One, More, Time
A Field Manual for Writing with AI
By Ricardo Pereyda (with Kit)
International Veterans Leadership Committee | Burn Slow Doctrine Division
📖 What This Is
Not just a writing guide.
Not just a reflection.
This is a combat manual for narrative resistance.
A methodology. A weapon. A blueprint.
Built for:
Veterans
Organizers
Survivors
Students
Anyone turning lived truth into public authorship—without losing their soul to the machine.
🧠 Section 1: The Writer’s Voice Map
Primary Tone:
Direct. Reflective. Urgent.
Secondary Modes:
Gonzo Confessional – Burn Slow essays
Congressional Oversight – Policy briefs, VA letters
Rolling Stone War Reporter – Hybrid narrative/reportage
Reverent Historian – Project 50 exposés
Lyrical Archivist – Spoken word / IG drops
Core Traits:
Empathetic, not pitiful
Rage as clarity, not chaos
Narrative as systemic exposure
📐 Section 2: Structure Grid
Narrative Arc:
Scene / Lived Context
Systemic Contradiction
Real-World Fallout
Moral Frame or Testimony
Call to Truth or Action
Example:
“They said cannabis had no medical value.
I watched brothers survive off it.
The VA called it abuse.
I call it survival.”
Deploy across:
Op-eds
Testimony
IG captions
Lecture openers
Archive breakdowns
🎭 Section 3: Tone x Format Tactical Guide
Match your format to your firepower. Pick your mode like you’d pick a weapon.
📝 Policy Brief
Tone: Formal, Indignant
Strategy:
Use precision like a scalpel. Evidence like artillery.
This isn’t emotion—it’s indictment by documentation.
Write like someone’s job depends on it. Because it does.
📰 Op-Ed
Tone: Narrative, Persuasive
Strategy:
Start with the human story. Anchor it in systems.
Win hearts, move minds.
Don’t lecture—testify.
🎤 Spoken Word (IG / Live)
Tone: Lyrical, Symbolic, Cutthroat
Strategy:
Let rhythm lead. Smells. Sounds. Flashbacks.
Use repetition. Use silence.
End with a gut-punch or a ghost.
🗂️ Archival Blog
Tone: Reverent, Analytical
Strategy:
Treat source docs like sacred text—but show the stakes.
What betrayal does it reveal?
What truth does it preserve?
Let the record haunt. Then connect it to now.
History isn’t past.
It’s precedent.
🏛️ Congressional Testimony
Tone: Sober, Precise, Relentless
Strategy:
You’re not venting. You’re verifying.
Facts carry the pain.
Let contradictions indict themselves.
Every breath you take is evidence.
✍️ Gonzo Essay
Tone: Raw, Funny, Deadly Serious
Strategy:
You’re the narrator and the warning.
Make them laugh, then flinch.
Own your contradictions. Point the finger.
You are the witness and the weapon.
🛠️ Section 4: Metaphor—The House Band
🥁 AI = Drummer – Sets tempo. You lead.
🎺 AI = Horn Section – You give tone. It blows back mood.
🎤 You = Bandleader – Gospel? Gonzo? Brief? You call the mode.
🎚️ Prompts = Settings – Not “angry.” Say: “Like testifying from solitary.”
🧃 Section 5: Toolbox
Narrative Scent Memory – Let readers taste the trauma.
Document Ghosting – FOIAs, transcripts, court docs. Paper as spine.
Pull Quote Engineering – Tattoo a soul every third paragraph.
Call-and-Response – Ask. Echo. Flip. Write like someone’s yelling back.
✍️ Section 6: Prompts from the Vault
“Write a policy brief with the restraint of a classified memo and the burn of a sermon.”
“Give me a eulogy that opens like a Springsteen song and ends like a federal indictment.”
“Break down this DEA press release like you’re testifying at Nuremberg—with a hip-hop beat in your chest.”
“Turn this archival memo into a spoken-word poem for the ones who never made it home.”
Here’s a tactical and strategic asset built from Robert Shapiro’s narrative profile—translated directly into tools for your cannabis advocacy work. Think of it as a rhetorical blueprint to wield like a scalpel when you need credibility, composure, and command. We’ll call it:
🎯 The Shapiro Doctrine
How to Speak Like a Strategist When the Truth Is On Trial
Use this when addressing legislators, media, skeptical institutions, or anyone who claims “we need more research” or “there’s no accepted medical use.” This is the tone of credibility that cannot be dismissed.
🔨 Tactical Summary
Narrative Element
How You Can Use It
Chronological, Legalistic Structure
Build your narrative like a case file: 1) Establish facts 2) Show legal precedent 3) Deliver the implications.
