FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:  Professor Dana Cloud, dcloud @mail.utexas.edu, (512) 731-1025; Charles Morris III, 617-314-1794, morrisch@bc.edu; Bryan McCann, bmccann@mail.utexas.edu, 512-739-4024
National Communication Association Lands in the Middle of Labor/Gay Rights Dispute as Members Plan a “Shadow” Convention

San Diego, CA – October 3, 2008 – When organizers for the 94th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) chose the theme “unCONVENTIONal” for this year’s gathering, they likely had no idea how prophetic their play on words would be.  Since NCA adjourned its 2007 meeting in Chicago, its national office and dues paying membership have been in the middle of an intensifying controversy surrounding a call to boycott this year’s convention hotel, the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.

A growing contingent of professors, graduate students, and other NCA members are calling on the national organization to withdraw the convention from the Manchester Hyatt after learning of a boycott called by a coalition of gay rights activists and the hotel workers’ union UNITE-HERE Local 30.  The boycott is a response to both what union organizers regard as unfair labor practices at the Hyatt and owner Douglas Manchester’s recent large donation to the anti-gay marriage California ballot initiative Proposition 8.

Since 2006, housekeepers at the Manchester Hyatt – San Diego’s largest hotel – have protested what they say is a dramatic surge in their workload.  Housekeepers at the Hyatt have claimed they must clean more rooms than employees at other Hyatt hotels and that individual female workers are often required to perform dangerous tasks – such as flipping king-size mattresses – without assistance.
Hotel employees have found common cause with the gay rights community following a $125,000 donation that Manchester made to ProtectMarriage.com, an organization supporting Proposition 8, which, if passed, would reverse the recent California Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage.  Recognizing deep and significant connections between their respective struggles, opponents of Proposition 8 joined forces with UNITE-HERE and their supporters to call a full-scale boycott of the Hyatt and other Manchester properties.

In response to the boycott, many NCA members asked the leaders of the association to relocate the meeting; NCA refused.  In an open letter to NCA members, Executive Director Roger Smitter accused UNITE-HERE of “using a California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage as a wedge to advance its own agenda with the Hyatt Hotel.”  Claiming that labor issues have “no direct bearing on the ballot-initiative issue,” NCA leaders have instead opted to invite Manchester to be part of a panel discussion on “matters of marriage, partnerships and commitment.”

In response to Smitter’s suggestion that labor and gay rights are entirely distinct issue, Professor Phaedra Pezzullo of Indiana University, who is helping to coordinate NCA members’ participation in the boycott, asked, “How can anyone claim that labor has nothing to do with the ballot initiative?”  The professor continued, “We need only listen to the grassroots movement in San Diego that has built a coalition to include workers resisting exploitation, GLBT activists standing up against the funding of hate, and women fighting sexual discrimination.”  Supporters of the boycott continue to argue that labor and gay rights organizing have everything in common.  Besides the plain fact that most gay and lesbian Americans are working and middle class, gay marriage advocates have long noted that marriage is itself intimately related to employment issues such as health care and inheritance.

It is unclear whether association claims as to the untenable financial costs of relocating are too burdensome to follow the lead of numbers of other associations, including the American Association of Law Schools, the Society of American Law Teachers, and the San Diego County Employment Retirement Association in refusing to hold their events at the Manchester Hyatt.

Absent a decision by Smitter and other NCA executives to relocate the conference, members supportive of the boycott have organized an “UNconvention” at alternative sites in San Diego.  Participants have sought locations at other hotels, local restaurants, and parks to hold the many meetings, panels, and job interviews that take place at NCA conventions.  Many prominent departments of communication – including Villanova University, Bowling Green State University, Indiana University, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the University of Texas – have relocated their social gatherings, significant both because these parties are sites of networking and because they generally generate important revenue for the hotel.  Many of these programs have also withdrawn from the conference’s graduate school and job fairs.  Professor Bryan Crable, Chair of Vallanova University’s Communication Department, wrote in a public statement, “We will not be asking job candidates!
for our two open positions to choose between conscience and career.”

The organizers of the UNconvention have, meanwhile, negotiated room deals with nearby hotels, such as the Embassy Suites, and are in the process of drafting an “alternative” convention program to help participating members to fulfill their professional obligations while honoring the boycott.  Entire NCA divisions, including Critic & Cultural Studies, the Feminist & Women Studies Division, and the Women’s Caucus have collectively voiced their support for the boycott.

