Making #GreenNewDealmaker
Political Storytelling With Sunrise Movement's Alex O'Keefe
Hey there--welcome (back) to the #GenGND Newsletter,
We have a very special edition for you this week, featuring an exclusive interview with the director of the latest viral video in the world of Green New Deal storytelling!
Last week Ed Markey put out an ad branding himself the #GreenNewDealmaker —And it’s garnered a lot of reactions you don’t normally see political spots getting…
Mashable described it as “Like a three-minute trailer for a Scorsese film.”
Slate called it “incomprehensibly thrilling.”
Politico made a lot out of the fact that the last line inverts JFK’s most famous sound bite.
And the ‘Godfather’ of the climate-movement, Bill McKibben, just called it maybe his “favorite political ad of all time” in his New Yorker Climate Crisis newsletter (which, if you’re not already reading, is a weekly ‘climate-must-have’ for your inbox!)
There was even some swooning over the fisherman wearing a #GND shirt in the ad…
….We agree Kate, we agree! And we feel like people aren’t paying enough attention to the fact that the “hawt fishahman” is actually a real-life oyster farmer, (...we <3 our '‘Aquahcultchah” here in New England...) who was filmed on the job for the ad by Sunrise Movement’s video director, and our pal, Sam Quigley!
Quigley directed the ad along with Alex O’Keefe, the creative director at Sunrise and one of the voices we feature prominently in Generation Green New Deal. Quigley and O’Keefe were also the masterminds behind the two viral ads for Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker, who lost a close primary race to Amy McGrath for the right to face off against Mitch McConnell, back in June.
Clearly the Sunrise video team has cracked the code for political storytelling and we wanted to try and understand that magic. O’Keefe and Quigley’s videos are masterpieces in building a new narrative for the Left — a narrative built around multiracial populism, re-appropriating American iconography, and just an overall “cool factor”. They’re firmly positioning themselves as the new ‘Mad Men of #GenGND’. So, Generation Green New Deal director Sam Eilertsen called up Alex O’Keefe to learn more about the Sunrise team’s creative process.
(LtoR) Sam Quigley, Sam Eilertsen, & Alex O’Keefe, in the good times before social distancing.
Here’s their conversation, edited for length and clarity:
Sam Eilertsen: So, Sam Quigley told our producer Nate Birnbaum that people have been asking him a lot about the creative process for the ad. And, (laughter) all Sam can think to say about it is “Well, Alex just hung out in Boston for awhile with only the last line in his head and watched The Departed a million times…” So, is that accurate? Where did the idea to invert JFKs famous line come from? (The last line of the ad is Markey saying “with all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.”)
Alex O’Keefe (AOK): My last name's O'Keefe, I'm Black, but I’m a quarter Irish. My grandparents looked up to the Kennedys, and that idea of “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” that idea of public service and being there for your community is one that really resonated with me and why my entire life has been spent organizing. But also it's such bullshit...People have been shaped to believe that it's shameful to ask things from this government that they pay for. My entire political journey has been about trying to remove the shame from welfare, trying to remove the shame from mutual aid and asking for more because that shame really plagued my family, growing up in poverty.
And yes, the last line sounds provocative. But what is controversial about that statement? When, you know, 200,000 people are dead and the government has neglected to even give nurses proper PPE, when people are getting evicted and the government has just disappeared, then it's really not a controversial statement….
EDITOR’S NOTE: Some folks found the last line to be a bit of a *slippery* slope..
…Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, even specifically cited the line as a big part of the reason she endorsed Senator Markey’s opponent, Rep. Joe Kennedy earlier this afternoon…
AOK: …but I really struggled to come up with anything besides the last line. I would tell people like, “okay, I know the vibe... Ed Markey is the last gunslinger. You know, he's a dealmaker but he's a dealmaker for the revolution." It’s taking the classic incumbency argument and using it in a populist way: “I put the deal on the table, but the people make it impossible to refuse." To mobilize for the Green New Deal, we need people to actually believe that the politicians we put in office can work with the movement to broker something revolutionary.
SE: So how did you come up with the rest?
