How to Make Policy Personal

One of the most effective ways to encourage people to take action or support your issue or candidate is to make what’s at stake personal. Show people how their lives will change and make it clear what’s on the line for them, their family, or loved ones.

Making policy personal is one of the fastest ways to break through and help ensure you accomplish your policy goals and this article will outline how to do it.

Show Don’t Tell

This may seem obvious, but often a debate focuses on words when it will often come down to emotion. A powerful message is important, but that message must show people why they should care rather than telling them why. Most of the time this is done through stories or anecdotes that highlight how someone’s life changed for the better or was negatively impacted because of a specific policy or law. This puts the audience in someone else’s shoes. Use a story or anecdote to illustrate the serious consequences of the issue.

Similarly, a public display can often serve as a powerful statement that helps put the issue into perspective. When people see imagery that evokes a feeling or when they are forced to acknowledge something, it demands their attention and forces them out of the same perspective into a new one. It’s why activists often create large art, photos, or words calling for action or reminding people of an issue. This is often seen around Capitol Hill. For example, shortly after President Donald Trump’s election, Greenpeace activists climbed a construction crane across from the White House and unfurled a large flag that read RESIST. Other activists have put up large photos and images of people affected by policy as a way to grab attention for their cause and placed them around Capitol Hill for legislators and their staff members to see and to remind them of the real-world consequences of policy. Regardless of a specific cause or action, visibility is powerful. Often, policy can become decoupled from people and this is a way to reconnect laws and legislation to people and the lived consequences.

Numbers and Data

Numbers can be a persuasive tool to illustrate the seriousness of an issue. They can show a major demographic shift or illustrate the scope of a problem, or they can serve as proof that action must be taken to address an issue.

Contextualizing data, like the amount of money a household would save or earn, the number of people a policy would serve, the geographical area that would be impacted, within understandable reference points can make the data useful and comprehensible.

Numbers can create urgency and illustrate that the problem or solution is much larger than originally thought. Work to find powerful numbers that help provide perspective about your issue. This can be a great way to reinforce your message through data to help your target audience understand the problem and solution around your issue.

Get People Involved

One more strategy that can make policy more personal is organizing demonstrations. The more people show up, take action, or create a groundswell of support in their communities the more likely it is to capture the attention of others.

When people put their time and bodies on the line for an issue, others take notice, especially when they know some of the people participating. While civic demonstrations like marches or protests are often effective ways to capture media attention and control the narrative, there are other ways to show support.

Signs in yards or businesses, t-shirts or bumper stickers, fundraisers at schools, businesses, or within the community, public meetings or events that feature the voices of people advocating for an issue, group discussions, and more. There are all ways to engage the public and get people learning, talking, and thinking about an issue. Repetition of an issue is a great way to shift the public from disinterested or unaware to more involved. And when people learn and begin to understand the issue, it can make a major difference when it comes to breaking through and making policy feel more personal. When people repeatedly hear about an issue in their communities it can make a difference in their perception of an issue.

Making Marriage Equality Personal

Often, all of these tools are necessary to start to break through and make progress with the public. Think of some of the largest movements over the last 20 years – they have used all of these tactics in some form.

For example, the marriage equality movement employed all of these tactics to effectively change public opinion. Activists highlighted the personal stories of couples who wanted for years to marry their partners. Edie Windsor – the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor – became the face of the movement as she spoke about the importance of marrying her partner of more than 40 years who was sick and whom Edie cared for without receiving any spousal support. Her story and others like it were powerful anecdotes that people could relate to – Windsor helped people see that same-sex couples wanted to build a life and future together and under current policy they could not.

Numbers were a part of the movement, too, as couples highlighted the economic benefit marriage would bring their families. And finally, as the movement turned the tides of public opinion, people were encouraged to show their support. Social media was full of equality icons and people proclaiming that #loveislove. Not only did the campaign urge people to publicly display their support, but it urged people to talk about their gay brother, sister, daughter, or son who deserved the right to marry their partners. This public involvement helped push the issue forward and allowed states like Massachusetts to pass marriage equality legislation that paved the way for the Supreme Court decision.

Conclusion

By utilizing powerful anecdotes and data, and by getting others involved, you can help make policy more personal. Using these tools allows you to break through to people who are unfamiliar with the issue and encourage them to put themselves in a different perspective, educate them on the scope of the problem and why it deserves a policy solution, and then reinforce the public support that is on your side through activations or other shows of support. Using tools within each of these categories will help you turn bland policy into real, tangible change for people.