This strategy of boycott supporters has generated its own share of controversy.  For example, physically disabled members of NCA have sought alternative ways to express their support for the boycott given their limited capacity to travel to alternative locations.  Some junior faculty and graduate students have suggested that the boycott places them in a particularly precarious position given the important role conference attendance plays in their career advancement.
Other NCA members have been far more pointed in their complaints about the boycott.  Writing on the NCA listserv CRTNET, Professor Meg Sargent of Southern Connecticut State University commented, “If I may be so bold….rather than spending so much time and effort on deciding how to boycott, relocate and otherwise disrupt our meeting…might I suggest you just stay home, and allow those of us committed to the pursuit of knowledge and scholarly debate to actually do so?”  She added, “While there may be a time and place to address your ‘cause’ - November in San Diego is not it.” Boycott participants argue that it is NCA, not the boycotters, who have put gay and lesbian members, along with sympathizers with the labor movement, in a terrible bind.

Nonetheless, the recent creation of the NCA Presidential Task Force on Hotel Site Selection to provide “recommendations, policies, and processes to guide hotel site selection for future conventions that meet the needs, interests, commitments, and ethical standards to which NCA and its members are dedicated,” suggests that members’ support of the boycott has already begun to influence organizational policy.

Because of such encouraging developments, organizers of this year’s “UNconvention” have continued to organize at alternative venues and intend to walk on the picket line alongside hotel employees and gay rights activists that will be present in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt.  Seeing the boycott both as an opportunity to advance two important and interrelated rights struggles, participating NCA members also view this as a chance to connect their scholarship regarding critical thinking, public advocacy, and human communication to grassroots struggles in the here and now.  In an open letter to NCA members, Professor Charles Morris of Boston College wrote, “Discrimination is the bottom line of this crisis,” adding, “NCA should be held accountable for its compromise with Manchester and the impact that has on its dues-paying members.”

The L.A Times wrote today that they had evidence of a rather interesting plan for Obama’s speech which will take place during the Democratic National Convention. The plan essentially is to move out of the actual convention for the speech, to Invesco Field, the home of the Denver Broncos. Because the Pepsi Center in denver can only hold 19K people, Team Obama thinks that a 70,000 person stadium is just the thing for an Obama acceptance speech. The times also notes two interesting things about this idea:

The unusual move, confirmed by two sources, would be an echo of John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech in 1960. Kennedy delivered his address before thousands of supporters at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Obama’s big moment also would fall on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

When Obama does give this speech, it will be in an open area where just about anyone can access him. It’s kind of an interesting trick, but considering that Obama, like Kennedy, is an excellent orator, it’s the kind of trick that will work splendidly for Barack. Furthermore, one other tactic behind this move is to give an example of just how many people support Obama: So big, even the Democrat’s own convention won’t be able to handle them.

The fact that it is also the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech is also of significance, as Obama’s PR team can spin link to King’s speech in one way or another. I don’t know exactly how they will link it, but it might again be on Barack’s ideology of hope compared to King’s. Of course this is speculation, and we’ll have to wait for the speech to see what’s really going on.

E.politics points out seven things that can be learned from Obama’s journey through the primaries, the biggest of these being that we live in a social media world, whether one likes it or not. However, that may not neccesarily be a good thing:

Before we crown Barack Obama the King of internet Politics, let’s ask him how he feels about all those Reverend Wright YouTube clips scattered at the base of his throne. Sure, the Democratic nominee-to-be benefited from the ‘net in significant and almost certainly decisive ways, but he also got kicked around plenty online. Just about every candidate suffered similarly, from the anti-Hillary “1984″ ad and the John Edwards haircut video to that great footage of Rudy Giuliani in a dress.

But beyond that, one tactic that’s been prevalent in the Obama campaign is to make him a brand. Again, this may not serve well, because Obama will then have to get over the idea that he is nothing more then the product of the Democratic party. Then again, G.W Bush sure did, so I have confidence in Obama. But Obama has certainly gone out of his way to influence people to make him a household brand. As Douglas Rushkoff pointed out on his commentary about the Obama brand:

From the beginning of his candidacy, I felt as if the Obama name and image represented a new way of doing things more than it exemplified it. My own sense of cynicism reached a peak when Oprah Winfrey began campaigning for him. I’ve watched her similarly enthused by fakers from Tom Cruise to the founders of The Secret. Oprah’s “energy,” if you will, is that of national branding. Oprah + (insert your product here) = MegaBrand.

But Rushkoff also says several positive things about Obama being a brand: "Obama does offer a non-polarizing and inclusive alternative to traditional political engineering, and we must embrace the possibility that America is ready to engage with itself and the rest of the world in this way." It might honestly be the best thing to happen to democrats since Bill Clinton.

Remember that being a brand now carries a form of credibility, but others may see your brand as a conglomerate, or not grassroots. Especially here in the blogosphere. People talk about creating a brand for their blog/book/product, but few take in the fact that brands have their own problems. Returning to Rushkoff:

Brand mythologies alienate people from one another and insert themselves in the place of real relationships. Instead of buying meat, corn, drugs, or soap from local producers, we buy them from A&P, Green Giant, Wal-Mart or P&G. These national brands have great mythologies, but serve to disconnect us from one another, and distribute power to those with capital and away from people who actually do work.

