Direct Action & Media Relations

Use images of drilling, mining, or draining to show who is pulling wealth from communities, what they are taking, and where that wealth goes.

Our research suggests that leaning into the metaphor of extraction can make these economic processes easier to understand. Direct action can make extraction visible by illustrating how wealth is pulled from communities, where it goes, and who benefits.

See it in action
Workers organizing for better wages could create a visual showing a large pipe or conveyor belt carrying dollar signs from workers on one side to corporate executives and shareholders on the other. Workers could stand beside it holding signs showing the wages they earn and the value their work creates, making visible how wealth flows from their labor into corporate profits and executive pay.

The accompanying media message extends the metaphor:
Workers create the value that keeps this company running, but too much of that wealth is being pumped out of our workplaces and into corporate profits. Today, workers are coming together to stop the drain and fight for a fair share of what they create.

For a sign or chant:
We create the wealth. Keep it in our communities.

Use the place where an action happens to connect today’s racial inequities to the policies, institutions, and powerful interests that produced them.

Direct action happens somewhere. A courthouse, bank, corporate headquarters, development site, neighborhood, government building, or vacant lot can become part of the explanation, helping people see how decisions made in particular places produced the inequities communities are fighting today.

See it in action
Instead of simply holding a housing rally at City Hall, organizers might trace a route through places shaped by redlining, displacement, highway construction, or disinvestment, ending at the institution with the power to make a different decision today.

For the press:
This neighborhood didn’t become unequal by accident. Decisions about lending, development, and public investment built the conditions Black residents experience today. We’re here because another decision is being made now and we’re fighting to shape it.

Use public actions to show how joy, care, creativity, and belonging strengthen relationships and build collective power.

Our framing research suggests that talking about joy as a source of community power can strengthen collective action. Music, art, food, humor, celebration, and care don’t have to sit outside the fight. They can show how people build relationships, trust, and solidarity—and how those connections make communities stronger and better able to organize, fight, and win.

See it in action

At an action calling for greater public investment, community members might bring the joy and connection of the community into the action through music, food, art, games, and celebration. These moments can show that joy is more than the future people are fighting for. It is a source of community power that strengthens relationships, builds solidarity, and brings people together for the fight.

The image tells two stories at once: what people are fighting against and what they are fighting to build together.

See it in action
Instead of staging an action solely around stopping the sale of public land to a private developer, residents could occupy the site with a one-day vision of its alternative future marking where affordable homes, community spaces, gardens, or locally owned businesses could stand.

For the press:
We’re not only here to stop a bad deal. We’re fighting for this land to remain in community hands so the people who live here can decide what gets built next.

For a sign:
This is what we’re fighting for.