“How can I help”? “What should I do”? These are first things that many people ask when they first decide to become actively involved in grassroots organizing.
The first thing to do is to make sure your own house is in order. Strong families well grounded in faith, love and the core American values based upon our faith and love, are the most powerful and permanent defense of our way of life. Children who have been raised in such a family have the strongest immune systems to radical indoctrination. Strong families can weather nearly every storm. And in the process, they provide an example to others that stands out like a beacon on a hill.
Next, talk to your Friends And Neighbors. And keep talking to them. And then find more of them to talk to. You are an advocate with more influence over the beliefs, attitudes and votes or your friends and neighbors than the mainstream media. Especially if you are well informed, reasonable, and can relate to other people on their own terms.
As you talk to other people, perform the old trick of “triage”; categorizing them into three groups. The first group is the people who agree with us. Don’t spend a lot of time talking to them because it would like preaching to the choir. They don’t need it. Instead, look to them for moral support, social relaxation and a source from which to recruit additional activists like yourself. Likewise avoid arguing with people at the opposite end of the spectrum. You never win a vote with an argument, so don’t waste your time. The people who are “true believers” in “global warming”, “social justice” and similar liberal mantras are like the old joke about a conservative having been a liberal until they were mugged. You’ll just have to wait until these people get some sense slapped into them by a reality they can no longer deny, before they will even listen.
Spend eighty percent of your time and effort talking to the third group, the one in the middle composed of “independents” who have not yet been aroused or having become aroused, have not yet made up their minds. Most of the time they are just busily going about their lives according to their own best lights and don’t want to be bothered with someone else’s agenda; just like you and I would be under “normal” circumstances. But these are the people who commonly decide elections, and they are going to be more receptive to the people they feel are “like them” and credible, than to the mainstream media and other propaganda engines.
Find new people who will join with you in your grassroots organizing efforts, organize your activities with others like you, and build coalitions with other organizations who share our cause. Leave no stone unturned. Build your email distribution list, your mailing list, and your telephone contact list. Make sure that all of your elected representatives are on your lists, and that you (and all your Friends And Neighbors) contact them on key issues. If possible, build a relationship with them so that when you get in touch you are more than an “email count”.
Be active and an advocate in your community. Schools, churches, community groups, charitable associations all need more conservatives involved; and without them it is all too easy to drift to the left, looking to the siren song of the public subsidy which prescribes that faith, values and economic common sense be checked in at the door.
If you can write, write Letters to the Editor or blogs on a recurring basis, preferably in media that is seen by people who are not “members of the choir”. If you can speak, find topics about which you can speak, and volunteer to do so … again to audiences who are not normally “members of the choir”.
Consider assuming responsibility as a political party committeeman or committeewoman. More often than not, these posts go vacant for want of someone willing to make the effort. The effort consists primarily of talking to every household in your precinct at least once or twice every election cycle, and helping them to understand the issues and participate in the political process. You will also be expected to help your party distribute campaign materials to the people in your precinct. If you become the kind of committeeman/committeewoman who will also help the people in your precinct get a pothole fixed, then you’re the first person they’ll look to for a political opinion.
These are the basics. It is all about talking to your Friends And Neighbors; identifying them, interesting them, informing them, getting them involved and then empowering them to make a difference. This is out of the comfort zone of many conservatives, who tend to be “doers” more than “talkers”. But have you ever heard the old phrase, “Do what you fear, and the fear will go away”? The same is true of talking to strangers. Do it, and you will become more comfortable with it. Do more of it, and you will become very good at it.
Final tip: Wear your colors. Let people know where you stand and new friends will come to you. Sarah Palin T-Shirts were real membership builders during the McCain/Palin campaign. American flag and conservative logo shirts still are.
Now go out there and be a Patriot!
See also these presentations from the Leadership Institute for Grassroots Activism 102
Building a Grassroots Organization
Building Coalitions
Petition Drives
Developing Effective Message TEA