Want to help at all? Simple way to demand change -- tell people and they'll tell others.
From now until The Big Day:
1. Sign up your city for an educational forum, video screening or other local action, if one has not been registered already. If you are registering your city (or if you want to help out), we ask that you secure a large location for big cities and your home, the library, outside of a post office, or rotary club (or similar) in smaller cities.
2. You can find people to tell about your event or help you plan it. Go to the forums for help. Or be our fan of the national FaceBook fan page or twitter and invite your social networking friends.
3. Publicize the forum/panel: download and tweak or make new flyers and distribute them around your community.
How to Organize an Event
Main parts: planning the event, online outreach, your local coalition, getting people to come. If you're flying solo, keep good track of your to-dos. If you form an organizing team first, these tasks can be split up between yourselves and delegated in the discussion forums?
1. The most simple event -- plan a video screening in your house or somewhere easy. Feel free to get creative with your action -- any creative ideas are great. Make plans in the forum for your city.
1a. Set goals for yourself and keep track of who you are talking to. Make sure you reach out to every person on your list at least 3 times, tell them, tell them again and definitely remind them the day before your event. Find people who can help you plan the event, give them tasks, make them report back their successes and failures. Keep track of what they are supposed to do.
2. Contact other organizations and local news outlets in your area who you think should know about the forum. Local blogs can be found here Everyone deserves a press release and you can post to public calendars that are applicable -- online calendars, community calendars, calendars at your church/synagogue/mosque, school calendars, etc.
3a. Can you think of 10 people among your friends, family, and contacts who are politically active or have affiliation to big groups like unions, student groups, political parties, political candidates, environmental groups, non-profits, local bloggers, advocacy organizations, media, schools districts, ANWF forums, anyone effected by the economy who have lost their jobs or homes or who have had to think about budget cuts?
-Write these people down and call them or email them.
-Ask them to help you organize or to reach out in their network. You can ask them to tell other people to help who can tell other people to tell people and to just attend.
-Anyone who wants to do anything is a part of your organizing team. Anything = they can take on small tasks of just talking to their network or flyering -- any little bit counts.
-Get them to contribute any ideas, this is their protest too. -Think of more people and add them to your list.
3b. Can you think of 5 groups who can turn people out to the forums -- unions, student groups, political parties, political candidates, environmental groups, non-profits, advocacy organizations, media, schools districts, anyone effected by the economy who have lost their jobs or homes or who have had to think about budget cuts?
-Let's do outreach to them together. We'll find their email addresses and phone numbers and call them and remind them to come, a month, the week, and the day before the event.
More About These Events
A New Way Forward is made up of national campaigns, like protests and forums, that take place all over the country in major cities and towns. This site was set up to help people and groups organize around a sound approach to economic recovery in a ground up, localized organizing effort. There are local organizing teams all over the country -- they need your help too. People from all backgrounds will come together to influence national policy and organize their own events in their own city.
The site allows anyone to sign up their city for an event and begin working out the details with other local protesters in designated forums. Though each protest will be executed differently by different groups of people, the website provides a national community that will help draw attention, support and resources to the local efforts.
