wizardwatson
Member
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 8,080
Here is my OPINION and IDEA about what we can do to strengthen, organize and motivate the movement. And the idea is to do it all right here at RPF/Liberty Forest. IDEA first OPINION to follow.
[[[IDEA]]]
The idea is to build something for the movement that is lacking. Namely, a method to broadcast event information and get feedback from events in a comprehensive way that reaches everyone interested and provides a hub for grassroots activity. We need a central place that is consistently updated with event info so that supporters know what is happening in their area and can participate in ways that they want in areas where they can actually be active. Basically we can communicate by email and provide feedback via forum posts (used as a wiki basically). To do this we simply need interested participants (you), a bulletin board/wiki (RPF), and an email list (privately shared google spreadsheet).
This is how the setup could be broken down. Ideas for improvement welcome.
National Coordinators
Initially there will only be national coordinators (RPF members). They will be responsible for recruiting primary agents for each state. Monthly, the NC's will post a thread showing updates for the number of agents and supporters for each state as well as the number of events held in the prior month for each state. This monthly thread will provide feedback for supporters to see how the movement is growing. Thread should provide backlinks to prior months and direct thread links to each individual state monthly thread. Ideally some forum moderators will be among the NC's to allow editing of the OP for each monthly thread if any changes need to be made or updated. The NC's will share a google spreadsheet that lists the emails of the primary state agents. Every month the primary state agents should report (request from NC via email) the current number of agents and supporters for each state as well as the number of events held in the prior month along with the current months thread link. NC's will be responsible for promoting the overall organization and intake of new supporters via forum post bumping, sticky threads, etc. and will also promote national activities and events that are not state specific. The end product of all this work is the monthly national thread post that contains a list of every state, its number of agents/supporters, number of events that took place in prior month, its current month thread link, as well as general info about the organization.
Primary State Agents
I'd say three is a good number for the amount of primary state agents. These agents are RPF members that will be recruited by the NC's. These PSA's will be responsible for posting and maintaining a monthly thread listing all the events and activities along with location, date, time and a brief description for any state-level functions that are happening. The PSA's are responsible also for recruiting SSA's (secondary state agents - see below) within their state. The PSA will update throughout the month the monthly thread post to add new events as they arise and report attendees and feedback for events that have already taken place. All this info is posted on the monthly thread. Only the OP will be able to edit the original post so in addition to listing event details on the thread, there will also be a link to a shared google spreadsheet containing event info linked via the main post so that the other PSA's can update event info in a shared environment in case the OP isn't available. This will provide a way for SSA's and PSA's to verify event info when they are broadcasting to supporters.
Secondary State Agents
SSA's are RPF members who post event feedback but primarily are responsible for email blasting supporters assigned to them. They broadcast about events taking place and get RSVP about who is attending what. They are also responsible for coordinating with event organizers about who has attended and posting feedback about how the event went on the monthly thread as well as getting new event info from supporters. For instance a supporter might be organizing a poker party or sign wave event. The SSA would report this event info to the PSA who would update the monthly thread with the new info which would later be broadcasted to supporters through appropriate SSA's. (Note: PSA's can opt to be SSA's and have supporters in their area assigned to them if they are so inclined.)
Shared Emails
The PSA's and SSA's will share a private google spreadsheet that lists all the emails and names of the PSA's, SSA's and supporter emails showing the hierarchy of what supporter is assigned to what SSA along with location (and name if they aren't too paranoid). This will be necessary in case SSA's fall off the radar so that we have a means to reassign the supporters. When the email list becomes too large PSA's can split into regions and divide the email maintenance process among different PSA's.
Supporters
Supporters are simply people who wish to be updated/emailed about events taking place in their area (they need not be RPF'ers). They are assigned to a specific SSA with the goal being to base this assignment on location so that they only get email blasted with events they have the ability to attend. If they are interested in attending events outside their area they should be encouraged to become RPF members and browse, via the monthly thread, other events outside their area.
Soft Support
The organization itself is nothing but an email tree, from the NC's down to the individual supporters with PSA's and SSA's in between. However, there will also be "soft support" consisting of event attendees and other supporters who might not want to be emailed directly but are perhaps reachable by phone from another supporter or simply a +1 for some event. Say I organize a weenie roast and 4 supporters show up but 30 other people came to munch and were handed slim jims. These event attendees should also be reported on the feedback thread so we know what kind of impact the event had.
RPF Profiles
In addition to all this event organizing and feedback that's part of the scheme, I also think some profiling would be highly beneficial. Basically the PSA's should provide a link to their own thread describing and introducing themselves and what they've done and what brings them to the movement, etc. These profile links should be on every monthly thread for all the RPF'ers (PSA's and SSA's) who agree to it. Essentially this would provide a way to personalize people's involvment and would put faces to names for who is involved in their state.
Event Note
There may eventually be so many events on a thread that there isn't room to post the event details. Or an event might need a long description of what to do or bring. In this case the event thread should either link to another thread describing the event or to a post further down on the main event thread. And instead of emailing all the event details to supporters only a short summary should be emailed with a link back to the full event description.
Idea Summary
So that's the nuts and bolts. Essentially you have monthly national threads that link to individual state monthly threads. These threads list events taking place by month for each state and act as a centralized place to post feedback about what happened with the events. The OP in the monthly thread, in addition to containing event info and general information, should also have links to profiles of RPF'ers (who want to do that) in that state. The events are emailed to individual supporters (no more than one email daily - SSA's taking care of people who only want one a week or who cancel their "subscription", etc.) to get RSVP info and promote the event with divisions based on location. Supporters also can use the email network to notify the movement of their own local events. So events are broadcast in both directions-from the PSA's down and from supporters up. Feedback about the events (pics, testimonials, videos, what happened, who was there) are posted to the appropriate monthly thread and RPF is promoted as a grassroots hub to find out what's happening in your area.
[[[OPINION]]]
So that's the idea. Not really anything grand in terms of viability and I've left out a lot of details that would need to be filled in later like how to tailor the emails, how to replace lazy PSA's with more active ones, and a host of other things, but the idea I think should be simple enough to understand and just as easy to implement if enough people were so inclined. What follows then is my opinion about why I think something like this needs to happen and why I think RPF would be a good home for such an effort. Feedback welcome.
The Obvious
It seems the obvious is one thing we humans seem to overlook or at least forget about on a regular basis. It's obvious that we are disorganized as a movement. I don't know if it's because of things like the forum, facebook, twitter and other social networks that exist that make us think we are organized but in my opinion we are not really organized as a movement. We may have achieved unprecedented organization in the 2012 Ron Paul campaign but the movement itself, which is much larger than those who actually participated in the campaign, for the most part is amorphous. A facebook group here and there, twitter followings, a deluge of various forum posts, the candidacy of such and such, the failed mission of CFL, etc. So what is missing? In my opinion what is missing is simply a basic mechanism to inform people of things they can do locally to further the movement and a feedback mechanism so they can see the outcome of those events and their impact. Broadcasting and feedback, plain and simple, but sufficiently centralized so that it's not just a bunch of disjointed posts across numerous forums and social networks where no one can really grasp what's happening holistically. For that I propose this system of collaboratively maintained event information and feedback, and a collaboratively maintained email list, both moderated via RPF. The movement needs something concrete to build on and it's my opinion that such a concrete network of individuals is what is lacking to achieve that end.