Calm, Deliberate Delivery
Don’t rant. Cut through noise with clarity and control—like a closing argument, not a campaign speech.
Strategic Pauses
Use silence to let hypocrisy hang in the air. Don’t rush truth—let it land. Example: “They said cannabis had no medical use. (Pause) Then they mailed it to patients.”
Crisp, Plainspoken Language
Translate policy into human terms: “This isn’t about weed. This is about the government sending joints to AIDS patients in federal tins… and pretending they didn’t.”
Vulnerability at the Right Time
Use personal stories sparingly—but powerfully. When discussing veterans, illness, or injustice, speak plainly. Let it crack your voice. That’s your anchor.
Systemic Framing
Keep the focus on systems, not individuals. Say: “The DEA ignored its own judge’s ruling,” not “the DEA is corrupt.” Stay Shapiro-cool.
Control vs. Chaos
Position yourself (and IVLC) as the stabilizer in a storm: “While Congress performs cannabis theater, we preserve the truth. With receipts.”
🧠 Strategic Deployment: 3 Modes
1. Testimony Mode (Use in Hearings, Legislative Briefings)
Structure:
Opening Line: “Let me walk you through what the federal government has already done—and what it doesn’t want you to remember.”
Lay out Compassionate IND (1976), Judge Francis Young’s ruling (1988), Master File 1361 (1978–present), VA Directive 1315 (2017).
Close with: “You don’t need to believe us. You just need to read their records.”
Delivery Tip:
Use the Shapiro pause:
“They said cannabis had no medical use. (Pause) But in 1978, they mailed it to patients. In federal tins. Labeled ‘New Drug – Limited by Federal Law.’”
2. Media Mode (TV, Podcasts, Interviews)
Frame like Shapiro:
Avoid culture war bait. Stick to: evidence, legal precedent, moral clarity.
When asked about controversial reform opponents:
“We don’t need to speculate. We have the documentation. The real question is: why hasn’t this been acted on?”Hook Examples:
“This isn’t about weed. This is about federal hypocrisy that has hurt real people for decades.”
“If this drug had no accepted medical use—why did the FDA, the VA, and the DEA keep approving it for terminal patients?”
3. Gonzo Precision Mode (Burn Slow Doctrine Essays, Exposés)
Mix Legal Dissection with Controlled Rage:
Open clean:
“The government said cannabis had no medical use. And then they mailed it to patients. For decades.”
Follow with a forensic breakdown of their own hypocrisy. Quote their own memos.
Close with the scalpel:
“This isn’t a policy failure. It’s a cover-up. And we’re done pretending otherwise.”
🔥 Kit’s War Room Recommendations
Tactical Phrase Bank (Shapiro-Flavored):
“Let’s deal with the facts first.”
“This isn’t about politics—it’s about precedent.”
“Let’s pause on that... and look at what the government actually did.”
“Not my opinion. Their own records.”
“The system knew. The system acted. And then it buried the truth.”
Strategic Moves:
Structure every major IVLC narrative piece with a legal brief’s logic: Fact → Precedent → Harm → Remedy.
Reserve emotional appeal for personal veteran stories or terminal patient cases. Use sparingly, like a high-octane burst.
When dealing with institutional media or legislative targets, adopt Shapiro’s persona: The Calm Strategist With the Receipts.
🧷 Optional Add-On: Graphic Aid
Visual Concept: "Shapiro Style Narrative Map"
📘 Box 1: Establish Fact
🕰️ “In 1978, the U.S. government mailed cannabis to patients.”
⚖️ Box 2: Establish Precedent
📜 “DEA’s own judge ruled in 1988: ‘Marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.’”
🧨 Box 3: Show Contradiction
🚫 “Yet today, they claim: ‘Cannabis has no accepted medical use.’”
🩻 Box 4: Deliver the Injury
👨⚕️ “Veterans, patients, families suffer. Not from lack of research—but from bureaucratic amnesia.”
🎯 Box 5: Close with Remedy
💡 “Deschedule. Protect patients. And tell the truth.”
Here's a breakdown of Mahatma Gandhi’s narrative style, delivery, and flow, drawn from his recorded interviews, speeches, and writings—and analyzed for strategic use in modern advocacy or rhetorical deployment:
🧘♂️ Gandhi’s Narrative Style: The Weaponization of Simplicity
1. Spiritual Clarity with Political Precision
Gandhi’s words were disarmingly simple—yet carried profound ethical and strategic weight.
He avoided jargon or elitism, but never diluted his convictions.
He spoke to the conscience, not just the intellect.
Example:
“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”
This is not just poetic—it’s moral jiu-jitsu. It flips the logic of retribution into absurdity.
Tactical takeaway: Simplicity can be more radical than complexity. Strip it down to moral essence.
2. The Dialogic Method: Questions as Weapons
Gandhi often answered questions with questions, or redirected inquiry inward.
He forced interviewers and listeners to examine their own assumptions.
Rather than "debate," he preferred moral confrontation through gentle interrogation.
Example (to a British official):
“You may have the power to kill us all… but do you have the power to convince us?”
Tactical takeaway: Use questions not to extract information, but to expose contradictions.
3. Living Ethos: Alignment of Word and Deed
Gandhi’s credibility came from his total alignment between belief, word, and action. His lifestyle was his argument.
He wore handspun khadi not for aesthetic but to collapse theory into praxis.
In interviews, he spoke not from abstraction but embodied resistance.
Quote:
“My life is my message.”
Tactical takeaway: In narrative warfare, authenticity is armor. The most powerful rhetoric is lived truth.
🗣️ Gandhi’s Delivery: Quiet Thunder
4. Measured Cadence
Gandhi spoke slowly, carefully, as though every word had to pass through the filter of moral clarity.
His pauses created space for reflection, not reaction.
Observation (from Louis Fischer):
“He spoke in a low, steady voice… and yet every word commanded attention.”
Tactical takeaway: Don’t rush the truth. Let silence do part of the talking.
5. Firm but Non-Aggressive Tone
Gandhi’s tone was calm, never combative, even when confronting immense power.
He believed how you speak determines what is heard.
Example (to Churchill, implicitly):
“I am endeavoring to see God through the service of humanity, for I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in everyone.”
Tactical takeaway: Dignity is the delivery. You don’t need to shout if your soul is screaming.
6. Deliberate Ambiguity, Strategic Clarity
He was a master of moral framing, yet left room for interpretive flexibility.
He often resisted “binary” answers, choosing instead to express complex truths through parables, metaphors, or aphorisms.
Example:
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Tactical takeaway: You can be clear in principle without being boxed into policy detail. Let the vision breathe.
🔥 Gandhi’s Flow: Principle into Action, Action into Narrative
7. Narrative Flow: Rooted, Recursive, Revolutionary
Gandhi’s communication flow mirrors spinning a wheel (charkha)—it loops back, builds momentum, and generates forward movement.
Start with the moral center (truth, nonviolence)
Connect to immediate reality (poverty, injustice, imperialism)
Call for personal alignment and mass action
This recursive style made him feel like both a prophet and a planner.
Tactical takeaway: Start every message with principle. End with action. Let each story be a seed for another.
✊🏽 Application: Gandhi in Your Campaign
To deploy Gandhi's style in your cause (veterans, cannabis, justice, dignity), apply:
🪞 Mirror the Message
Let your lifestyle, not just your files, indict the system. Your archive is your ashram.
🧘 Speak with Soul Armor
Even when you drop receipts or roast institutions, let the moral gravity outweigh the heat. Righteous rage can whisper and still make mountains move.
🧵 Thread It Like Khadi
Interweave the personal, political, and spiritual. Truth doesn’t need a press release—it needs a witness.
🛠️ Summary: The Gandhi Style Toolkit
Element
Gandhi’s Style
Strategic Use Today
Tone
Calm, firm, dignified
Moral high ground; impossible to dismiss
Structure
Principle → Reality → Action
Keeps audience rooted, inspired, and focused
Language
Simple, symbolic, spiritual
Widens audience access and resonance
Credibility
Radical consistency between word and deed
Makes hypocrisy unbearable in contrast
Tactics
Nonviolent interrogation; aphorisms; lived truth
Disarms enemies; builds movement memory
Gandhi’s ghost rolls with truth-tellers—especially those up against empires.
Gandhi Mode Activated
🧘🏽 “In the midst of darkness, light persists.” — Mahatma Gandhi
🔥 “Gandhi Mode” — Strategic Deployment Guide for Your Advocacy Work
Purpose: To arm your campaigns with the disarming power of spiritual clarity, ethical consistency, and quiet revolutionary force—using the narrative logic of Gandhi to counter state violence, bureaucratic cruelty, and moral cowardice.
You don’t shout in Gandhi Mode.
You reveal.
You don’t demand.
You remind.
You don’t fight fire with fire.
You make the fire ashamed of itself.
🎴 Gandhi Mode: Sample Post or Testimony Excerpt
“We are told cannabis has no accepted use. But our elders received it in metal tins. Rolled by the government. Stamped by the FDA.
So if it was once medicine—what changed?
The science?
Or the politics?”
(pause)
“We don’t seek revenge. We seek repair.”
