“Culture Moves Before the Politics:” Comedy’s Lessons in Cultural Organizing Around Reproductive Health
by Michele Alexander
With nearly seven out of 10 Americans in support of upholding Roe v. Wade, NARAL Pro-Choice California’s Rebecca Griffin is far from being in the minority as she works to protect women’s access to reproductive health care. Currently, more than 55 million women have no out-of-pocket costs for birth control and other preventive services — coverage that employers could deny under an October 2017 executive order and would be lost if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. As reproductive health issues remain on the public and policy agenda, at both the state and national level, Griffin and her colleagues have gotten creative in their advocacy.
This creativity has given way to what Griffin calls “cultural organizing.” This twofold approach involves both engaging with comics and writers to change the way issues are portrayed in the cultural narrative and using comedy and storytelling to engage, organize, and activate supporters. What started as brainstorming sessions about reproductive health has since transformed into much more as the comics and writers work with Griffin to shape timely and hilarious sets informed by NARAL Pro-Choice’s data and research.
Over the years, Griffin and other comics, such as Nato Green, Zahra Noorbhaksh, and Kurt Braunohler, have built long-lasting partnerships that pair comedy with calls to action to reach audiences in new and more engaging ways. For instance, as part of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s All Access events, NARAL Pro-Choice California hosted Stand-Up for Choice, a night of stand-up featuring Bay-area comedians sharing their humorous criticisms of anti-choice policies while building support for reproductive health access. To support NARAL’s work exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Griffin once again turned to comedy, launching the #CPCAdvice campaign, where comedians shared their fake reproductive health advice to call attention to how CPC staff misinform and manipulate women. From videos to written pieces, Griffin and her team are weaving comedy and pro-choice advocacy together to change the narrative and engage and organize supporters.
Griffin’s cultural organizing fits with how we here at The Laughter Effect see comedy affecting change: She is opening the door to complex issues like reproductive rights and breaking down barriers to action. By pairing comedy with pro-choice advocacy, Griffin and the comics she works with are creating memorable messages about a traditionally taboo topic and reframing abortion in a way that is more relatable and personable for audiences. And, they are doing it by putting a twist on frequently used advocacy and outreach tactics like publishing videos and articles, hosting events, and running social media campaigns.
I recently sat down with Griffin to learn more about her cultural organizing and how her successes and lessons learned can provide greater insights into comedy’s role in social change:
(Interview edited for length and clarity)
Laughter Effect: Tell me about your role with NARAL Pro-Choice California.
Rebecca Griffin: I am the Associate Director for California Programs, for NARAL Pro-Choice California. Most of my work is around our proactive organizing in California, so I lead our legislative campaigns to pass pro-choice legislation at the state and local level and I do a lot of our California-based communications work. I’ve taken on this cultural organizing piece– in terms of working with comedians on plugging into our campaigns and thinking about longer term cultural organizing around the issue of reproductive freedom.
LE: Tell me about this work — this cultural organizing and how you are incorporating comedy and humor into NARAL’s advocacy.
RG: I think that we see time and again that the culture moves before the politics do. We are the majority in this country — NARAL has done significant polling and research that shows that 7 in 10 Americans support access to abortion — and that’s in red states, blue states, it’s everywhere. The cultural conversation on these issues is still really steeped in stigma — there was some research that was done that showed women are 7,000 times more likely to die after having an abortion on TV than in real life. I think that there have been some really significant strides in terms of changing that conversation but we’re still in a place where a lot of people don’t realize how common an experience abortion is. That they know and love people who’ve accessed abortion care.
In terms of the cultural conversation, comedy is a really important way to access people’s thinking about this issue — to open them up to examining their thinking about these issues. Comedy obviously has a history of taking on taboo topics and breaking down that kind of stigma. It’s a way to reach people and activate them beyond maybe just agreeing with us to actually taking action and being more involved in the organizing around these issues.
LE: Let’s build on that further: how do you feel comedy is a powerful tool for reducing the stigma and engaging new activists?
RG: I think that there are people who maybe would go to a comedy show that aren’t going to go to a panel discussion on reproductive rights. For one thing, it’s a way to get people thinking about an issue that maybe they wouldn’t go out of their way to engage with. Personal stories are really important in the discussion around abortion and reproductive freedom: A lot of comedy is very personal, and hearing from people talking about their own experience in a way that, you know, people can laugh, and feel comfortable, and enjoy it, but also think about it in a different way. I think our issues can be very heavy — especially in the current situation where reproductive freedom is just under attack in such significant ways and so many different places — and just engaging on that or watching a documentary about that are all very important but can also be very depressing. So, I think that [comedy] is a way reach people and open them up to new information in a way that they might not do otherwise.
LE: You mention the current climate — and abortion access and reproductive rights are often hot button issues. How have you dealt with some of the criticism that’s emerged in response to pairing pro-choice advocacy with comedy? How do you walk the fine line between funny and potentially taking it too far?