Events
It's important to point out that any event can really be included in this type of organization. Candidate meet and greets, sign wavings, moneybombs, cookouts, poker parties, libertarian/democratic/republican functions, occupy demonstrations, oathkeeper meetings, reform party meetings, tupperware parties, etc. So anything really, anything politically related or functions composed of liberty activists. The point is we are going to be broadcasting these events to liberty supporters, that's the key. So even if we're attending an event for communists, we're actually notifying our liberty supporters to go to the event and provide feedback for the liberty movement. So it isn't so much important where or what we're doing but rather that its our supporters out there being active and spreading the message. Obviously we want to focus our efforts on activities that grow the movement and spread the message, but even if we're attending or organizing an event that seems pointless, it's still our supporters out there collaborating and interacting. I think it is important from this angle that we be creative and not only promote the cause but have fun doing it. A poker party might seem stupid from a political angle but could go a long way towards befriending and networking with fellow supporters who might not initially be all that interested in attending a speech or town hall meeting of liberty candidate x.
Importance of Feedback and Moderation
"Hold on!" some will say. "It's useless to heard cats", "We're a decentralized movement", "let everyone act independently", "you need a specific plan", etc. Some might argue that allowing events to be posted willy nilly will only dilute the movement and the message, or that allowing certain events to be included might push people in the wrong directions splintering the effort. I don't think this is a problem and here's why. All you really need is some event moderation and moderation of the feedback. This is why I think RPF is a great asset and should play an integral role in this project. Consider what the forum is. It's simply a collection of individuals for the most part pointing in the direction of liberty. There's no concrete set of beliefs that everyone has to follow, no leader, but we've still remained here because the overall direction is agreed by a kind of consensus. How has it remained so for 5 years running? Because of moderation and feedback. If someone posts something antithetical to liberty the feedback sets it straight. If someone comes to the boards trolling or pushing an agenda outside of the general scope and mission of the board they get banned if they are a troublemaker or their post gets moved away from the primary forum sections. The exact same mechanism will work for the system I'm proposing. Events will be moderated by relevance, and when feedback gets posted about the event the community will be able to see whether that event was useful or counterproductive. We don't need a specific platform of ideas or a specific "plan" of what we're setting out to do. The forum will provide guidance for the event system in the same way as it guides the overall mission of the forum.
So we don't need a new website or some fancy pledge or hard wired "plan" because all these things try to put the cart before the horse. First you need a community of interested participants and we have that here at RPF. It only needs a little bit of organization added to it. The event organization will stay in focus to the extent that the community of supporters stay in focus. I believe this will happen on its own because here at RPF we have a general consensus on the message and I think that's the main ingredient. We may have different philosophical beliefs but the core ideas of limited government, sound money, and anti-corporatism is for the most part universal.
Campaign or no Campaign
A note about campaigns. Yes we need to focus on getting liberty candidates into office. But the scope needs to be broader than that. This is why I think CFL was a failure. All the people that supported Ron Paul were simply not really that interested in politics. They were mainly interested in Ron Paul. CFL failed because of this primary fact. No one had the ambition to self-educate themselves on local elections and on top of that the activity in most of the states never even got off the ground because state coordinators were simply blogging about where candidate x stood on certain issues and whether they were worthy of support. People in the movement need to be educated before anything like CFL could work. We need to have meetings about how to participate. Event updates about where they can go to support or learn about a candidate. We need direct emails that have already done the groundwork about when and where to be so the supporter can just mark it on their calendar and be there. This whole logging into a certain website, reading the coordinators blog to try to figure out how to participate exceeds the level of effort the average supporter is willing to commit to.
This is why I think an event organization system could succeed via RPF where CFL failed. On the one hand we have events that appeal to a broader base. Some people will be interested in going to a candidate function or a town hall meeting but some might be interested in going to an Occupy meeting or a sign waving or simply a get to know your neighbor poker party or weenie roast. From these smaller types of functions the more politically active can motivate and encourage the soft supporters into helping with more liberty directed actions. We should be creative in this regard, make it fun, make people feel that they have a lot of options for participation. On the other hand we aren't requiring people to spend extra effort logging into some esoteric website daily, having them try to figure out how it works, signing up for some event, attending the event then getting no feedback. No, we simply send them an email with a list of upcoming events, have them RSVP via email, and after the event they can come to RPF to view feedback about the event or post their own. Simple.
RPF Home
Why RPF? I say why not RPF? It's a large collection of liberty supporters who for the most part agree with 90% of Ron Paul's message of freedom. We squabble about abortion, gay marriage, anarchy vs. minarhcy, creation vs. evolution, and a hundred other things that matter very little to the overall strategy. But by and large we are on board together when it comes to the message. Why not make use of the community for a truly grassroots project like this? We spend so much time and effort on this board posting our philosophical ramblings and very little effort directly for grassroots projects. So many event posts, moneybombs, and creative ideas get lost and buried on this forum that it's kind of sad. So many of us are just hammering that "new post" button and using RPF as a news feed. And if you've been on here a while you've likely seen good ideas and worthy events get ignored and buried. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could have a central group of people to send an event idea to and have it directly mailed to supporters in your area who are able and close enough to attend? Wouldn't it be great to have somewhere to point the newcomers to when they want to know how to get involved?
[[[SUMMARY]]]
So we don't need facebook, twitter, youtube or meetup to build our core around. Yes these things are awesome but they are secondary to the overall system which I believe should be a collaboratively maintained event organization and notification scheme. We build our network of supporters and we make a "footprint" on the web using a network of RPF threads so that people can see what is happening, what was happening, and have a concrete view of how the movement is growing. Wouldn't it be great to actually know how many of us there are? Wouldn't it be great to register an event in one place and have it broadcast to the right people instead of posting a thread that you bump a few times and still get only 50 views mostly by people who aren't even in your area? Yes there is some effort involved in setting this up. It might take a couple months before we get enough states up and running to make an impact and build a substantial supporter base. I think though that this effort is necessary and is not being done by anyone else at the moment. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
[[[GROUND ZERO]]]
I posted this thread after seeing all the angst and apathy surrounding the emails from the 2012 campaign indicating that they were scaling back the campaign. Many have said "it's over" and "what now", etc. What's going to happen to the movement? There's will be no more Ron Paul to glue the movement together. And why should Ron be the glue. He did his part. He carried the cross for all of us for five years. Isn't it time for us to pick it up and carry on?
I see this point in the movement as kind of a ground zero. Ron built us up so much and added droves of people who now believe in the message. Will we fall back and splinter or will we explode? I think this could be a great opportunity. We no longer have people telling us that this or that strategy isn't helping Ron win. Or that saying this or that is hurting Ron. Now the movement can unfold in whatever direction it needs to in order to bring as many people to the message as possible. We can spread our money more liberally now towards smaller elections that we know we can win. This isn't the time to give up and go home, this is the time to get off our asses and get our boots on the ground and make a difference in our community instead of following lock-step every order coming from the national campaign and ignoring everything else. Liberty supporters should be everywhere. Infiltrating the GOP the Dems, the occupiers, the libertarians, popping our heads out of your morning latte. There's plenty of events happening around us all the time. We just need people mining the web for these events, scouring meetup and facebook for supporters, adding them to the list, and broadcasting to them what's happening in their area. It's work yes but compared to how much a committed RPF'er posts about non-relevant stuff it isn't a whole hell of a lot of work.
When will the Ron Paul campaign morph back into the R3VOLUTION? When will Ron Paul Forums be Liberty Forest?
I think the time is now. I wanted to post along these lines after the campaign was over but now that it's clear in the minds of most on here that Ron isn't going to grab the nomination it's now about what's next. I think what's next is to build the movement from the ground up. To do that I believe the key ingredient that is missing in the movement is a simple event management and notification system as described above. We need our own email list. We need a network of threads that show people what's going on and how to participate. Something to me that seems obvious and simple and easy to implement.
