For almost 15 years, Meetup has served as an organizing platform for a wide range of political parties and movements, welcoming everyone from the Howard Deaniacs to the Tea Party. “We’re vital plumbing for democracy,” we always said. Before today, our company had never taken a partisan stance. It’s not a decision we take lightly.
But after Donald Trump’s order to block people on the basis of nationality and religion, a line had been crossed. At a time when core democratic ideals felt under attack, we looked at our members’ response, and were inspired by Meetups like SF Resist. We felt a duty to spark more activity and broaden civic participation.
As champions of democracy, equality, human rights, social justice, and sustainability, more people (than ever!) are ready to organize, take to the streets, visit town hall meetings, pick up the phone, paint signs, and huddle to make their voices heard.
We are Meetup, dammit! We needed to act.
So last week we stopped normal operations for a company-wide hackathon (a “resist-a-thon”) to help people get involved.
We created 1,000+ #Resist Meetup Groups to act as local hubs for these actions.
- We launched 1,000+ #Resist Meetup Groups, free for everyone
- We’re announcing them to our 30 million members
- We made key product changes enabling anyone to schedule local Meetups
- We partnered with leading organizations to distribute their ideas for making change
We’re not operating alone:
We’re relying on members to take this forward (anyone can show up, anyone can step up). And we’re lucky to have partners including Planned Parenthood, the Women’s March, the Anti-Defamation League, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Campaign and many others who are contributing to our library of ideas for making change.
Meetup exists to create welcoming spaces where people can connect. We look forward to seeing the positive impact from these Meetups when those connections happen.
Find a Meetup near you, and get involved.