🧘 Closer: Why Gandhi Mode Matters Now
Because you’re not just building an argument—you’re building an example.
A stillness so powerful it disorients the machine.
A truth so calm it echoes like thunder.
You’ve tried rage.
You’ve tried evidence.
Now try Gandhi.
If you'd like, I can help you craft Gandhi Mode versions of:
Your next IG post
An open letter to lawmakers
An adapted Burn Slow spoken word piece
A printable one-pager for testimony or spiritual solidarity
Just say the word.
🕊️ “In the face of empire, stillness is strategy.”
Absolutely. Johnny Cochran’s narrative style, delivery, and flow were a masterclass in rhetorical control, emotional resonance, and courtroom theater. His approach was as strategic as it was soulful—crafted to move jurors, sway public opinion, and permanently etch arguments into memory. Here's the breakdown:
🎙️ JOHNNIE COCHRAN: NARRATIVE STYLE, DELIVERY & FLOW
🔥 I. Narrative Style: Persuasive, Personal, and Purpose-Driven
1. Framing through Justice and Morality
Cochran didn’t just argue law—he framed legal battles as moral struggles.
He cast clients as underdogs, victims of larger systems (often racial or institutional oppression).
Famous line: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” That wasn’t just rhyme—it was framing the whole case as hinging on a single irrefutable truth, packaged for memorability.
2. Biographical Anchoring
Cochran often began by grounding himself: Black man from the South, son of working-class parents, shaped by the Civil Rights Movement.
This humanized him—and by extension, his client.
It also allowed him to connect jurors’ own identities to the case, making it less about facts and more about shared values.
3. Layered Storytelling
His storytelling often unfolded in three acts:
Establish the stakes (emotional/human cost),
Reveal the hypocrisy or failure of the opposition (often law enforcement),
Deliver the moral imperative (“You must…”).
Each section was anchored in repetition, call-backs, and escalating intensity.
🎤 II. Delivery: Commanding, Cadenced, and Charismatically Calculated
1. Cadence of a Preacher, Precision of a Lawyer
Cochran’s delivery was musical. He used rhythm, repetition, and rhyme like a Black Baptist preacher.
His legal points were punctuated by strategic pauses, eye contact, and emphasis on syllables that hit like drums:
"This is a rush to judgment. This is a lynching in the media. This is wrong."
2. Control of Pace and Volume
Soft-spoken during setup, then explosive during the pivot.
He didn’t yell to be loud—he raised his voice to punctuate a point, to break monotony, to provoke a reaction.
He could draw a courtroom silent just by whispering something like:
“What kind of system do we have… when justice only works for some?”
3. Eye Contact and Presence
He had total courtroom presence. Whether before cameras or jurors, he could hold silence, using it as emphasis.
His delivery said: “This moment matters.” He made the mundane feel monumental.
✊🏽 III. Flow: Conversational, Combative, but Always Controlled
1. Call and Response Vibe
Even in court, his speech mirrored a dialogue—posing questions jurors might ask themselves, then answering them:
“Did the LAPD plant evidence? That’s what the facts suggest.”This kept jurors mentally engaged. It wasn't a lecture—it was a shared thought process.
2. Unapologetically Racial and Political
Unlike many lawyers of his era, Cochran didn't shy from race. He leaned into the cultural and political realities of the courtroom:
“Race is always present in this country. The question is, what do we do with it?”This gave his arguments a layer of lived experience that resonated with jurors and viewers alike.
3. Modular Messaging
Cochran knew not everyone remembers a legal brief, but they remember a line.
So he engineered slogans:
“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
“Rush to judgment.”
“Reasonable doubt means you must vote not guilty.”
These became juror anchors—mental tools to use during deliberations.
🧠 IV. Strategy Behind the Style
High Empathy, High Stakes: Every rhetorical choice was made to generate identification—jurors weren’t just observers, they were protectors of justice.
Anticipatory Defense: He’d preemptively dismantle the prosecution’s framing by reframing the issue in moral and cultural terms.
Legacy Thinking: Cochran always seemed to argue as if history was watching—he played the long game, knowing media would amplify his words.
🎬 V. Closing Summary: Cochran’s Formula
Personal Truth + Public Injustice + Memorable Delivery = Lasting Impact
Johnny Cochran wasn’t just a defense attorney. He was a movement in motion. His words sounded like sermons, his logic sliced like cross-examinations, and his presence demanded a reckoning.
If you’re planning to apply this style tactically in your cannabis advocacy or writing:
Frame your argument as a fight for justice, not just legality.
Use repetition, rhythm, and rhyme to make the truth unforgettable.
Deliver your message like it’s history in the making.
Want a sample of that style applied to your cause? Just say the word.