My challenge to all of you here at RPF is to read the post and tell me if you think this idea is something we need and is a priority or whether you think something else is more fundamental. I think without this we're going to deteriorate. Without a way to keep our supporters on the same page we're going to splinter. Let's build it, let's bring back some of the supporters we've lost, let's widen our scope to bring more people in from the left and the right. We don't need magic websites or some concrete plan of action we just need to be informed of what's happening so supporters can plug themselves in. I believe setting this up will strengthen and organize the movement in a concrete tangible way and by providing event feedback we will motivate supporters to continue to participate.
That's all I wanted to say for now. Epic post complete.
[[[IDEA]]]
The idea is to build something for the movement that is lacking. Namely, a method to broadcast event information and get feedback from events in a comprehensive way that reaches everyone interested and provides a hub for grassroots activity. We need a central place that is consistently updated with event info so that supporters know what is happening in their area and can participate in ways that they want in areas where they can actually be active. Basically we can communicate by email and provide feedback via forum posts (used as a wiki basically). To do this we simply need interested participants (you), a bulletin board/wiki (RPF), and an email list (privately shared google spreadsheet).
This is how the setup could be broken down. Ideas for improvement welcome.
National Coordinators
Initially there will only be national coordinators (RPF members). They will be responsible for recruiting primary agents for each state. Monthly, the NC's will post a thread showing updates for the number of agents and supporters for each state as well as the number of events held in the prior month for each state. This monthly thread will provide feedback for supporters to see how the movement is growing. Thread should provide backlinks to prior months and direct thread links to each individual state monthly thread. Ideally some forum moderators will be among the NC's to allow editing of the OP for each monthly thread if any changes need to be made or updated. The NC's will share a google spreadsheet that lists the emails of the primary state agents. Every month the primary state agents should report (request from NC via email) the current number of agents and supporters for each state as well as the number of events held in the prior month along with the current months thread link. NC's will be responsible for promoting the overall organization and intake of new supporters via forum post bumping, sticky threads, etc. and will also promote national activities and events that are not state specific. The end product of all this work is the monthly national thread post that contains a list of every state, its number of agents/supporters, number of events that took place in prior month, its current month thread link, as well as general info about the organization.
Primary State Agents
I'd say three is a good number for the amount of primary state agents. These agents are RPF members that will be recruited by the NC's. These PSA's will be responsible for posting and maintaining a monthly thread listing all the events and activities along with location, date, time and a brief description for any state-level functions that are happening. The PSA's are responsible also for recruiting SSA's (secondary state agents - see below) within their state. The PSA will update throughout the month the monthly thread post to add new events as they arise and report attendees and feedback for events that have already taken place. All this info is posted on the monthly thread. Only the OP will be able to edit the original post so in addition to listing event details on the thread, there will also be a link to a shared google spreadsheet containing event info linked via the main post so that the other PSA's can update event info in a shared environment in case the OP isn't available. This will provide a way for SSA's and PSA's to verify event info when they are broadcasting to supporters.
Secondary State Agents
SSA's are RPF members who post event feedback but primarily are responsible for email blasting supporters assigned to them. They broadcast about events taking place and get RSVP about who is attending what. They are also responsible for coordinating with event organizers about who has attended and posting feedback about how the event went on the monthly thread as well as getting new event info from supporters. For instance a supporter might be organizing a poker party or sign wave event. The SSA would report this event info to the PSA who would update the monthly thread with the new info which would later be broadcasted to supporters through appropriate SSA's. (Note: PSA's can opt to be SSA's and have supporters in their area assigned to them if they are so inclined.)
Shared Emails
The PSA's and SSA's will share a private google spreadsheet that lists all the emails and names of the PSA's, SSA's and supporter emails showing the hierarchy of what supporter is assigned to what SSA along with location (and name if they aren't too paranoid). This will be necessary in case SSA's fall off the radar so that we have a means to reassign the supporters. When the email list becomes too large PSA's can split into regions and divide the email maintenance process among different PSA's.
