Wednesday, February 1, 2017

INDIVISIBLE Lesson 8 - Representatives and Public Meetings - Speak Up

www.IndivisibleGuide.com offers a "PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR RESISTING TRUMP’S AGENDA.”  It contains basic lessons in how to productively deal with congressional staffers and representatives.  Its been compiled by volunteers who have been congressional staffers themselves and who understand how the system works.  

As we found out in the last election, it doesn't matter that we have a skewered political system, it's what we have and it's still important that massive amounts of citizens participate.  If we don't learn to how use it, the radical absolutist christian right certainly does know all the tricks - and they are more than happy to railroad us, given the opportunity, as we certainly have.  Citizens, it’s our last chance.  What INDIVISIBLE has produced needs to be shared far and wide, which is why I plan to sharing all their videos and hope others will find this helpful.  Beneath the fold I have screenshots of the main points.  Feel free to copy and share, this information needs to be circulated and utilized.

Organizing Against Trump - Local Meeting
Anti-Trump Education


Local Public Events - Members of Congress seek attention. 
How can you give them the attention you want them to get?

If you want to connect with others, visit http://www.IndivisibleGuide.com, and follow #AntiTrumpEdon Twitter. All content in these training video is "open source" licensed under the Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)






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INDIVISIBLE:
A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR RESISTING 
THE TRUMP AGENDA

Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.
Updated January 5th, 2017


Here’s the quick and dirty summary of this document. While this page summarizes top-level takeaways, the full document describes how to actually carry out these activities.
Chapter 1
How grassroots advocacy worked to stop President Obama. We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components: 
  1. A local strategy targeting individual Members of Congress (MoCs).
  2. A defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption. 
Chapter 2
How your MoC thinks — reelection, reelection, reelection — and how to use that to save democracy. MoCs want their constituents to think well of them and they want good, local press. They hate surprises, wasted time, and most of all, bad press that makes them look weak, unlikable, and vulnerable. You will use these interests to make them listen and act.
Chapter 3
Identify or organize your local group. Is there an existing local group or network you can join? Or do you need to start your own? We suggest steps to help mobilize your fellow constituents locally and start organizing for action. 
Chapter 4
Four local advocacy tactics that actually work. Most of you have three MoCs — two Senators and one Representative. Whether you like it or not, they are your voices in Washington. Your job is to make sure they are, in fact, speaking for you. We’ve identified four key opportunity areas that just a handful of local constituents can use to great effect. Always record encounters on video, prepare questions ahead of time, coordinate with your group, and report back to local media:
  1. Town halls. MoCs regularly hold public in-district events to show that they are listening to constituents. Make them listen to you, and report out when they don’t.
  2. Non-town hall events. MoCs love cutting ribbons and kissing babies back home. Don’t let them get photo-ops without questions about racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.
  3. District office sit-ins/meetings. Every MoC has one or several district offices.
    Go there. Demand a meeting with the MoC. Report to the world if they refuse
    to listen.
  4. Coordinated calls. Calls are a light lift but can have an impact. Organize your local group to barrage your MoCs at an opportune moment about and on a specific issue.
NOTE FROM THE INDIVISIBLE TEAM

We’ll be updating the guide based on your feedback and making it interactive ASAP. You can sign up for updates at  www.IndivisibleGuide.com.

Every single person who worked on this guide and website is a volunteer. We’re doing this in our free time without coordination or support from our employers. Our only goal is to help the real leaders on the ground who are resisting Trump’s agenda on their home turf. 

We hope you will take this document and use it however you see fit.

We want to hear your stories, questions, comments, edits, etc., so please feel free to ping some of us on Twitter: @IndivisibleTeam,



And please please please spread the word! Only folks who know this exists will use it.



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