RedwoodGirl’s Guide to Progressive Organizing

I’m a Medicare-for-all get-the-corporations-out-of-politics progressive activist working with both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. If that is not your wing or party even, my specific recommendations might not be applicable but I hope some of the overall recommendations on how to organize will be.

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I see that some of y’all progressives here in the US need some tips or extreme guidance on what it means to “get organized”. Well, I am here for you. At its core, “organizing” is banding together with other people to build power to enact a cause or elect a candidate. Working with others on a cause isn’t always easy, but when it works it lifts everyone up and pushes policy changes forward. Three basic tactics: work with an existing group, starting a group, and media work.

1. EXISTING GROUPS

You can work with an existing group that is already doing the work. What does that mean? It means they’re educating people in their community about their issue by talking to friends and colleagues face to face, and talking to strangers at events. They’re getting folks to sign up to mailing lists, usually email these days, and then emailing them to ask them to call their elected officials and show up at meetings. They’re organizing direct actions and protests and rallies. They’re constantly communicating with their people via Facebook and Twitter and Slack and email and a website to keep everyone informed and motivated.

If you haven’t done these before, they might sound intimidating or not your style. Don’t worry. When you’ve found the cause that moves you, and the right group of people to support you, many of these actions will be easier than you’d think.

Here’s some progressive groups in the US that I’d recommend starting with. I’ve either worked with all of these groups or follow their activities closely.

• Progressive politics in general: Democratic Socialists of America (http://www.dsausa.org/), and Progressive Democrats of America (http://pdamerica.org/). Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has a platform that’s nearly identical to Bernie’s, and they have local chapters, so that’s a no-brainer. They’re growing like gang-busters since the election. They’ve got local chapters everywhere, look around on Facebook. If you’re in the East Bay, find them at https://www.facebook.com/eastbaydsa/?fref=ts. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is run by a power-house woman, Donna Smith, who was featured in Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” and who was one of the people behind getting Bernie to run for president. Donna’s on Twitter and Medium at donnasicko. DSA and PDA are both highly likely to support the entire array of progressive issues.
• Pushing Bernie’s platform: Bernie’s group Our Revolution (https://ourrevolution.com/). Political Revolution is a spin-off from the Sanders for President group on Reddit, with the same goals in spirit as Our Revolution but not affiliated. They’ve got an active Slack group which you can request an invitation for at http://polrevvols.herokuapp.com/.
• Getting progressives elected to Congress in 2018: Brand New Congress (https://brandnewcongress.org/home). These guys are taking on the pretty audacious project of running a full slate of progressive candidates in every Congressional race in 2018, even races where the Democratic party failed to field a single candidate in 2016. And they’re going to nationalize the campaign so hopefully everyone in the country is paying attention to the 2018 races and how they can help candidates outside their area. I haven’t worked with them personally but I sat in on a conference call and they seemed very organized and determined. So for now I think they’re work looking into.
• Single-payer healthcare: Health Care for All (HCA) in your state. In California it’s Health Care for All — California (http://healthcareforall.org/). HCA is small but it punches above its weight due to the decades of experience of many of its board members and membership, and its regional-chapter-based structure which gets people meeting face to face so they form tight bonds, and because it’s part of a coalition of several other healthcare organizations including National Nurses United (NNU) and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and HEAL-California. Now it’s part of a larger California single-payer coalition called “Healthy California” along with the Physicians for a National Health Program, California Nurses Association, Therapists for Single-Payer, Courage Campaign, California Teachers Association, VoteVets, and dozens of other community and labor organizations (https://healthycaliforniacampaign.org/about/). If you’re a healthcare professional and a single-payer supporter, definitely look into Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), as they’re ramping up their activism now: http://www.pnhp.org/.
• Environmental issues and climate change: 350 (https://350.org/) and Food & Water Watch (http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/)
• Civil liberties: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): https://www.aclu.org/
• Racial justice: Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
• Local issues: there are local orgs in every town and city doing good work and they are dying for volunteers. Google search “yourtown yourissue” or “yourstate yourissue”. Or contact DSA or Our Revolution to see if anyone there knows of local orgs on your issue. Or hell, post a comment to this article and I’ll try to find one, and if so will show you how I found it.

2) STARTING A GROUP

Another way to organize is to create your own group. It could start with just you and one other person and communicating via email. Or you can start a Facebook group, or a Google group, or a Slack group, or a Twitter acct. Starting up a group on more than one channel tends to give the illusion that it’s larger than it is, so that’s fun. Look for folks on Twitter who live near you who are interested in an issue or idea you’re interested in. Invite someone out for coffee to talk about making something happen. Advice from Linda Tirado (@KillerMartinis): “Have a block party. Set up childcare shares. Plan an urban garden. Find a project that engages folks.” BOOM you’re organizing. One very effective way to build power is to join up with another group after yours has gotten some momentum.