Supporters
Supporters are simply people who wish to be updated/emailed about events taking place in their area (they need not be RPF'ers). They are assigned to a specific SSA with the goal being to base this assignment on location so that they only get email blasted with events they have the ability to attend. If they are interested in attending events outside their area they should be encouraged to become RPF members and browse, via the monthly thread, other events outside their area.
Soft Support
The organization itself is nothing but an email tree, from the NC's down to the individual supporters with PSA's and SSA's in between. However, there will also be "soft support" consisting of event attendees and other supporters who might not want to be emailed directly but are perhaps reachable by phone from another supporter or simply a +1 for some event. Say I organize a weenie roast and 4 supporters show up but 30 other people came to munch and were handed slim jims. These event attendees should also be reported on the feedback thread so we know what kind of impact the event had.
RPF Profiles
In addition to all this event organizing and feedback that's part of the scheme, I also think some profiling would be highly beneficial. Basically the PSA's should provide a link to their own thread describing and introducing themselves and what they've done and what brings them to the movement, etc. These profile links should be on every monthly thread for all the RPF'ers (PSA's and SSA's) who agree to it. Essentially this would provide a way to personalize people's involvment and would put faces to names for who is involved in their state.
Event Note
There may eventually be so many events on a thread that there isn't room to post the event details. Or an event might need a long description of what to do or bring. In this case the event thread should either link to another thread describing the event or to a post further down on the main event thread. And instead of emailing all the event details to supporters only a short summary should be emailed with a link back to the full event description.
Idea Summary
So that's the nuts and bolts. Essentially you have monthly national threads that link to individual state monthly threads. These threads list events taking place by month for each state and act as a centralized place to post feedback about what happened with the events. The OP in the monthly thread, in addition to containing event info and general information, should also have links to profiles of RPF'ers (who want to do that) in that state. The events are emailed to individual supporters (no more than one email daily - SSA's taking care of people who only want one a week or who cancel their "subscription", etc.) to get RSVP info and promote the event with divisions based on location. Supporters also can use the email network to notify the movement of their own local events. So events are broadcast in both directions-from the PSA's down and from supporters up. Feedback about the events (pics, testimonials, videos, what happened, who was there) are posted to the appropriate monthly thread and RPF is promoted as a grassroots hub to find out what's happening in your area.
[[[OPINION]]]
So that's the idea. Not really anything grand in terms of viability and I've left out a lot of details that would need to be filled in later like how to tailor the emails, how to replace lazy PSA's with more active ones, and a host of other things, but the idea I think should be simple enough to understand and just as easy to implement if enough people were so inclined. What follows then is my opinion about why I think something like this needs to happen and why I think RPF would be a good home for such an effort. Feedback welcome.
The Obvious
It seems the obvious is one thing we humans seem to overlook or at least forget about on a regular basis. It's obvious that we are disorganized as a movement. I don't know if it's because of things like the forum, facebook, twitter and other social networks that exist that make us think we are organized but in my opinion we are not really organized as a movement. We may have achieved unprecedented organization in the 2012 Ron Paul campaign but the movement itself, which is much larger than those who actually participated in the campaign, for the most part is amorphous. A facebook group here and there, twitter followings, a deluge of various forum posts, the candidacy of such and such, the failed mission of CFL, etc. So what is missing? In my opinion what is missing is simply a basic mechanism to inform people of things they can do locally to further the movement and a feedback mechanism so they can see the outcome of those events and their impact. Broadcasting and feedback, plain and simple, but sufficiently centralized so that it's not just a bunch of disjointed posts across numerous forums and social networks where no one can really grasp what's happening holistically. For that I propose this system of collaboratively maintained event information and feedback, and a collaboratively maintained email list, both moderated via RPF. The movement needs something concrete to build on and it's my opinion that such a concrete network of individuals is what is lacking to achieve that end.
