Anyone for an organized step forward?

Run time: 04:59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=553M--wDZCM   Posted on YouTube: February 17, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 17, 2010 By DU Member: rooftoprevolutionary Views on DU: 942

 
If the Tea Party can organize into a coherent (I know some think that's debatable) force then what's our answer to that?

ready for a fight!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9xx5Ri278

Listen, the skyping and everything is great but if you really want to start organizing a movement and you are willing to lead, all you have to do is set up a little community-based political group. Get the people you already know to join and tell them to spread the word, put up flyers at schools, libraries, and retirement centers. There are a couple small activist groups in my community but they are mostly academic in nature, and not really about setting up a vocal movement. They are fun to go to every once in a while if they have an interesting speaker but its not activism.

All you got to do is set up your own shit. Start small, just meetings and such and then move on to actual rallies and public gatherings. I would love to start one of these on my own, but I am not a leader and not sure I would be good at mediating events. However if I saw an ad for a local grass roots progressive group I would give it a shot for sure.

The point is that the entire progressive/liberal movement needs to begin organizing locally if we dont want to get slaughtered in the mid terms and all it takes is one person in a town willing to put the time and energy into setting up a group.

local politics are extremely important but we have a lot more knowledge and interest on a national level, mostly because that's where the big show is and what the mainstream media covers. We need people organizing on a local level to feel like they're under a national banner.

Of course, with the tea party, all that corporate funding and free advertisement on Fox and MSM coverage makes that a lot easier

But in my opinion it all starts at the local level and branches out. You start locally and then attempt to merge your group with those in the next town until you have a county wide group. I know liberals are not as easy to organize but I think a lot of the problem is that they aren't aware of various opportunities within their community. I feel if you could spread awareness of your group, there's no way you couldn't round up a little group of people to join you.

My point is you have to start small, very small and the problem is a lot of people dont like that, they expect there to just be a big organization waiting for them to join and when there's not they get discouraged and give up. There are small groups of people all over this country in every state and county who are more than willing to go to a meeting or rally every once in a while, they just dont want to take the time to find them. Thats why you start small and then get other members to tell their friends and co workers, thus creating a snowball effect. Groups like Move on and Code Pink do a pretty decent job of this in terms of having a lot of branches but their problem is that they are too focused on the national level and neglect the county level. Instead of a top down approach you gotta go with a bottom up approach.

What surprises me is that there aren't more liberal web sites designed to put activists in touch with one another. I dont see why this forum doesn't have somewhere for small grass roots organizations to advertise their meetings and rallies. This forum could be a great resource for the aspiring activist who isn't aware of whats going on in his community.

I'd recommend checking out Democracy for America. They have online training and a solid manual for getting started despite some of the obstacles that are mostly put there by ourselves, myself very much included.

Thank you for the encouragement and believe you me, I'm trying.
I agree that many people don't want to put the work into it, and I can relate. I didn't want to put a lot of work into something that was just a battering ram for a political party. What I hope to do is get together with a lot of intelligent people with great ideas and move forward, not as Democrats or liberals or "lefties" but as concerned citizens. I don't give a fiddlestick who voted for who, I just care about what we're doing about it now.

Word of mouth is very powerful, I agree, and with internet, it can become astronomically powerful. I hope to see people on both the national and local levels start pushing forward.

If anyone is in LA, please feel free to come check out rooftop revolutionaries: meetup.com/rooftop-revolutionaries/

Hope to see you all on the 6th.

You know, really getting a movement moving forward is probably about as complicated as launching a successful website these days... which I've heard really takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. Not to be a downer, just want to let you know what you're up against.

you know what they say, organizing lefties is like herding cats, I wish you the best of luck

Please do! I'll be video conferencing on skype and also using that for chat, so if you don't have skype, all you have to do is go to skype.com and download it for free, then leave me your skype name and I'll put you on the list for the 6th.

Thanks!

It seems we need a small set of goals.

1. Incumbents, Pass a Constitutional Amendment clarifying that corporations are not persons, and money is not speech - or we throw your butts out of office

2. Universal healthcare without corporate profits, and world market prices for prescription drugs

3. Return to 1959 tax brackets

4. Return to 1977 financial regulation

5. De-occupation of the World, by American military

6. Restoration of media ownership restrictions

or something along those lines, for example.

I like. Even if #3 was not achieved immediately, getting people to be aware of where tax brackets used to be--and where they are now--would be a win. In fact, you could say the same thing about all of them. Just agitating for them and getting them on the national agenda would be a win. (The problem? 95% of the corporate-owned media mentioned in #6 would refuse to cover the story or mention any of the goals.) But I like.

I fully agree "just adgitating for them" is highly useful and informative. Of course achieving them would be even better.

Would love to hear more, hope you can talk on the 6th, via skype or chat.

casual conversations and handy iphone youtubes, especially the one that Maddow did in Republican hypocrisy.

I knew you'd come.

:hi:

Hope to see you all on March 6th, via video skype or chat.

:hi: