Show Notes
In this episode, Pete Altman talks with media strategist and Counter Stream Media founder Shilpi Chhotray, who makes a powerful case for rethinking how we build power for climate justice. Shilpi shares why she’s stepped back from the mainstream climate movement—and why philanthropy’s failure to fund narrative work and frontline leadership is holding the movement back. From global organizing to launching a frontline-led media outlet, she outlines how narrative strategy, not just comms, can shi...
More from The Campaign Strategist
Campaigns often know their issues better than they know the people they're trying to reach. Five campaigners explain why stories alone aren't enough, and what works instead. Kristen Grimm of Spitfire Strategies on why "save democracy" messaging misses most people. Will Robinson on two hospitals that closed four miles apart. Anat Shenker-Osorio on "married filing jointly" versus "love makes a family." Ritti Singh on leading with the frame and putting the details in the middle. And Mark Magaña...
Campaigns keep pouring money into broadcast TV while their voters are on YouTube, and targeting people too narrowly can backfire. Digital strategist Colin Delany has watched every new political technology arrive since the mid-1990s, and he explains which ones actually changed how campaigns win. Colin is the founder of Epolitics.com and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World. We cover the three shifts that mattered most (online video, data-driven field and targeted adv...
Someone with 1,500 followers who reliably gets 250 people engaging is a person who can move 250 people — and a door knocker isn't reaching that many in an hour. Narrative strategist Ritti Singh explains how New York's tenant movement built a surround sound communications machine, and what any advocacy organization can take from it. Ritti led communications for Housing Justice for All and the New York State Tenant Bloc, including the Freeze the Rent campaign in New York City's 2025 mayoral ra...
Will Robinson has made ads for Democrats for forty years. He opens this conversation by calling his own profession parasitic. We start with what artificial intelligence has done to political communication since late 2025. Voters searching for a candidate increasingly get a synthesized paragraph instead of a list of links, and only about one percent click through to a source. Will searched himself and found out he is a Republican state representative from Florida. His conclusion: thirty years...
The tactics most campaigns were built on are quietly breaking, and the reason isn't messaging — it's trust. Host Pete Altman talks with Amanda Brink, executive director of The Empower Project, whose recent essay "The Rules of Engagement Have Changed" argues that real persuasion now happens in the group chats, DMs, and comment sections where people decide who to believe. Amanda makes the case that we're organizing in an environment where credibility travels through people rather than instituti...