Messaging Roundup: From Community Action to Ms. Piggy
(Image credit: sharonfrancesme on Instagram)
Hello Resisters!
Last Saturday was something of a milestone for this group. Prompted by Hands Off NYC’s Day of Community Action, we held our first public-facing event. Of course, we’ve had plenty of encounters with the public before this, through our participation in protests, our Visibility Brigades, and our DIY Freedom Fridays, but this was different. This time, we set up shop for a few hours in a “town square” in the middle of Kensington, with our big beautiful signs, flyers, whistles, zines and buttons. With our resistance playlist blasting, we invited people to join planned activities like business canvassing and zine folding, and most importantly, we talked with anyone and everyone who came by about the ways we, collectively, are trying to fight fascism and protect each other. What’s more, we had partners join us—neighborhood businesses, a local Bangladeshi sports club, someone from Councilmember Shahana Hanif’s office, and a representative from ImmSchools who traveled all the way from Queens.
We talk a lot in the roundup about “social proof,” the idea that people look to the actions of others to figure out how to behave, especially in uncertain situations. Saturday, we offered that proof: when this city that we love is under attack, we meet each other in the streets, we share resources, we educate each other, we dance, and yes, we stand up and fight back.
Photo Credit: Kate Fermoille
By any measure, the day was a huge success. As many as 200 people stopped to find out what we were all about, and walked away better equipped to keep themselves and their neighbors safe. And we have about 40 new additions to this ever-expanding group. We are so happy to have you!
Since we have some new readers, here’s a bit of housekeeping. The Messaging Roundup is a weekly dispatch from Kate D. and me, and sometimes guest contributors. Here, we share ideas on how to make sense of these times we’re in, and how to effectively convey the urgency of this moment to others so they’ll be moved to join us in trying to do something about it.
We also have a lively Signal channel called “Amplify THIS!” where folks can share good messaging they’ve come across, or maybe created themselves, from stickers seen on a lamppost to billboards, performance art, and Instagram posts. We go messaging-adjacent a lot, too. It’s a fun space. If you want to join us, email Kate or me.
That’s Ms. Piggy to You
By Kate Dalton
If you’re a woman or have ears this week, you might have caught the person elected to the highest office in the land responding to a female reporter’s question about the Epstein files by saying, “Quiet, Piggy.” Now, we all probably come to the term “pig” or “piggy” with various associations, and the following are a few of mine.
Image Credit: Lindsey Boylan on Instagram
Growing up as a child of the 80’s, I of course had a fondness for Jim Henson’s muppets, a fondness that was aided by the spinoff cartoon series Muppet Babies hitting me at a young age. And, like a lot of people, I loved Miss Piggy. Of course, she was ridiculous, but that was part of her charm. She was an unapologetic diva simply searching for, nay demanding, the adulation she rightfully deserved. Okay, she wasn’t without her flaws, and we certainly needed wholesome Kermit to help take her in, but there was a degree of ironic appeal there, a self-referrential quality to this character in the form of an animal associated with ugliness but who simply came across as glamorous, vain even.
Fast forward to Piggy encounter # 2, twenty-some years later: I’m a high-school English teacher co-teaching a special education class with a friend. At the time, the class was reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. This co-teacher friend and I were very cognizant of how students perceived us, and we worked hard to blur the line between general ed teacher and special educator, and by association, between typical students and students with IEPs. For this reason, when reading aloud Lord of the Flies, we decided it would be important that I as the general educator play the role of Piggy, the picked-on and tormented character that is eventually cruelly hunted down by his fellow island dwellers. Though the character comes off as sort of pathetic, there’s no doubt that anyone who has ever experienced cruelty would see a look of familiarity in poor Piggy.
Now over the course of reading the novel, one of my thoughtful, creative, and boisterous students started to identify with Piggy. (He even made an adaptation of Biggie’s classic song “Hypnotize” with the lyrics “Piggy, Piggy, Piggy, can’t you see?”) The student, whom I’ll call M, happened to be in my advisory classroom, a homeroom of sorts. And clearly Piggy was on his mind, because around the time we were reading the text, he referenced the character when we participated in a sharing activity in advisory where we all wrote something nice under the name of each person in our group. Under my name, he wrote in bright bubbly pink letters, “Piggy.” Now, this could have been insulting, but if you knew the student, and you knew our class, this was high praise, and also a little funny. My student, in their classically M. way, was acknowledging that I took up that Piggy part, the difficult but necessary one. In that respect, it was an homage to giving voice to the bullied and subverting expectations around strength and a whole host of other things. I’m not entirely sure I’m doing the moment justice, but there was no way to see it as anything but sweet.
And here we are this week, when the president of the United States shut down a challenging question on the Epstein files from a female reporter with “Quiet, Piggy.” It’s in the midst of my varying degrees of outrage that my mind goes to Miss Piggy and the bubbly letters in pink next to my name spelling out that same term as high praise. I, and I think we, need these multiple associations to diffuse or disarm some of Trump’s barbs. I’ve certainly seen a fair share of online content appropriately mocking the insult and the president, which I think are entirely warranted.
But at the same time, our horrified reactions are justified and necessary too. Once again, just because what this cartoonish president says is ridiculous does not make it less dangerous. Referring to a woman in this way, in her professional capacity, intending to call her ugly, only highlights the heinousness of the speaker. And they’re not just words–they’re representative of a larger disregard for human beings, one that enables the violence of this regime, whether we’re threatening to execute members of Congress, abducting community members, condoning the state-sponsored murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or the acting in countless other ways to abandon due process and our humanity for the sake of fascism.
Returning to our earlier associations, there’s no Miss Piggy joy in Trump’s words–the only delight comes in our metacognitive response. But there is a connection to Golding’s Lord of the Flies–there’s the theme that cautions us to beware of our baser mob instincts and of the targeting of the most vulnerable. As always with this regime, we have to do many things at once. We must take him at his word, we must deflate the power of those words with mockery and scorn, and we must continue to work at writing a different story.
Image Credit: tinypricksproject on Instagram
Amplify this
Resistance Art Alert! Check out Fall of Freedom
We Ain’t Buying It! No Target, Amazon or Home Depot from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Shop local!
“Protect Rogers Park,” Chicago created a model all of us can follow to thwart neighborhood ICE raids.
Whistles are now an NYC thing. Let’s keep it going.
With grief and gratitude, for disability activist Alice Wong
The NYT says women ruined the work place. Women clapped back.
To all of the plants growing through concrete (h/t Cristina)
Antonia Scatton brings us the messaging most Americans want from their leaders. (Hint: It’s not about left vs center.)
Jesse Wells’ “Join ICE” on Colbert (h/t Kate F)
“Mutual aid is slow, messy, human”: some thoughts on how we practice community care
And as always,
‘Til Next Time,
Julie, Kate & the Messaging Team
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