Help Me Come Up With An Itinerary?

[patriotcalendar]

The Austin Meetup group has been invited to host a delegation of Indonesian political party heads on Monday morning. (See event here.)

They are in the US as part of a State Dept program (See bios and program objectives here.)

We have approx 1 1/2 hours in which to entertain the delegation, and to help facilitate their study of the topic "Grassroots Democracy: Elections and Campaigns"

I'm putting together an agenda for Monday's visit, and would love some input from the RPF gang!

Here's my rough sketch so far...

# Meeting and Introductions, Beverages

# Short tour of the office

# Overview of activities:
- discussion of how we use the internet to organize (especially Meetup.com)
- discussion of fundraising tools/methods available to grassroots
- discussion of grassroots outreach and voter identification projects (homemade signs, bottled water giveaways at public events, mailings, phone banking, canvassing, etc)

# [Hopefully] Observation of live phone-banking

# [Possibly] A brief sign-wave in front of the office, in which our Indonesian guests will be invited to participate

# [Possibly] A brief excursion into Precinct 207, where we'll invite the delegation to accompany us to "canvass a couple of homes" (with advance permission from homeowners; with any luck, media camera crews may follow us)

# Question/Answer Session -- We'll invite the delegation to ask us any remaining questions, and we should have some questions of our own prepared. I feel sure they'll gladly oblige! What a fun opportunity!


If anyone has 2 cents to throw in, please do!

Also, I want to come up with a couple of small gifts for each of our Indonesian guests. "Something Texas" and "something Ron Paul" -- any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[patriotcalendar]

I think I just heard a pin drop.

 

[PatriotOne]

What a unique opprotunity for your meet up group and for those attending. Though I find it rather ironic that our election process is being held up as some shiny example of a democratic process for foriegn countries by the State Department, when it, itself, is rife with corruption, MSM manipulation, marignalization of candidates, closed door to all but the Dems and Repubs, vote fraud, etc.

I also find it ironic that the one candidate, who has suffered the most at the hands of this corruption, has had one of it's grassroot support organizations chosen by the State Department, to teach a foriegn country how to be a grassroot organization. I shake my head in wonder.

Anyways, not to take away from what you guys have been chosen to do, as it is still n amazing opprotunity to show how to get the public involved in the election process. People getting over their apathy is the first step to seeing the rest of the problems so I salute you guys for getting involved.

The Austin Meet Up group doesn't need any advice from me on your agenda., You guys rock! As far as your "small gifts" are concerned, small pocket constitutions signed by Ron Paul would be great if you could get them in time!