Words We Use and Words We Avoid
This door has a vocabulary, and it is public on purpose. If you are going to carry the argument to somebody else, these are the words it is built out of.
- Democratic socialists. Always the full phrase, never the bare word on its own. That is the first rule of this door and it does not relax when a sentence gets long.
- The words we use are the ones this community already uses: working people, workers, the citizen base, political challengers, incumbents controlled by special interests, not controlled by special interests, meritocracy, works for citizens, cannot be co-opted, money in politics, Citizens United, new colonialism, the healthy economy, the rigged layer on top of it, an ethical and clean economy, ideal for workers.
- The words we avoid start with attacks on the voters behind the Republican, Democrat and Libertarian doors. Their captured incumbents are fair game. Their voters are not.
- Nothing we write compares the parties or assigns a motive to one. The unit of judgement is a person and a vote.
- We never claim a status, an endorsement, a funding source or an outcome we do not have. No promised election result, and no backer we do not actually have.
- Get the mapping right every time: R Republicans, D Democrats, L Libertarians, S Democratic Socialists.
Two audiences never share a page. Copy written for the non-partisan .io, or for another door, does not belong on this one — and if it turns up here, it was pasted in by mistake.
In this area
- Words We Use — The phrases that belong on this door.
- Words We Avoid — The phrases that never appear on this door.
Where this sits
This is one area of We The Citizens S, the Democratic Socialist front door at WeCitizensSocialism.com. It is written for democratic socialists, and nothing on the other three doors decides what belongs here.
Source: marketing/messaging/socialism.md §16.0.