper, who designed the banner and the fist you're seeing above. And you're seeing the typography here is from old but all the body shops in the bottom left, and the fists are pulled from the auto workers mural. And this is an example of really using local imagery to create a sense of a bigger movement or movement that was really accountable to local space, because it was pulling from the literal like streets of Detroit. So as the movement for the Green New Deal. grew sunrises role was often to escalate. And we want to share the story because we've been sharing a lot of examples of rallies or marches. And we think often that the more serious and rigorous that we can be about staging practices. When we take escalated action the more that we can continue to build power, instead of letting it drop off art isn't just for your marching the street it's also for those escalated situations where people are risking a rest or other kinds of ways of of turning up the heat. This is an image of an action we took while to occupy Nancy Pelosi's office to demand that she introduced climate legislation. While this image is going on this is in the hallway outside her office a few dozen sunrises are inside her office occupying, but this image in the hallway just got just as much attention so we want to talk about it. On the right you see a diagram we made for the action beforehand in preparation. And everyone would line up to give their letter to Nancy Pelosi that was the story of the action hundreds of young people with their own letters about what they love and stand to lose to climate change, waiting to get into her office to deliver it. But the problem is that that image of people lining up did not look very powerful. It was a little line in a big wide hallway. So we train people ahead of time to line up on both sides, and to take turns stepping to the middle of the shop to fill that blank spot in the floor and make clear to the media that that was the spot to take the photo just by. Just by the, the power of the situation you could see with your eyes you don't even have to point. This is where I should stand to see the action. What you're seeing here is that what makes this image powerful is those yellow rectangles going way off into the distance right like off over the horizon, and to pull that off everybody in the shot had to be really present lean back coats behind them signs up facing the right way, people in the back are just as essential to this image looking powerful and disciplined, and it helped create a situation in which hundreds of young people had a critical role to play in the action, and if they weren't going to get into her office. So it was a plan that didn't just build a good photo though this photo went everywhere and was used for a lot of recruitment and sunrise movement. It also made a really electric experience for participants, holding the line together. Another teachable story in this action is that it's in a Congress congressional office building. So signs weren't allowed. So we had every young person put their letter in an envelope, and we printed the message of our action on the envelope. So we went through security, we said, oh no it's not a sign it's a letter see it says dear Democrats on one side. There's a letter inside, and that was the only way this action could happen the visual strategy is literally what made the rest of the strategy possible. Next. As sunrise movement kept growing job there was too many awesome actions for Josh and I to be in the mix of nearly all of them. So we pivoted and we built this whole national training program for action art leads who were skilled up in those four phases we named initially identity creation art production distribution action staging. And this grew the movement's ability to command power so exponentially. I don't have stories about it for days but I wanted to lift up a cup, a learning of ours, which is that, in addition to the movement, looking and feeling sharper and more powerful we also noticed that once we built this art leads training system. People will get trained up through our program, and then make a leap to high levels of leadership in other kinds of work within sunrise movement. So we had to lead roles conflict mediation roles coordination roles, because the act of developing their leadership to get ready for art production developed so many different kind of central skills, logistical skills strategy brain relational organizing understanding communications work and it was all very transferable more than we'd anticipated to helping build the movement overall to include this incentivize movement. The union were to take on a project like this. The point we're making here is that the opportunity to have an art committee at a local level creates a potential new entry point for people who have different interests, or for younger or newer union members who don't see themselves in the roles in the community, but who might be creative or want to have fun and work with paint, and that building space for them through an art committee can be a way into the union and a way to build their investment in the union and build their skills to match the needs. Next. Just in conclusion what we saw is that investing in visual strategy and staging particularly and in visual leadership development for visual strategy really grew the movement for Green New Deal to keep doing amazing things and deliver on that wonk principle and help grow skilled leaders that will be in in many movements for years ahead and change what the public's idea with understanding what's possible was. We've never been so close to climate justice legislation I really believe for another time. Last slide. We're at the end of our training. I love this. It looks like we've got a lot of awesome art activists on the call ready and also reach out if we can help. Here's our email address. And some of you are asking some specific questions that we might or might not get into, but we have a lot of tips about sourcing paint and fabric and taking photos and working with photographers on our Instagram. That's what it's there for. So I'm going to put in the chat again feedback form that we'd love if you had a second to fill out or if you want to reach out to us with more specific ways that's a great place to start. And I'll kick it back to Sarah for some Q&A. Excellent. I have seen a couple things in the chat. And I will go ahead and pull some of those but please go ahead and either use the Q&A function or the chat if we have some time for that. Jake asked earlier, when is it effective strategic to use satire street theater and creative direct actions in a campaign and why. This also suggests to me like, you know, something I think we talk about it labor notes is sort of, we kind of try to push back on the like tactic first approach and we kind of try and think about like your, your, your goal and your target. And then you, you know, you figure out what's going to be most effective to that but I'd like to hear your perspective. This isn't a direct answer but one of the things that we often run into is people will have in their head and the term that I usually hear an art action action that is about the creativity, and like that that is the visual action. And those are great, not not hating on them, but visuals are part of literally