AOK: Well, I called Ed Markey. The way he talked about his long career reminded me of The Kid Stays In The Picture, you can spot him all throughout history. I'd just be driving around Boston, yelling in an aggressive Bostonian accent with Sam Quigley, trying to get in the vibe. I still couldn't land the script, the subject was too vast. The speech didn't sound human, just sounded political. We didn't really write it until the night before we were going to film with Markey. Our friend Jeremy Ornstein was doing push-ups and hyping us up. And then we just riffed. I would start off like "there's an invisible contract we all signed at birth" and then Sam would have to make up the next line. Furious improvisation. We turned on Gimme Shelter, that's when I just got into it, I just freestyled the rest of the ad as Ed Markey, like I'm De Niro looking in the mirror in Taxi Driver. Supremely confident. People are yearning for confidence in the government. Whenever I had to stop to cackle, or Sam went "OHHH," like it was a rap battle, I knew I had hit the right line.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: O’Keefe provided the recording below, of part of the scripting session…)
AOK: Most political messaging is not based on free expression. It's based on data. It's based on a cynical computation of human emotions rather than actual communication, joking, and laughter -- the interactions we hold dear in our social lives. That's the kind of political messaging I try to create: optimistic, conversational, cinematic. Something regular people who aren’t politicos will enjoy. We even watched scenes from The Departed with Ed Markey to prep the speech. I have the most surreal job in politics, it's pretty nice.
SE: I saw a number of people on Twitter alluding to the fact that the opening of the ad is basically Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract theory.
AOK: Yeah. I was a philosophy student. In political messaging, you want to start with a narrative that people already believe, and then you want to build upon that towards your end. There are these "meta-narratives" everyone knows instinctively. Think about... there's "the invisible hand of the market," right? That is the mentality that drives capitalism. And it's something that is understood colloquially, even if your average American can't speak to the theory or even name it.
When people wear a mask, right? It's an invisible contract. We’re all signing on because we want to protect each other. When people social distance, they are opting in and perceiving this contract in visible ways for the first time. People believe that they work hard and they deserve something back. People get swayed towards visionary, socialist policies by a practical message that says you deserve this because you've already earned it. You filled the glass, so take a sip. You don't have to do anything special, you are enough.
SE: One thing that struck me is you have images of the Black Lives Matter protests, at the same time as the voiceover narration is referencing the American Revolution. It’s interesting, in the era of statues being torn down, of a broad re-examination of the sins of American history, to reclaim that history in service of multiracial populism.
AOK: If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it, it wouldn't feel as dramatic, but for an old white dude, who's been in Congress for a very long time to acknowledge this is not just as a protest, but a legitimate revolution, that’s powerful, that’s an ideological realignment.
You can't make a brand new narrative. It won't resonate. The left has been very bad at narrative for a very long time. Liberals have been stuck on a narrative that relies on pointing the finger like, “Don't you feel sympathetic? Why don't you feel sympathetic?” And that has alienated a broad swath of people. But, if you can actually connect social justice to things like The Departed, Jimi Hendrix, Old Town Road, cool guys from the Seventies who have nice suits and cool hair... that is going to bring a lot more new people on board.
I think we should do a lot more popular education about eras like Reconstruction, because it helps white people be like, “Oh, there was an alternative. Maybe my great-great-great-grandfather was that kind of white person and I could be too.”
SE: Like the Wide Awakes?
AOK: Exactly. It's not to erase your privilege. It's not to negate colonialism or white supremacy or patriarchy, but it is to say that there's always an option throughout history and you are faced with that option right now.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING WITH US, ALEX! #GenGND <3’s YOU!
NOW, ON TO YOUR ‘GREEN NEW(s) READING LIST’…
We’ve been listening to Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of our favorite #GenGND interviewees & a key policy architect of the GND, for quite awhile now--but we highly encourage you start listening to her & other Black people (particularly Black women) in general & IN PARTICULAR IF WE WANT TO FIX THE CLIMATE CRISIS!
Here’s some words from another (young) Black woman who we’ve just started hearing from, & who we expect to hear a lot more from--Nikayla Jefferson, a 19 year old Sunrise Movement activist from San Diego--who will soon be studying Political Science under another one of our #GenGND favorites, Leah Stokes--the Poly Sci professor of environmental note at UC Santa Barbara. Check out Nikayla’s words about the THE STAKES OF THE 2020 ELECTION in GRIST
And to round out the reading list this week, we’ve got the latest from one of our favorites--& another #GenGND interviewee, best-selling author David Wallace-Wells in NYMAG’s Intelligencer Blog--discussing WHAT CLIMATE ALARMISM HAS ALREADY ACHIEVED
Now, how about something that’s easy on the eyes to wrap things up? It’s been a long week, and we’ve been checking out Patagonia’s amazing library of environmental films, which they’ve made free to all and available online during the pandemic, WATCH THEM ALL HERE
Thank you for this story in particular hit a nerve when AOK talks about education, like the ”reconstruction era”. We need to go back to the drawing board.