My work in advocacy

 

Above: The mission of my life, and my advocacy work.


The challenge of injecting quality information into overloaded minds

I believe that with quality information, delivered in an efficient way, people can make quality decisions — for themselves, and as part of the groups to which they belong

Despite all of our culture’s technological advancements, quality information, particularly regarding issues of high importance, is hard to come by to the average, busy person.

There are so many voices, flashy graphics and emotional videos flooding our awareness in the course of a day, that it can become a part-time job to hunt down, verify and evaluate useful facts and perspectives about a particular area of interest.


I use all my creative skills to develop innovative means to present vital facts, regarding my five highest external values, to the general public — particularly the young

I possess a considerable number of creative media skills, primarily regarding visualization, wordsmithing, multimedia production and investigative journalism.

Post-9/11, my focus shifted from developing advertising and corporate communications media, to using all of my skills to develop innovative means of advancing and defending my five highest external values:

  • Freedom
  • America
  • Israel
  • Children
  • Dogs

My advocacy work products range from infographic design to documentary production, executive speech-crafting to core branding, strategic analysis to rapid-response campaigns.  I also enjoy creating scorching satire whenever possible, to mock and ridicule bad ideas and organizations.

Above: In response to the growing trend of an A-Z of university departments offering extra credit to students who participate in Hamas-supporting activities, I created this to expose UCLA.


What makes me a different kind of advocate

Regardless of their form, all of my work in advocacy shares three basic attributes:

(1) They are built on verifiable, carefully-curated, meticulously-organized evidence, which I openly cite, and to which I provide efficient pathways.

(2) They reflect my ability to empathize with the target audience, regarding their knowledge, perceptions, literacy level and media usage preferences, and craft content that meets them “where they are.”

(3) They strip partisanship out of issues being addressed, by establishing basic principles around which most reasonable people can find common agreement. I’m not just non-partisan, I am anti-partisan. While I fiercely champion the civic, philosophical and humanitarian principles in which I believe, I do not engage in any kind of partisan political warfare.  My purpose is to provide vital facts and useful perspectives regarding an issue under discussion, and let the consumer of that information judge for themselves the proper course of action.

Above: My objective was to devise a means of conveying the cruel, unspoken impact of welfare entitlement “pushers.” Details here.


Contents

(1) Services

(2) Portfolio

(3) Testimonials

(4) Projects I’m working on


(1) Services

The realms in which I am currently most active are:

  • Creative direction: Helping clients to develop a vision of the end product, in its most ideal form, then creating a plan by which to achieve it
  • Visualization design & direction: Converting complex and controversial data and arguments into visual formats that the target audience can understand, up to and including 2D/3D animation and VR storyboards
  • Executive message-crafting: Helping organizational leaders to better analyze and understand difficult situations, and develop principled, polished, evidence-based public and internal statements concerning them
  • Strategic writing: Helping to develop the key verbiage and messaging structures for mission-critical projects, including crisis management and rapid-response media
  • Video writing-design-direction: Developing the conceptual, verbal and visual framework for videos that have impact, and in select instances, directing the project though completion
  • Branding: Creating instantly-recognizable visual and verbal framing for organizations, products and services
  • Developing original TV/streaming and film projects: I recently wrote my first motion picture, and have developed the concepts for eight TV/streaming shows, all of which are conceived from the ground up to explain and champion freedom, and rational human behavior, in original ways
  • User interface design: I started my career designing interfaces for early CD-ROM interactive skills-training applications, and since then have worked in a variety of realms

Contact me to discuss how I might help advance your mission-critical projects.


(2) Portfolio

My top five external values are freedom, America, Israel, children and dogs.

(2a) Freedom

(2b) America

(2c) Israel

(2d) Children

(2e) Dogs

Below is a sampling of my work in each realm.


(2a) Freedom

The most consequential knowledge crisis our culture faces is the fact that there is such a lack of popular awareness of the nature, virtue and history of freedom, that an increasing number of free people have been led to believe that tyrannical social systems are not just preferable, but morally superior.

If you doubt this, consider:

  • The number of American Millennials who say they approve of communism jumped from 28% in 2018, to 36% in 2019.
  • 50% of American 18-34 year olds say Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel was “justified.”
  • 51% of Democrats, and 37% of Republicans support passing a law that would criminalize “hate speech,” meaning any statement or expression that a racial, religious, sexual or ethnic minority might find offensive.
  • 43% of American Millennials think The Communist Manifesto better “guarantees freedom and equality” than the U.S. Declaration of Independence, or aren’t sure.

Undergirding all these shocking facts is the context in which these perceptions arose: despite America spending more, per-student, than any nation in the world on “education”:

83% of U.S. college graduates and 68% of elected officials cannot identify the functional differences between the free market and a command economy.

Since 1993, and especially since 9/11, I have been working as much as possible to create knowledge tools and activism strategies that help advance and defend freedom. I define my general mission as follows:


Anti-freedom activists are decisively winning

Unfortunately, those who are at war with freedom are decisively winning the war for young Americans’ minds, and have been for a very long time. Here is a sampling of the deep research I’ve done to validate this claim:

  • 50% of Americans under age 35 say they think Hamas’s 10/7 slaughter of Jews was “justified,” and 40% now support Hamas over Israel.
  • 52% of American Millennials say they’d rather live in a socialist or communist country, vs. 40% why say they prefer to live in a capitalist country
  • The number of American Millennials who say they approve of communism jumped from 28% in 2018, to 36% in 2019.
  • 43% of American Millennials think The Communist Manifesto better “guarantees freedom and equality” than the U.S. Declaration of Independence, or aren’t sure.
  • 83% of American college graduates and 68% of elected officials cannot identify the functional differences between the free market and a command economy.
  • 64% of Americans overall (across political parties) agree with Marx’s core doctrine, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
  • 51% of Democrats, and 37% of Republicans support passing a law that would criminalize “hate speech,” meaning any statement or expression that a racial, religious, sexual or ethnic minority might find offensive; 40% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 support government censorship of “statements that are offensive to minority groups.”