In other words, when you’re enjoying that high and mighty brand you’ve created, you’ve essentially cut off the rest of the world. Good for corps, but bad for bloggers. Still, though, Obama’s use of the internet is paying off. As Sifry states:

He [Obama] is riding herd on the largest and most potent new political organization anyone has seen on the American landscape in at least sixteen years. He’s probably got anywhere from four to eight million email addresses on top of his 1.5 million donors and 800,000 registered users of my.barackobama.com, his social networking platform.

That same social network allows people to crowd-source ideas for Obama, whether it’s campaign strategies or ideas to do as President. It has made him a very powerful figure on the internet. Out of all the candidates, Obama has used social media to its greatest, and it shows.

One last fact: Barack Obama has the 3rd highest amount of followers according to Twitterholic, losing only to Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte, in that order. I might also add that there’s a bit of a social media feud between them as well….

Summary

• Social media is a double-edged sword as a rhetorical tactic
• Branding youself has its advantages and disadvantages
• A social network is a great place to source ideas and spread your word

No matter what you’re doing in your campaign, you need to develop an ideology, or a cause for your idea. The "Developing your Ideology" aims to do just that. For this series, we will be looking at the construction and use of Ideologies in life.

What is an ideology?

Ideology on its own has many different meaning interpretations. For our purposes, an ideology is a set of values one attempts to present. Often, we have multiple ideologies, but really flaunt one. Case in point: Barack Obama. Take a listen to this speech and see what I mean:

He makes reference to "something happening," and overall presents a tone of positivity that arguably hasn’t been seen in a long time. He presents ideas on something known as Hope. Obama represents hope for the US, and change for the better if he is elected. In a sense, he turns Hope into an ideology, his set of values, and he flaunts them to the American Public.

Hope is one of Obama’s ideologies. He may have others, but this is arguably the biggest.

His hope ideology reflects around change for America, and trying to make it a better country. He also states that as bad as it’s gotten, America can get back up again. He is marketing Hope as his main reason for why he should get elected. McCain has his own ideologies, and so does Clinton. It’s just that Obama chose an ideology of Hope, out of the many he could choose.

Ideology is important to you, too. As a blogger, you should think of your values, and what your blog stands for. I bet you the Huffington Post is going to have vast differences in their ideologies in comparison to a conservative blog, and that Robert Scoble will hold different ideologies from say, someone else in the Blogosphere.

If you were someone else, think about how your values impact your work in the public sphere. You stand for something, what is it?

Ask yourself this question: What values do I represent in my blog? In the next segment, we’ll take those values and turn them into an ideology.

Barack Obama released an ebook for people to download entitled "The Blueprint for Change." The book itself is a detailed description of Obama’s plan of action should he be elected president, but there is plenty of rhetorical tactics being used here. Here’s an excerpt from the opening message as an example:

The Democratic Party has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people when we’ve led not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction; when we summoned the entire nation to a common purpose - a higher purpose.  And I run for the presidency because that’s the party America needs us to be right now.  I run to offer this country change that we can believe in.

Already, Obama invokes his favorite ideology: That of Hope. He wants to bring hope to the people of America, and the plan that he provides is the method toward healing the United States. He is specific about not accepting what pessimists would say we should just take. His plan shows that the US could be something better.

What is also present in this book is his idea of unity: Since his speech at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004, Obama has stated that he wants to unify all parties. As Obama states:

I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America, I want to be the President of the United States of America.

Obama knows that one of the biggest errors by both Al Gore and John Kerry was dividing people into thinking either Democrat or Republican, where your part shouldn’t matter (I might add that this is a good reason to go nonpartisan, like myself.) So he wants to unite others with a plan that appeals to both Democrat and republican.

There’s more interesting things at hand here as well. Why an eBook? Perhaps Obama is also appealing to the tech crowd, because not a lot of people will want to grab an ebook. It’s also possible that he might get people with smartphones and other toys to read it. (But good luck with the iPhone.)

It’s an interesting read, but it mostly talks about his plan. The plan itself is good for a swing voter.

The Blueprint for Change [LINK]

I’ve been interested in social media for a while, mainly because you get things like Viral Videos, guerilla Ads, if they were. Now, with the advent of Youtube, expect to see a lot more of these. In fact, here is the first of these new videos, entitled "I am voting Republican."

It depicts all the reasons why someone would "want" to vote republican.

TechPresident points out that this could be the defining meme of 2008 because

1. It clearly defines the candidate to beat
2. It clearly states the reasons to vote against the candidate.
3. It uses the cognitive power of satire to deliver the "bad news" in a positive way.
4. It has burned through the "first-adopter-sphere" like wild fire.

