My name is Ilana Cohen. I spent this summer with the Patriotic Millionaires as the Communications Intern, meaning you may have (unknowingly) seen some of my work on our social media platforms. As my final assignment, the team here asked me to write “A Closer Look” on what I learned this summer, and I was more than happy to oblige.
The provocative name of this organization inevitably sparks fascinating conversations, which is funny because “talking politics” was never something I actively sought out. But now, having spent the summer reading and writing about tax, wages, labor, and democracy issues, it feels impossible to not talk about them. Through drafting content and learning from the team, I discovered how to confidently communicate what I believe in.
I fell in love with advocacy in high school, where I looked forward to government class, aced environmental science, and had a love-hate relationship with English. Across the board, I noticed how policy connected to pretty much everything we talked about in these courses. During my first two years of studying at Virginia Tech, I learned that no issue exists in isolation, and the best solutions live at the intersection of multiple topics. That is why, even though I am majoring in Environmental Policy, I decided to dedicate my summer to taxes, wages, and all things money here at Patriotic Millionaires. Reading Tax the Rich, Pay the People, and Burned By Billionaires gave me a foundation, but these past ten weeks gave me the confidence to truly “talk politics” with conviction.
As a social media writer, you need to know your audience and the best way to make a message land. While finding that voice, I realized I was constantly coming back to a basic literary concept: ethos, logos, and pathos. These three parts of persuasion represent appeals to credibility, logic, and emotion. I learned that applying Aristotle’s concepts is a great way to understand any political argument, and it ultimately helped me identify the three pillars that shape our advocacy.
Here is how I’ve come to understand Patriotic Millionaires through this lens:
Our Logos: what the numbers are telling us.
Data are the most basic language we have. It is difficult to argue with hard facts (though it doesn’t stop people from trying!). The numbers paint a stark reality: the top 10% hold 70% of U.S. wealth, while the bottom half holds just 1%. This inequality extends to the environment, where the top 0.1% contribute 76 times more to global warming than the average person. Meanwhile, worker pay is stagnating. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since I was 3 years old, while CEO pay has increased 20 times faster than average worker compensation. This disconnect is exactly why 63% of adults view low tax rates on corporations as unfair and eight in 10 young people view current economic conditions as “bad” or “terrible.” These are not just statistics; they are proof that the “American Dream” is being priced out of reach for my generation and wealth inequality is growing rapidly.
Our Ethos: our moral obligation to the people.
The massive wealth gap, the rising cost of living, and our very first trillionaire are not accidents. They are the deliberate results of a system built to let this happen, enabled by people who wanted to see it happen. For too long, lawmakers have made empty promises and been completely okay with leaving working families to struggle. Look closer, and we’ll see that it’s primarily the 0.1% and 0.01% holding extreme amounts of wealth and using it to change the course of our democracy. This is our appeal to your ethics. Through our work, we are asking our fellow millionaires, billionaires, businesspeople, elected officials, and citizens of the world to look at these economic issues and answer them with their morals:
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Is there any ethical justification for a trillionaire to exist?
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How much is too much? If there is an amount that is too little, there must be an amount that is too much (an idea established by the Extreme Wealth Line).
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How does someone become part of the 0.1% and 0.01%, and how much did others contribute to their success? Were there public investments (or private financial support) that led to their success?
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Should someone working a full-time job (40 hours a week) make less than enough to survive?
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Why should income from investments be taxed at a lower rate than a teacher’s hard-earned paycheck?
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Should the size of a donor’s wallet carry more weight than a citizen’s ballot?
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What role should money play in politics, if any?
Our Pathos: the human stories that drive our mission.
While I spent a lot of time this summer writing from the perspective of a millionaire, I never once forgot that this mission is really about millions of Americans struggling to find their footing, working multiple jobs, or scrambling to pay rent. Every legislative push, every endorsed candidate, and every social post exists for the people slighted by a system that disguises wealth hoarding as “good for the economy.” A minimum wage worker in North Carolina or a public school teacher in New York is just as worthy as any tech “bro” or CEO. The only people gaming the system are the billionaires demanding tax breaks because they believe they’ve worked harder and deserve them more. These lived experiences are what rile us up. They motivate us to spread our message, find Congressional champions, and educate the public on exactly how the rich intend to stay rich while almost everyone else struggles. Patriotic Millionaires is a membership-based organization, meaning that every member can tell their story and speak to the ways in which our society is set up to benefit them and their financial success over everyone else’s.
These three pillars have provided a framework for me to grasp the true significance of our message.
Behind every press release, social post, video clip, and email, we are trying to persuade you to care about our country’s tax, wage, and labor systems. It might sound mundane, but through a communications lens, I see an issue that touches everyone.
My generation has been left with a lot of tough and complicated problems to solve, and it is easy to check out or “leave it to the experts” when politics feel so polarized. However, my work this summer with communicating these stories and championing the organization’s priorities proved to me that this is far from a lost cause. Getting politicians and the people they serve on the same page is so crucial right now, and everyone can do it. I found that if you have a story (pathos), a moral question (ethos), and a little bit of data to back it up (logos), your voice can and should be involved.
As my time at Patriotic Millionaires officially ends, I plan to use these new skills to connect the environmental crisis to the economic one. I have discovered that no issue is impossible to understand when it is broken down into language we all connect with. The next time a dreaded political conversation comes up in class or at the dinner table, I now know exactly how to approach it: ask people why they hold their perspective and explore how we might agree or disagree. This is how we start productively solving our issues together.
