Opción Democrática is a political party in the Dominican Republic that describes itself as ‘a place for hope’ and ‘the party of good politics’. Video and digital content lead Valerie Caamaño joined the Australian Progress virtual study tour participants recently to explain how this focus on intrinsic values and a positive vision came about, and how it shows up in their messaging.
Valerie described the goal of the party’s messaging as ‘making politics fun’ in a context where much of politics is run with the backing of big corporations and the mainstream culture is conservative and Christian. Opción Democrática is rooted in progressive values and led by a young and diverse leadership.
Valerie and her team diagnosed the message trap afflicting much progressive political messaging: “We are stuck in a corner, reacting to whatever the far right is saying and pointing out how bad they are. The far right gains ground when people hear this, feel useless and stop participating.” Sound familiar?
Valerie outlined the four major shifts that took Opción Democrática’s messaging in a different, and far more successful direction:
Moving from reinforcing hierarchies to a winning identity
Opción Democrática avoided reinforcing frames about a strict political hierarchy with messages about the party’s minority status or the fact they were up against powerful opponents. Sacrifice/martyrdom stories are not helpful because they do not attract people to your cause. The party instead describes themselves against the others in terms of a winning identity: ‘the dominating parties’ vs ‘our citizens party’, ‘the monopolistic parties’ vs ‘our grassroots party’ or ‘the party of the elites’ vs ‘our party of the people’.
moving from struggle to belonging and fun
Despite the very real difficulties, they face, Opción Democrática avoids the language of struggle and sacrifice. Instead, their messages talk about hope and belonging, with slogans like ‘When we come together, nothing can stop us’ or ‘We achieved this goal through the inspiring work of our people’. A candidate who is not expected to win a race does not describe their candidacy as ‘seemingly impossible’ but ‘the greatest adventure of my life’. The frame throughout is fun, sociability, creativity and joyful participation, as reflected in their upbeat social media videos (you don’t need to speak Spanish to get the vibes!)
FROM ANGER TO care
Despite the very real problems facing ordinary people in the Dominican Republic, Opción Democrática avoids leaning in to extrinsic priming by using metaphors of battlegrounds, fights, winners and losers.
Above all this messaging frames politics as a way to care for each other. It appeals to the collective good, challenging individualism. It connects with family values, a strong part of Dominican culture, and instead of fuelling conflict, it inspires hope, solidarity and belonging.
Instead of telling people ‘we understand that you are angry’, Opción Democrática says ‘we feel your pain’. Instead of saying ‘we have to keep fighting for our democracy’ they say ‘we having to keep nourishing our democracy’.
As well as young people having fun, they share videos relatable to an older, more conservative audience, like a grandmother calling all her relatives to sell lottery tickets and fundraise for the party, or older people lighting candles on a religious holiday to draw attention to lives broken by healthcare system failures.
from passive framing to naming a villain
Opción Democrática avoids presenting problems as simply existing, or immutable. They avoid deficit language like ‘The Dominican Country is the country with the most opaque election financing in our region’ that suggests these failures are part of Dominican identity.
Instead, they make it very clear who is responsible and who should be held accountable with language that shows the actions and processes that caused the problem, and the people who must change it: ‘Democratic parties and the economic groups that finance them are choosing not to be transparent with their campaign money’.
So many lessons to be learnt here in Australia as we take on the far right. Check out Opción Democrática on Instagram or follow Valerie on LinkedIn here for more.