RG: There’s some people who hate everything we do — whether we’re serious about it or we joke about it — and I don’t think that’s an audience we need to be too concerned with. I think in terms of the people who are our supporters, or who are in agreement with us, an important factor there is who’s the target of the comedy and that’s what we’re really mindful about and the people we work with are mindful about. The jokes are talking about the absurdity of the situation, talking about what these experiences are — but, the women who are accessing this kind of care are not the target of the jokes. I think that’s the most important thing that we think about. The comedians that care about these kinds of issues, they understand who they’re really making fun of and who they’re using their comedy to expose. It’s very much in line with the way that we would want to talk about these issues.
LE: You started describing your audience — tell me more about who this ideal audience is that you really want to bring in to these comedy shows, with this type of advocacy and outreach.
RG: I tend to think about it as a mobilization tactic. It’s a way to get people from being passively pro-choice to being actively involved in the campaign. A lot of our target audience is people who maybe agree with these issues but for whatever reason that’s not their top priority for what they’re doing to take action or they’re not thinking about it or aren’t as aware of the current threats and what they can do about it. This can be a way of getting the issue on their radar and then we’re there to give them opportunities to get active after they’ve just enjoyed this comedy that makes them think about the issue in a different way.
LE: Do you present any calls to action alongside the shows and events?
RG: Any time we’ve done a live event, we always have some kind of action. One of the ones that we did was this all access event — it was actually a nationwide network of events that were happening all on one day to really increase the visibility of support for abortion access and get more people involved. We decided to make our event a comedy show, so we had this sold-out show in San Francisco and then we also had people in the lobby signing our petition to the governor to sign our bill that made birth control more accessible in California. [At the same time], the comics on stage were talking about tweeting as part of the nationwide campaign that was showing support for abortion access. We want to make sure we’re not getting up there and lecturing people because it is a comedy show — so we have to find that balance — but we want to make sure that people leave there knowing who we are and knowing what kind of action that they can take to get more involved, and then we can follow up with those people and make sure they stay engaged in the work.
LE: You mentioned a little bit about working with the comedians — tell me about how that outreach started, how you’re building partnerships with them, and what has the reception been like when you do approach them?
RG: We really started this out with a partnership with Nato Green, who’s a comic based here in San Francisco and who’s also a union organizer, so he really understands both sides of what we’re trying to do. We started a few years ago bringing some comics together for sort of a strategy and brainstorming session as a way to get people thinking about our issue, getting them learning more about NARAL, and what’s going on currently. We’ve built a network of comics that we’re continuing to build that I’ll send periodic updates to — of “this is happening, this is a really urgent issue, maybe you want to pay attention to this” — you know, trying to give people fodder without being too prescriptive about what it is that we want them do.
LE: So, you essentially give the comedians the facts and data and they take it from there.
RG: Yeah, and I think that’s an important factor in doing this kind of work. They are bringing skills to the table, just like any other person that you collaborate with on a project. They are the experts when it comes to being funny. If we try to tell them how to be funny, then we’re going to end up with a much worse product. Understand that the partnership needs to be a partnership and for it to actually increase the awareness and the engagement, it has to be funny first — it can’t just be a slightly humorous PSA that we put together.
LE: Has there been anything that has surprised you?
RG: One of the things that’s been really important is thinking about this kind of work as a long-term campaign. And, that’s really challenging because, in organizing, we’re used to metrics and the outcomes are really clear and pretty straightforward: did this health care bill pass or did it not, and we know that we need to get calls into senators’ offices. When we do the cultural organizing, there’s some sort of marketing metrics you can look at (how many people viewed this video, how many impressions did this hashtag get) but, in terms of the longer-term work of changing the cultural conversation, that’s hard to measure.
When a lot of people think about comedy and working with comedians, they think of sort of one-off things with really well-known people. But, I think that what a lot comedy nerds like myself know, is that there’s so many really talented people up there who are already talking about these issues and want to be helpful and involved, especially right now. This is something Nato Green, who we work with, has talked about a lot: Comics are a community that can be organized like any other and if you can give them a way to do that — that works with them and uses their skills and creativity — then I think that you can get a lot done that way. You never know what the next thing is that people are going to do and how your work might influence that.
LE: Tell me about your upcoming projects and what’s next.
RG: We’re thinking a lot about the relationship piece and how to maximize that. We want to be a resource to people. We’re talking to more writers and people who are working on TV shows to help [them] understand that they have the support [of the majority of Americans], and they can help solidify that support, by having these more realistic portrayals of the issue that are more relatable to people’s lived experience. We’re also looking at events and shows and how we can connect that to what’s going on: Next year is going to be a big election year in California, and that’s something we want to get people involved in. It’s an ongoing process of evaluation and thinking about next steps and how we can put a twist on typical organizing actions.
