Judith Warner had a great piece in the New York Times a few days ago, in which she managed to weave together an argument that featured both Michael Moore and the practice of female genital cutting. Worth reading, because she also put quite eloquently an idea that forms the basis of Underground’s own approach to communication:

…she had learned, through years of trial and error, that to reach people you had to meet them where they were. Respect them. Acknowledge their social norms, beliefs and practices. Find common ground. Build on shared human aspirations — for safety, for dignity, for a better life for one’s children — then discover how those shared aspirations might reasonably translate into ending practices that cause suffering.

If you come in and say, ‘You are awful people,’ people tune out and say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ …Making people feel bad about what they’re doing doesn’t work; they only get defensive. What does work is getting people to discuss together what are their rights and what they mean. It’s not just a question of blaming and shaming people but educating and empowering them.

For twenty years, Baykeeper has been on the front lines of the fight to protect the San Francisco Bay from pollution, as advocates and scientists, on the water and in the courts. Underground was proud to recently complete a new set of materials for the organization, including a report on its response to the Cosco Busan spill, the organization’s 2008 Annual Report, and now, it’s new agency brochure.

Baykeeper’s communications challenge today is making sure that that everyone who cares about the Bay understand both the very real threats to the health of the Bay and our ability (with Baykeeper’s help, of course) to fully protect and restore the Bay. To address that challenge, Underground decided to develop a concept for the brochure that heightened these contrasting views of the Bay as both remarkable and irreplaceable, habitable and vulnerable, swimmable and pollutable. The end result is a brochure that conveys both the beauty of the Bay we all love and the vital work that Baykeeper is doing to defend it.