every action and the bulk of actual visual work is not super creative original tactics, but just doing a good job of telling a story at the rallies and marches that make up most of our campaigns. As far as satire and stuff go I think for me it's whenever it matches the story that you're trying to tell. Yeah that's what I'd say, similar to what Sarah was saying, a lot of the time we start people get a creative idea in their head and they start a really fine tune level and we like really like to start visual strategies kind of strategy start with your goals, what are you trying to do, then pick some strategies and pick tactics to match it so if you are if you end up with a strategy where you're trying to shame the boss. And there could be a real place for satire in there. I'd be careful about matching your production techniques to match your strategy. Right, because like, if you pick a satire strategy, and then you have a super open participatory fun art build where everyone brings their kids and makes things that look cute. It doesn't carry that threat. So you might need a more centralized production technique that looks creepy or scary or serious to match. You know I'm getting into the weeds little bit here to match a satire strategy. And I think Josh and I are careful about when we use theatrical tactics because it requires a lot of discipline to pull off and it and for the, the seriousness of the situation to come through. And we both over time have kind of shed a lot of them, maybe more interesting parts of our work like you'll see those really powerful images from the teachers unit or just just two colors on plain white fabric. And we focus on getting that right a lot of the time because it builds power. It does when you were talking about the staging part because again create and I think creative direct action is a real spectrum like creative for, you know, a union of artists is going to be different than creative for, you know, a union of electrical workers but because, you know, we're all starting from different places. And I think it's going to be really impactful. It even made me think when you were talking about staging though just like even when we're doing like a march on the boss with five people. If anyone's been a part of an action where you like get to your destination and you haven't talked about like where to stand or who's going to talk first and like how you sort of can stand there and fumble. You know, because you haven't like thought through all of the, like what would be the most powerful or the most effective way to carry through your tactic once you've made it to the march, you know, the boss's office. I feel like the, you're sort of bringing this ethos of like how are you bringing through and thinking through every possible step of your tactic, including at the end when you've documented it and shared it. And so I think, I think you're right but like bringing those fundamentals and it's part of the creative part. So that question to I see from Renata. What are some questions you asked to an organizing committee when you're trying to determine the visual strategy. I love this one. One of the things. So, so part of determining the visual strategy is determining visual identity I'm going to jump right to that because I like that part but there are there are bigger strategic questions as well. One of my favorite ones there is asking people to talk about the struggle and the injustice without ever mentioning the opponent or the direct issue that we're working on. So for labor, the actual labor stuff, because we get really lazy about not talking about the broader aspects of who we are, because we can just talk about how bad Jeff Bezos is. And it is a really good job of invisibilizing our story by telling the opponent story so talking about who we are as a big one and talking about who we are outside of the specific injustices that we all already have the time points on. Because if you saw the like the locally based examples we're doing of like a local visual identity that stuff comes out, not from talking about the exact struggle but by talking about the things that you're fighting for, and like the community there and that's where that power comes from. And one of the things in talking about what your broader visual strategy is on a strategic level is just getting really grounded in what is the arc of the campaign that we're doing. And what is our comm strategy for that campaign and what is our recruitment strategy to get people out to that action, and where are the holes in those because if you start really looking at them usually there's a hole two weeks before the action when people are making up their mind and how enthusiastically like whether to ask other family members and people to show up where you need the visual strategy to kick in, because the organizing strategy and the comm strategy don't have the things they need in that moment. Rachel anything to add. I think Josh, everything would be repetition. I'm just seeing the chat a couple people are like, what kind of paint do I use so I put in a link to the Instagram post that we now send folks to because it's a very common question of with like every everything that we think people often ask about paint. You're not alone if you don't know where to start. Yeah, your Instagram is very helpful. I like to just speaking to to and it also reminds me of the teachers who you know the Chicago teacher sort of early on did the schools our students deserve and the sort of like talking about what we were fighting for, you know, nurses in every school and how powerful that was, and it created these visuals of like drawing the sort of beautiful communities in the beautiful schools we want. And being being for something can be really powerful. I'm, I'm really curious about this question that cat just asked if I can go on someone myself. And it also speaks to one that happened earlier I think Lizzie was the name of the person who Lizzie was talking about. What do we do if I don't have a lot of money or a lot of capacity, which I'm sure is a question a lot of us have. And cat has this question. I encourage members who are worried when the action is creative or art related because they don't consider themselves artistic tips to include or encourage their participation so this isn't a barrier. So, I think both of these are kind of questions about where to start in the reality of the world. And when we're building with new folks, even though it's like, oh my goodness we could use art for so many things and then we have these big ideas about campaigns. We often start by saying let's take one action together. And that way it, it can be clearer or more bounded what we're making visuals for because it's specific to it. We're going to be in this place the banner should be this big to block the street, or like here's the demand for this moment and learn how to build together. And that can open up an opportunity to say like hey like, let's just do an experiment. Let's see how it goes and you can prove your point. So from there what I'd say is, you don't need like, Bethany was kind of joking but you don't need a lot of people to do the initial stages. Often we're pretty bounded about, let's not have a committee of 20 people brainstorm our visual identity let's pick two or three leaders who really