The work I’ve done, and continue to do, to advance and defend freedom, to general audiences — and particularly, the young

Over the last 30 years, I have generated conceptual frameworks for an array of what I call “knowledge tools” and activism strategies, through which to begin making measurable progress in reversing the key metrics of how young people view the concept of freedom, vs ideologies that are at war with it.  These frameworks include:

  • TV & streaming shows
  • 3D animated & virtual reality (VR) educational series
  • Podcasts

Due to the proprietary nature of these ventures, I am not at liberty to provide further details, except to qualified inquirers in a private setting.

Below, however, is a sampling of the publicly-viewable projects I’ve worked on over the last 30 years, to advance and defend freedom.


“The Choice”: A means of conveying, in one graphic, the dividing line between freedom and totalitarianism, in a format that the average American teenage girl can understand, and relate to her own life

Some years ago, I was challenged to explain in one graphic, a basic truth that I think every American teen should know, to help “inoculate” them against being indoctrinated in anti-freedom ideologies, regardless of their particular flavor.  This challenge was laid down after a contentious discussion with a senior member of a major “legacy” organization, that claimed to champion freedom.

Over time, I pointed out data I was accumulating that showed (a) how badly the war over basic principles and factual history was being lost, and (b) how virtually nothing “the good guys” (including this organization, and I) were doing was targeting young people, let alone in a way that they could easily understand, verify as accurate, and relate to their own lives.  My insistence that this was the most vital gap to be filled caused respectful friction between myself and these organizations (and their funders).

In the heat of the moment, I was challenged to come up with something, in a single graphic frame (for social media), that would be an example of what I say needs to be created. Specifically, a graphic that would convey to a generic teenager a universally-understandable demarcation line between the core principles of freedom, and what life is like for a non-criminal person whose freedom has been taken from them, by totalitarians.

Here was the result of my R&D:

Notes: The bottom image was used in my original piece — it is of 11-year-old Ghulam Haider, who was being forced to marry Faiz Mohammed, 40, in Afghanistan. (Photo and story by The New York Times here). The upper image used to be a similar picture I searched for and found online at the time (2011), but as I prepared this piece to be shared publicly, for the first time, I had an AI image generator create this image, based on my detailed description. Here’s what I remember of how I phrased what I wanted to see: “A mocha colored girl, running in a crop-top, with the sun behind her, her whole life ahead of her, living in freedom, and a radiant smile that shows she relishes it on a cellular level.”

Read an overview of how I explained my vision for this graphic would be used, along with other related media tools and activism strategies, here.

The response I received from the challenging organization was, essentially, “That’s not what we do.” The more I dug, my read of the “tea leaves” was that the organization feared such a graphic could provoke the wrath of groups like CAIR, and a constellation of “social justice” organizations — and that it’s better to take more traditional approaches. In one form or another, this was the rejection I heard of my work over and over again, for a very long time.

Addendum: Andrew Breitbart told me, and said occasionally in public, that his mission was to help turn young minds that have been seduced by anti-freedom lies and ideologies into the equivalent of ex-smokers, in the presence of tobacco industry lobbyists.  I have adopted this as my expanded mission.  I want to see the day where my work products and creativity help young people to acquire the knowledge and confidence to stand up to anyone who peddles such lies — as well as anyone who enables them.


(2b) America

My work regarding advocating for and defending America relate to three primary realms:

  • National security
  • Economic security
  • Property rights

The most consequential project I worked on — which I also helped to gestate — was “The Lost Liberty Hotel,” which helped to neuter a wildly unjust ruling by the US Supreme Court.

[COMING]


(2c) Israel


(2d) Children


(2e) Dogs

Above: This is the key graphic I created for my HEATKILLS.us project, to help prevent dogs from suffering in hot cars. This graphic has been used in countless articles and blogs around the world, and in 2023 was featured in a Psychology Today profile of my project.


(3) Testimonials

The following is a sampling of praise for my advocacy work; see more here.

“I highly recommend Jon for his invaluable assistance to Moms For Liberty in clarifying messaging on a complex and challenging issue. Jon’s insightful guidance and clear communication skills played a pivotal role in navigating the intricacies of the matter, ultimately leading to a more coherent and effective message.”

– Tiffany Justice, co-founder, Moms For Liberty

“Jon has made a tremendous contribution to various liberty-oriented organizations in Virginia. He has earned a well-justified reputation among his colleagues for high-quality work, delivered when promised. Whenever I am approached by liberty-oriented organizations and candidates in need of help with media materials, Jon is the first person I recommend. Quite simply, Jon is a tremendous resource for the liberty movement.”

– James W. Lark III, Ph.D., 2000-2002 national chairman of Libertarian Party of America, and systems engineering professor at the University of Virginia

“Jon has an uncanny grasp of the challenges facing those wishing to advocate liberty in the public square, which are even more significant and complex, given the American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s mission to do so in an environment that encompasses religion, law, philosophy and national security. We found his input on our (existing) website, logo, and the body of other visual and written media we have developed and employ, to be uniquely on-point, and well thought-out.”

– Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., Founder & President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy; See info on my work for Dr. Jasser here

See more testimonials here.


(4) Projects I’m working on

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