While our country reels from the devastation of natural and manmade tragedies, coverage of these events can obscure stories that might have received front page coverage. With the Supreme Court case regarding “extreme gerrymandering” kicking off this week, I reached out to friends, family, and coworkers to make sure they were aware of this case and its potential to affect our understanding of voting rights. Here is a brief on the tactics I employed with various people:
A.J. (friend)
“Oh yea? Well did you hear about this?”
A.J. and I make sure to keep each other informed on important news. These conversations usually end up ping-ponging into one-upmanship on who read what. Tactically, I take an early opportunity to get all of my talking points in before he returns the serve.
Kat (wife)
“I can’t listen to you with a three year old yapping in my face.”
My wife has her priorities in order and rarely suffers distractions. She prefers to read the daily rundown from The Skimm for important news. Luckily, they had a blurb in their October 4th edition I was able to point her to.
Kent and Jamie (coworkers)
Awareness through humor
This one was difficult to strategize because typically their socio-political dialogues are sparked by sharing hot takes from primetime and late night comedians. In this case, we had direct conversation on our morning drive to the job site, and I pointed them to an old John Oliver episode for a humorous refresher.
Strategically Communicating 
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