understand our union, and have them have a couple meetings to visualize, or to come, who we are, and then have people plug in when you're just painting in the lines, or have more people plug in once the art is done, and you're in the street, and start people start people can pick up the bug at a different place in the cycle, and then have more willingness to go deeper on the on the visioning. Josh you agree with me on that point or. I think one of the other things with the question about if you're on a shoestring budget. How do you do this stuff. It doesn't take an artist to paint signs and banners. Often it's even better to be done with someone who has alternative skills, someone who was a painter or someone who was a seamstress like a house painter. You know these are not skills that require a high level of creativity they require a high level of being able to fabricate a thing. So you may not need an artist, but if you're working with artists in labor organizing and if you're working with artists and social movements in general, there's really three ways artists get paid. One is to get paid. One is to get paid by a bigger organization like a lot of our larger clients explicitly overpay us so that we can do volunteer work. And the other one is they're doing it as a hobby and it is personally fulfilling for them. It's fulfilling for them as an artist, which means that you might get a lot of free labor off of that and great volunteering and definitely use that but that person will then probably take less direction and be less accountable to the movement because they're not being paid. And so if you can't afford to pay an artist. Get used to working with someone who is sort of doing their own thing that can be a great arrangement, but like understand it as that's the trade off for arts being traditionally underfunded. Absolutely advocate that artists get if you're asking someone to do visual strategy work, pay them the way you pay a strategist, if you're asking them to do arts production pay them the way you pay someone who is doing a similar thing, which may be nothing it may be free and then don't pay him it's great. A whole spectrum here. So we have locals, I mean, Bethany was referencing, you know, being able to get grants from your international. You know, we've, we've seen unions where, you know, folks can can call in from their state affiliate or regional affiliate and get support on things and other folks don't have that some, some people do have big budgets, and others don't but I do think this is something that can happen at every scale. I do also I like James question here I think we probably just have time for one or two more. We have budgetary constraints time availability. James says he's working with people who might be working at all different shifts. So how would you maybe do a collective art production, where you've got people coming in at at all different times, I think this could make for a really fun sort of marathon event but I don't know if you guys have any experience with that. I mean, this is an interesting challenge we haven't, I would love to work with workers that this is a challenge that we would need to solve together. The first thing that comes to mind to me is like there's different steps of production, and some of them are easier to do and some of the caught like a roving meeting, right where it's like when everyone can't show up at the same time I just have lots of one on one conversations. You could do a visioning process through that, right, even if folks can't come to the art build, or you could use a durational tactic, right like you could do a sit in overnight so that everyone takes a turn. And a lot of people think that the only way to get folks excited about visual strategy is if they do the whole arc, the visioning and the making and the signs in the streets, and the distribution right like that. It doesn't, but that actually found that any one of those moments alone have done well can build a lot of identity, people often feel tremendous pride in the art that they held at an action. So it might be about picking a tactic that people can be except absorbed into over multiple periods of time, or might be about like harvesting people's opinion about the vision. Those are two forms of moments that seem easier. This is kind of a obtuse answer, but for me if your union if your workers if your community cannot all meet each other in the same physical space. The number one question you should ask is how do you make people feel like they have met each other in the same physical space how do you get them that sense of community, and it might be include everybody in the art build. It might be have one group make the signs have another group be carrying the signs into the action. It might be make real damn sure that you're getting good photos and videos that make people feel like they were there. And then distributing those out to the people who will work in night shift and can't participate, like including your members is that is a distribution strategy thing too. And so definitely if you're already working with that different shifts limitation, think about a calm strategy that's going to make everybody feel like a big part of the movement. Movements maybe the wrong word here but like part of the same labor struggle. I say we probably need to wrap up now. I want to real quick. Of course, thank Rachel and Josh and if you have follow up questions they have included a lot of ways to get in touch with them both their email address in the chat as well as that feedback form maybe if you all want to drop that again. I hope you'll share that with us as well we'd love to hear sort of what what people got from this and if people collaborate on this, we were joking on the labor note stuff. If more people use this visual strategy, you know, tools and and got good at it we would have such fabulous photos to run in our magazine and on our website so we hope that you will take them up on this and use it because it does make for striking visuals and we love that. So thank you again to you to thank you for everyone for supporting labor notes again check out our website labor notes.org. We are an independent little media and organizing project that, but we're so lucky to have the support of the labor movement and a fabulous folks in the rest of social movements who reach out to us as well. That's any thank you so much for joining us it was so impactful to have someone who'd gone through this process from the labor side join us and Rachel Josh anything else you'd like to say I'll let you wrap it up. Thank you so much. I wish we could all get off mute. That's that's my wish. Thank you for talking to you. And please make better signs so that labor notes can have better imagery. That's actually building thing. Oh, we will make this. So Josh Rachel mentioned that they would make the slide deck available. So we'll go out to them for that and we will also post this recording on our, our website and social media. So folks weren't able to make it or if you want to share parts of it and show people what what it is that look loud can do can use that. Great. Okay, well with that we'll wrap up. Thank you all for joining us. Make sure you continue to fight the boss and we'll hopefully see you at our conference. Thanks everyone. We'll be there.