3) MEDIA WORK

Another mode of organizing is media work. You can write articles like this on Medium and share them on Facebook and Twitter. You can do a podcast like Holly Wood does or a radio show like the Progressive Army folks do. You can build up a Twitter following like I have :): the keys there are tweeting a lot, with useful info, re-tweeting others’ stuff, engaging in conversations respectfully, being generous, supporting other folks.

FYI Twitter is 100x better for organizing than Facebook. The non-chronological and unpredictable nature of Facebook, compared to the instant and predictably chronological stream of Twitter, makes it difficult to convey information reliably or urgently. Facebook is good for a central “presence” almost taking the place of a website and/or blog to keep folks informed in an easy-going way. Facebook is also great for setting up events, since it then puts it in your Facebook calendar and people who are going to the event can see each other and self-organize. Fun story: recently the Oakland Peace Center organized a “Post Election Resources Fair” for folks in the East Bay to find organizations doing work with issues they’re interested in, and they mostly organized it on Facebook. In four days time they got 33 organizations to take part, some of which found the event on Facebook and contacted them to take part. The day of the event, over 400 people showed up, nearly all of whom knew of the event only by Facebook. People are hungry!

Conversely Twitter is great for conveying a sense of urgency, and for easily finding other folks who are similarly aligned, and following them with no expectation that they have to be friends with you or follow you back. Twitter is loosely connected to Medium by custom. Most folks who write for Medium have a Twitter account and frequent it’s with the same handle. Some interesting progressive activist and/or writer folks I follow on Twitter and/or Medium (I’m going to change these out b/c there’s way too many good people to follow):

• Naomi Klein: @NaomiAKlein on Twitter — environmentalist writer and activist
• Elizabeth Bruenig: @ebruenig on Twitter — associate editor for Post/Everything at the Washington Post
• Anoa J. Chang, Esq.: @TheWayWithAnoa on Twitter, Anoa J. Changa, Esq. on Medium — editor at Progressive Army, contributor to the BPD Show
• Brendan James: @deep_beige on Twitter, brendan james on Medium — writer for Guardian, Vice, Slate
• Bill McKibben: @billmckibben on Twitter, Bill McKibben on Medium — founder of 350.org
• Jeet Heer: @HeerJeet on Twitter, Jeet Heer on Medium — senior editor for The New Republic
• Johnathan Cohn: @JonathanCohn — prolific tweeter in Boston MA
• Abi Wilkinson: @AbiWilks on Twitter, Abi Wilkinson on Medium — freelance writer in the UK for The Guardian and The Telegraph. It’s great in general for progressives in the US to follow leftists in Canada and the UK and other left-leaning countries because they have more a history of it, and they’re more confident in leftist policies than we in the US will ever be.
• Every town has at least one progressive activist on Twitter. Use Twitter’s search tools to find them. Or get in the habit of replying to news articles with helpful or witty comments and see who likes or retweets or replies to your comments.

There are thousands of people worth following on Twitter. You can drown in it, if you don’t organize the people you follow, so I like to keep lists of people by topic or geographical area. The lists that I use most often:

• https://twitter.com/RedwoodGirl/lists/workshop, a condensed list of my favorites;
• https://twitter.com/RedwoodGirl/lists/favs1, a larger list of my favorites;
• https://twitter.com/RedwoodGirl/lists/favs-bayarea, my favorite SF Bay Area folks;
• https://twitter.com/RedwoodGirl/lists/ca-healthcare-sp, healthcare and single-payer folks and CA healthcare analysts.

If you do use Facebook for organizing your group, be aware that its security is pretty flimsy. It’s pretty easy for somebody with no scruples and a few bucks to hack into your account and possibly sever lines of communications with your folks. So I’d strongly recommend using Twitter and/or email and/or Slack in conjunction with FB. One way to keep them connected is you can set up an automatic re-posting to Twitter via the FB settings. Ask me how if you need it. Also I’d recommend telling your people to turn on “Notifications” for your FB group or organization. When people join a FB group it automatically sets their notification on for “selected videos” but not for any other posts. To fix that: turn Notifications off, then back on again. Now Notifications are on for all updates, events, and videos.

I’ll add to this and update it as ideas come to me and as the feedback requests. Remember that activism should be fun! If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong! Leave comments here or contact me on Twitter at @RedwoodGirl. We’re going to get through this folks! I love you guys! Happy organizing!