NAA Comms: Our Voice & Our Lane

NAA’sInternal VoiceUse and Lane

Only

Our Voice

The perspective and tone of Never Again Action.

• Direct and honest
• • “Hey, I’m just going to level with you, here’s what’s going on” 
  • Cut through the noise
  • Be human, not non-profity 
• Heaviness 
• • Really feel the weight and stakes of what’s happening
  • • The historical weight
    • The emotional weight 
  • Really let it sink in
• Bold, unafraid to be confrontational 
• Sharp moral lines
• • There’s us and there’s them. Which side are you on? There’s no gray area when it comes to fascism, to detaining and deporting people.
• Respect everyone and especially people who are harmed by the systems we’re fighting
• • We write as though a directly impacted person is sat next to us and let that guide our respect for immigrants of all statuses and people with all experiences of incarceration
  • We use language that aligns with disability justice principles
• Mischief at times 
• • Our boldness and directness give us license sometimes to be mischievous 
  • • Like ‘Flood ICE’, would hate to fuck that up for you, assholes
    • Pranking the school bully vibe 
• Bringing a sense of urgency
• • Telling personal stories with real-time stakes, talking about the ever-increasing number of deportations 
• Really value our audience's time and attention
• • Let’s make this snappy! Looking for short and interesting over long and technical
• Pride in our chapters, our work, and our organizing
• • Boom, we just did this! 
• Not accepting the legitimacy of the things around us
• • The government is fucked up
  • Capitalism is fucked up
  • Aware of the context in which we’re operating 
• Jewish!
• • Driven by our Jewish values
  • Driven by our Jewish history

• Avoid:
• • Jargon. 
  • • We try to write things in pretty simple language 
    • We want to be conscious of things that need to be explained, but want to minimize the number of those things. Try to be precise & concise when we do explain things (instead of rushing through / writing something long and boring) 

Our Lane

The things we talk about. 

• Narrative interventions
• • For example; “The US has a deportation system, not an immigration system”, “Never again means never again for anyone” 
  • Reframe conventional thinking and put forward a new story that drives the change we need  
• Pushing forward our campaign
• Individual stories of immigrants that have been/are being mistreated, other stories that are moving and show the horrors of the immigration system
• Amplifying our partners 
• Amplifying local chapters 
• New angles
• • Big report that we thought was really illuminating
  • Stuff that we’d actually send to our friends 
  • • You’re only going to share if it felt important to you and you thought it would mean something to you 
• News
• • Amplifying news that fits our narrative 
  • Shitty things at the border, internal immigration, etc 
• Things that make you FEEL
• • Don’t get caught up in other stuff, pay attention to what is moving to you
  • Showing the emotional impact that stuff is having on us
  • • Behind the curtain / we’re real people vibes  
• Highlighting cool tactics
• • Inspiring brave actions in other movements 
• Humility / passing the mic vibes 
• • Bringing in people to talk about important things we’re not qualified to talk about 
  • Variety of voices 
• Warnings 
• • Risks of a coup 
  • Early warning system for things that aren’t getting as much attention as they should be (i.e. convoy stuff is scary)
  • Bridge between antifascist analysts and normies 
• NOT our lane
• Anything we don’t think is going to happen (like the many things moving through Congress that never had a chance of passing). We don’t create false hope or put faith into systems of power that won’t create the change we need 
• Things that are not in our theory of change (unless there’s a really good reason)

Our “Social” Activity – 

How we talk to other people on social media.

• Be discerning:
• • Not everything is worth our time, and not everything carries urgency
  • Always consider the goals when responding to people – ask yourself, “What would be the purpose of responding?”
  • • Would it be to clear up misconceptions? 
    • Would it be to further educate our public?
    • Would it be to answer a legitimate question from an audience member?
    • Will our responses get our messages across and reinforce them? 
    • Is there a net benefit to responding versus not responding?
    • Will our responses fit “our voice?” (See above)
    • Are we accepting the risk of trolls to our pages?

• If we want to respond to an antagonist, ask yourself the following:
• • Is this an obvious troll with a newly created profile and/or very few followers?
  • • You can ignore this person.
  • Is this a member of the opposition with a large platform? (A GOP politician, conservative commentator/influencer, etc) 
  • • You can respond to this person/QRT them.

• We don’t engage in negative responses more than once. 
• • We say our piece in the OP, reinforce it in the response, and we don’t do any more. 
  • Let the other person give us the attention and boost our content!
• It’s better to not respond at all than to respond poorly–  
• • Err on the side of caution and if you’re not sure, ask for feedback from someone about your content!

• Tone:
• • Unapologetically pro-immigrant
  • We boldly and straightforwardly question anti-immigrant responses to our post and challenge the normalization of this rhetoric 
  • Stay consistent within our (above) “voice”/tone guidelines!

• On snarkiness:
• • It can be appropriate, depending on the context!
  • Display sharp moral lines representative of our “voice”
  • Pranking the school bully vibes

• If you’re considering responding to something with a snarky tone, ask yourself the following: 
• • Would we be punching up or punching down?
  • Are we clearly defending the humanity of immigrants, while being snarky? 
  • • If our wording loses that humanity, choose different wording, or don’t engage.
• On irreverence: 
• • We stick to mocking fascists, Republicans, and white, anti-immigrant people 
  • We don’t take the perspective of BIPOC folks unless it’s explicitly stated that a Black or Indigenous person or other POC is taking the mic 
  • We typically take a Jewish perspective and, while Jewish people come in all races and backgrounds, most of our audience will assume a white person is behind the words.

• As a standard practice, we don’t make jokes from the perspective of the people being marginalized by the policies we’re addressing. 
• • Our perspective is as allies, except when addressing antisemitism.
  • When needed, we will explicitly state how we/the person making the post is directly affected by the harmful policies that are the subject of the content. 

• Reinforce our messaging in our space.
• • All responses to comments on our posts should reinforce our current campaign, or the message of the original post 

• Uplift our partners!!
• • Express support for our partners in their own space and boost them in our space!
  • • Like, comment, and share their content! 
    • • Instagram stories 
      • Retweet, or quote-retweet them
  • With permission, and appropriate context, tag them when relevant 
  • • (if sharing on Instagram stories, or in captions on an Instagram or Twitter post)

• How to handle emotions
• • Social media can be an emotional rollercoaster! 
  • Sometimes, emotions can get the better of us – here’s some guidelines on how to keep things in check when logged into a Never Again Action account: 
  • • We don’t want to respond just because we want to be right
    • Be logical – how are we furthering the movement with what we say?
    • Reminding yourself: It is about solidarity and not personal victories!
    • It’s easy for us to miss when we cause harm, and can lead to accidental harm, as not-directly affected people – please be aware of this!