Before we dive in: our head of communications, Brianna Johnson, will be speaking on an abundance panel at WelcomeFest tomorrow, June 3, in Washington, DC. If you’d like to join us, register HERE. Hope to see you there.
There is so much happening in the abundance world right now. Congress is moving on housing and energy, our Abundance Agenda project and polling work are ramping up, and the movement is breaking into the mainstream faster than a quarterly newsletter can keep up – so you’ll now hear from us monthly. Here’s everything we’ve been up to.
What We’re Doing
On the Hill
Two weeks ago, an amended version of the Senate’s 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the House of Representatives 396-13 – with the fixes we’ve been fighting for.
You may remember that we called on the House to change one provision in an otherwise good Senate bill that would have forced builders of single-family rental homes to sell them within seven years, depressing housing construction. Working with Up for Growth and other partners, we helped surface the impact of that provision in the Wall Street Journal – a story that was cited by both Ranking Member Maxine Waters and Rev. Al Sharpton in letters to the House. The House Build America Caucus also helped lead a 76-member, bipartisan letter demanding the provision be fixed.
Ultimately, the House answered our and other YIMBY calls and made the fix, which is why we worked with partners to coordinate a letter from nearly 200 organizations backing the bill, featured in Politico Pro. After the House passed the bill, Baillee Brown authored a piece outlining why the Senate needed to start working with the House to make this bill become law – and yesterday, it was announced those bicameral negotiations are in the works.
TL;DR: we are now closer to seeing landmark housing legislation become law than at any other point this Congress – or in the past 30 years.
The Abundance Agenda
We announced our Abundance Agenda project at the end of April, featured in Axios. The response has been everything we hoped for:
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a self-described ally of Inclusive Abundance, uplifted the agenda.
We have an all-star advisory board: Daniella Ballou-Aares, Ron Bloom, Laurel Britton, Arnab Datta, Marc Dunkelman, Jane Flegal, Kumar Garg, Nic Glover, J.D. Grom, Suzanne Kahn, Marshall Kosloff, Amy Liu, Jen Pahlka, and Sonja Trauss.
We’re seeing real interest from across the policy world.
Because of that demand, we’ve extended the submission deadline to June 18. If you’re curious about learning more, you can watch our interest session here (passcode: MZa9#j?A).
Message Testing
Right now, there’s a messaging question facing Democrats: should they lean into abundance, or into a more populist message about corporate power and billionaire greed? Though there are obviously tensions, as illustrated by the housing fight, these don’t always have to be at odds. To dive deeper into this question, we worked with Blue Rose to conduct research on which abundance messages were most effective at persuading the voters Democrats need to win this November.
Top findings included:
Abundance messages that emphasize cost-of-living solutions are very effective at persuading the voters Democrats need to win back. Seven out of 10 of the abundance messages that emphasized different solutions to rising costs scored in the 90th percentile or higher of all messages Blue Rose has ever tested.
When we tested the higher-level, vision-setting messages political parties and campaigns run on, a populist/abundance synthesis was more effective than either abundance messaging or populist messaging on their own.
Voters are less angry at who’s profiting from rising costs than at the fact that no one is fixing the problem. When asked who’s most responsible for rising costs, respondents selected “politicians who’d rather fight than fix problems” 69% of the time – 10 points more than “wealthy elites and billionaires” or “big corporations.”
You can hear Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson talk about this tension – and our research – more in a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show.
Hiring
As you can tell, we’ve had a lot on our plate – and we’re continuing to grow! Please join us in welcoming:
Jaclynn Garry-Rosales, Manager of Operations, coming to us from YIMBY Action and Yes in My Back Yard
Tannera George, Events and Convenings Manager, joining us from Arnold Ventures
Jackson Gode, Manager of Government Affairs, who will lead our work on AI, innovation, and government effectiveness. He was most recently at the Partnership for Public Service
Lindsey Haughton, Policy and Communications Associate, joining from Evergreen Strategy Group
Read about them on our team page here.
What We’re Reading
The New York Times editorial board making the case for permitting reform
The Washington Post on how two drinking fountains in a Manhattan park ended up costing $375,000
A New York Times story on the strain facing the electrical grid
This newsletter is a product of Inclusive Abundance Action, our 501(c)(4).