But the problem is that it’s WAY too early to call the defining meme. The war between Dems and Reps only started, and that fight’s got til November to finish. That’s almost half a year. But, this is only the start of the adventure. Youtube wasn’t around last election, and neither was Twitter. How will they both fit into this election. Judging from the primaries, it could get bloody.

What makes this effective?

Look at the surface:

1. America the beautiful plays in the background
2. Repeat instances of the flag
3. General sense of Republican "Pride."

These are all representations of our country, useful for making it sound like the video stands for what America wants.

Beyond that, we see a satire of republicans, that this is what the party does regardless of the promises and rhetoric of the party. It also argues that if you do vote Republican, you’re voting for all of the things in the video. It attacks all of the things that Republicans did bad, such as pollution, race relations, the economy, etc, all under the usual patriotism given with a Republican ad.

On a slight tangent, Republicans seem to argue themselves more patriotic than liberals. While that may not be true, Liberals should get their act together to show how they more embody America.

As Liza Sabater, the author of the TechPresident article said, "This has got to be one of the best "get out the vote" initiatives I’ve seen in a long time." I predict a counterattack video shortly. When it does, it’ll be here.

I wrote this on my Main Blog, but I feel it important here as well.

Recently, I wrote an entry about Youtube’s contest where you could win seats at the Republican National Convention, and I got some linkage for it. While I thank those who linked to my site, it worries me that people are starting to consider me some sort of political commentator, where I am not.

Years ago, when I was but a freshman, I was active in political blogging, although I was active under an alias, not under my name, and I’d rather not reveal that alias. However, I found it boring, and full of the same old crap.

Time passed. I dropped that alias, but never found time to return to the blogosphere until about early May of last year, when I got a wordpress account under my name and started writing.

I started writing about things like GTD, organization, and being positive. Now I write about blogosphere culture. Politics was something I wasn’t going to touch. Yes, I comment on it as it applies to blogs and social media, but I don’t actively endorse a candidate.

I don’t want to reveal my political stance on this site, although you might be able to guess it. Or not. I really don’t care. I blog for culture, not for some party.

One particular organization that seems to be abundant with rhetorical tactics is Apple Computers. So much, in fact, that I will be dedicating an entire category to Apple for this Blog. I can’t cover everything I want to say in one blog entry, though, so I will just say my general thoughts on how Apple is representing itself in the world.

For the record: I can say I am equally competent with a Mac as I am with a Windows PC. I actually have fond memories of using a Mac in grade school, it’s just that up until recently, I was a windows guy.

Here is the iChurch, here is the iSteeple….

Ever notice the way Apple sets its PR up? It advertises itself almost as if it were the "true path" away from the evil Microsoft Windows. Many of the bloggers out there state that they have "converted" to OSX, and joined its "cult."

Now, I have my problems with Apple, but I love how they work to make Microsoft (and in a way, Linux) look evil, while they look like they apple to everyone.

But the biggest area where it becomes a church is during the MacWorld and WWDC conventions, where Steve acts as high priest/God of Mac, and presents his latest powers to the people. See, where Steve works is with that intimacy: From the Mac & PC commercials to the iPhone advertisements, the commercials have one goal: Show how approachable and easy it is to become part of the iCulture.

We’ll be coming back to Apple time and time again, with more specific stuff. But, I figured I should come up with an example of the kinds of articles one will find here.

My name is J.T Dabbagian, I’d like to welcome you to the opening of the Ad Rhetorica. It’s been a while since I was able to actively blog, but now I can, at least for the next three months, anyway.

So what’s this site about?

Ad Rhetorica loosely translates from lating to "Appeal to Rhetoric." This blog covers the various tricks and tips used by major figures to convey their presence, major figures being anyone from Barack Obama to John Chow. What do I mean by Rhetoric, you say? Well, that’s a bit of a vague question, but I want it this way. Some people believe that everything we possibly do contributes to our rhetoric. I’m not going to go that far in my blog, but I will say this: People do some really odd things to get attention.

For instance, on my main website, I wrote about The RNC’s deal with Youtube. This Blog’s goal is to figure out why people do things like this. Yes, obviously it’s for the attention, but HOW does it get attention, and why that particular tactic, and not others?

There are particulars in what people do, such as Twitter campaigns, speeches, apologies, etc. This site covers it all. In effect, we will see what makes people tick, and how people are successful, or failures, based on what they do in the world.

This blog does not concern Social media only: While I do offer a service as a social media consultant, I’d rather concentrate on other aspects of media, considering that half the people in the Blogosphere are social media consultants.

Looking forward to a good blog! Don’t forget to subscribe!