So, how do we help regular folks picture themselves in the place of individual people being abducted by the regime AND resist the temptation to throw others under the bus? There’s evidence that winning messages expose the greedy few’s “divide and conquer” trick - see Ian Haney Lopez’s work for more.

A related downside lies in the way centre-left politicians tend to celebrate individual wins while buying into their opponents’ narrative. In Australia this “please all, please none” approach is typified by the centre-left Labor party’s slogan “tough on borders without being weak on humanity”. Yuck!

We saw this happening at the very beginning of the #HometoBilo campaign. But to their credit, the local organisers and spokespeople from this deeply conservative Australian town never gave in to the temptation to throw other migrants and refugees under the bus.

Sounds easy, right? But there are downsides. As powerful as it can be to show how individual people subjected to state-sanctioned abduction are moms, dads or students who are welcomed by their neighbours, some folks will be tempted to contrast “their” people with a supposedly “criminal” other.

Without photos or names, the Sacket Harbor community simply and powerfully evoked the humanity of the family they fought for. Like the rural Australians who led the #HometoBilo campaign, they referred to them as friends, neighbours or students, helping the rest of us picture ourselves in their place

One of the first lessons we had to learn (well, after a decade we’ve *almost* learned it) is to resist the urge to respond to our opponent’s firehose of lies by saying “NOT illegal” or “NOT criminal”. As George Lakoff (@theframelab.bsky.social) says, when you negate the frame, you evoke the frame.

#HometoBilo is one in a series of victories won by the Australian refugee rights movement in the last 10 years. We still have a long way to go, but when it comes to language and narrative, we owe a lot to the wisdom of US allies like @anatosaurus.bsky.social

In Australia, it took four years of community-led campaigning, relentless legal action and a change of government to bring the Nadesalingam family home to Biloela. Incredibly, Sackets Harbor did it in just 10 days, under a regime which is using state-sanctioned abduction to repress dissent.

The Sackets Harbor community’s swift victory in winning the release of a family taken from their town shows striking similarities to the #HometoBilo campaign here in Australia, which was also initiated by members of a conservative rural community.

Notice how they also anchor their message in widely-shared values like “friends”, “family”, “safety”, “home”, “community”. This affirmation of values opens up a space of common agreement where everyday folks are better able to face up to the urgent and distressing reality you need them to attend to.

Here’s a great example - in their March 30 press release on the family taken from Sackets Harbor, @thenyic.bsky.social use honest, direct and emotionally expressive language like “wrongfully abducted” and “snatched from their home and disappeared”