Message templates
Say it in your own words, with a running start
Not a script to read out. Three blocks you assemble, so the result sounds like you rather than like a template.
Block one is a fully drafted paragraph describing the situation, adapt it or use it as is. Block two is a bank of ways to say why you are speaking, including simply admitting that you're worried or that you feel isolated. Block three is a range of asks, ordered from easy to hard, so you can pick the one you can actually live with.
That last part is deliberate. A single fixed script means people either send something that doesn't sound like them, or send nothing at all.
Asking an institution to adopt the IHRA definition
For asking a body you belong to to adopt the IHRA working definition, written so the ask is never the words on their own but the words attached to a person, a process and a date.
- A week or so
- Anti-antisemitism
Asking for antisemitism training
For asking an employer, university, union or organisation to cover antisemitism in the training it already runs, written as a consistency ask rather than a request for special treatment.
- An evening
- Anti-antisemitism
Email to colleagues
For raising antisemitism at work with people you sit next to, written to be forwardable, quotable and still defensible in six months.
- An evening
- Anti-antisemitism
Letter to your representative
For writing to the office that represents where you live. Built to be pulled apart and rewritten in your own words, because a letter sent as it stands here is worth close to nothing.
- An evening
- Israel advocacy
- Anti-antisemitism
Opposing a boycott motion
The note you send members before a boycott motion is voted on, and the amendment you put, both written for the people in the room who have not yet decided anything.
- An evening
- Israel advocacy
- Anti-antisemitism