Meetup Support team
I believe that there is a great need in the Ron Paul freedom revolution for support and guidance for the Ron Paul for President meetups. I want to make it clear from the start—this is not about controlling meetups, but helping Ron Paul for President Meetups be the best they can be, and avoid pitfalls that can weaken or even disable them.
I notice that there are a number of organizations which are attempting to create organizational structures, including Friends of Ron Paul USA, headed up by and Restore the Republic (which was founded by Aaron Russo), lead by Gary Franchi. I am happy that there are those who see this need. Again—they are not trying to control, but about support and maximizing our efforts through working together. The way I see structure is this: structure is like the banks of the river, so that the creative energy, the water, and flow through, being the river-in this case.
The success of our movement has been mainly because people have been free to self-organize, utilize their creativity, and be free to choose in a marketplace of ideas. People have voted with the time and money for such projects as the Nov. 5 money bomb, the Blimp and the Boston Tea party money bomb. Many are now voting to go canvassing door to door, sign up as delegates, help make sure the vote is accurate, writing letters to Iowans, and registering people to vote.
People have voted for these things because they were first made aware of them mostly through information disseminated on the internet. They read about the information, saw that it made sense, sometimes observed that it was endorsed by someone or some group that they trusted, and decided to take action. People who are connected to local meetups usually would present this to their local group. Usually the first step was to send out a message via email, and then to talk about it at a meeting. If others thought it was a good idea, then the group would take action. If they didn’t think it was a good idea, then the individual would either give up on the idea, get frustrated and quit, or pursue it on their own.
The very positive outcome of this system is that we don’t get bogged down having to get approval from some higher up authority, such as a board of directors, in order to accomplish things. We can see that when the free market is utilized in the area of campaigning for a president, the free market really works! If you want to sell an idea, are able to sell it well (or someone has already gotten the sales part down) then the idea is purchased. The more the idea is developed—with how to do it, what to do, and proof that it is going to work, or has worked in the past, and even that it is an idea endorsed by others who are trustworthy, and others are actually utilizing the idea—the more likely people will buy the idea.
For example, some ideas that I presented to our group that I hardly needed to sell were:
1. Making signs (like garage sale signs with boxes) that could be easily placed on street corners with high visibility.
2. Having sign making parties
3. having gatherings to put together canvassing materials,
4. Canvassing
5. Delegates
6. State wide organizing
7. changing our venue to one that was more accessible to college students
8. picking up trash and promoting ron paul
The challenge we have right now is that we don’t have much time. Meetups who are just starting need to hit the ground running. People who start meetups need to have a jump start and get a sense of the big picture—what has been done, what works, what things are thought by many wise people as being priority.
For example, it took me a while to figure out that canvassing and delegate selection was the most important thing to do . It took me a tremendous amount of energy to work to help get our meetup on track. When I planted the meetups that I planted, I was asked by someone who I respected also. When I got our statewide group organized, it was because someone encouraged me to do that so that we could be more likely to get a paid coordinator from headquarters. I followed through on that.
I have really been blessed by receiving direct advice and mentoring from very wise and in the know people. This happened because of my networking ability and my inclination to talk to-- just call up people out of the blue. I also had a lot of time—choosing to work full time on this campaign has been a tremendous sacrifice, yet it has paid off in results, because the research I have done has benefited our group and myself immensely.
I dove into being a meetup organizer. I learned so much by pouring all my time and energy into this job. I still have much to learn. I do have a gift of sifting through tremendous amounts of information and discerning what are the most important actions to take. I also get a big picture view of what is happening, what direction we are going in, what needs to be done to get from here to there. Again, not everyone has this ability—so many get overwhelmed by too much information.
The biggest challenge I see right now is there is an overload of information. Both meetup members an organizers need a daily digest of the latest, most important information. They need to know about the handbook that has been written where they can get guidance. They need to know about all the resources that are out there for such things such as canvassing.
My dream is this: a Meetup Support team that people turn to for mentoring, advice, to get an easy to understand feel of the big picture, and how they can be effective leaders and members of meetups. I am approaching a number of groups who might serve as the sponsor of this team, and hopefully soon there will be both a website and an email address we can use. Then, when people receive emails from this email address, they will be sure to open it. This way, they can prioritize. We will also be sure to send the word out to people to send what they consider the most important information to our email address, so that we won’t miss anything.
If there is one newsletter where we do our best to prioritize the most relevant information, it can help save time for people.
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