Events
It's important to point out that any event can really be included in this type of organization. Candidate meet and greets, sign wavings, moneybombs, cookouts, poker parties, libertarian/democratic/republican functions, occupy demonstrations, oathkeeper meetings, reform party meetings, tupperware parties, etc. So anything really, anything politically related or functions composed of liberty activists. The point is we are going to be broadcasting these events to liberty supporters, that's the key. So even if we're attending an event for communists, we're actually notifying our liberty supporters to go to the event and provide feedback for the liberty movement. So it isn't so much important where or what we're doing but rather that its our supporters out there being active and spreading the message. Obviously we want to focus our efforts on activities that grow the movement and spread the message, but even if we're attending or organizing an event that seems pointless, it's still our supporters out there collaborating and interacting. I think it is important from this angle that we be creative and not only promote the cause but have fun doing it. A poker party might seem stupid from a political angle but could go a long way towards befriending and networking with fellow supporters who might not initially be all that interested in attending a speech or town hall meeting of liberty candidate x.
Importance of Feedback and Moderation
"Hold on!" some will say. "It's useless to heard cats", "We're a decentralized movement", "let everyone act independently", "you need a specific plan", etc. Some might argue that allowing events to be posted willy nilly will only dilute the movement and the message, or that allowing certain events to be included might push people in the wrong directions splintering the effort. I don't think this is a problem and here's why. All you really need is some event moderation and moderation of the feedback. This is why I think RPF is a great asset and should play an integral role in this project. Consider what the forum is. It's simply a collection of individuals for the most part pointing in the direction of liberty. There's no concrete set of beliefs that everyone has to follow, no leader, but we've still remained here because the overall direction is agreed by a kind of consensus. How has it remained so for 5 years running? Because of moderation and feedback. If someone posts something antithetical to liberty the feedback sets it straight. If someone comes to the boards trolling or pushing an agenda outside of the general scope and mission of the board they get banned if they are a troublemaker or their post gets moved away from the primary forum sections. The exact same mechanism will work for the system I'm proposing. Events will be moderated by relevance, and when feedback gets posted about the event the community will be able to see whether that event was useful or counterproductive. We don't need a specific platform of ideas or a specific "plan" of what we're setting out to do. The forum will provide guidance for the event system in the same way as it guides the overall mission of the forum.
So we don't need a new website or some fancy pledge or hard wired "plan" because all these things try to put the cart before the horse. First you need a community of interested participants and we have that here at RPF. It only needs a little bit of organization added to it. The event organization will stay in focus to the extent that the community of supporters stay in focus. I believe this will happen on its own because here at RPF we have a general consensus on the message and I think that's the main ingredient. We may have different philosophical beliefs but the core ideas of limited government, sound money, and anti-corporatism is for the most part universal.
Campaign or no Campaign
A note about campaigns. Yes we need to focus on getting liberty candidates into office. But the scope needs to be broader than that. This is why I think CFL was a failure. All the people that supported Ron Paul were simply not really that interested in politics. They were mainly interested in Ron Paul. CFL failed because of this primary fact. No one had the ambition to self-educate themselves on local elections and on top of that the activity in most of the states never even got off the ground because state coordinators were simply blogging about where candidate x stood on certain issues and whether they were worthy of support. People in the movement need to be educated before anything like CFL could work. We need to have meetings about how to participate. Event updates about where they can go to support or learn about a candidate. We need direct emails that have already done the groundwork about when and where to be so the supporter can just mark it on their calendar and be there. This whole logging into a certain website, reading the coordinators blog to try to figure out how to participate exceeds the level of effort the average supporter is willing to commit to.
This is why I think an event organization system could succeed via RPF where CFL failed. On the one hand we have events that appeal to a broader base. Some people will be interested in going to a candidate function or a town hall meeting but some might be interested in going to an Occupy meeting or a sign waving or simply a get to know your neighbor poker party or weenie roast. From these smaller types of functions the more politically active can motivate and encourage the soft supporters into helping with more liberty directed actions. We should be creative in this regard, make it fun, make people feel that they have a lot of options for participation. On the other hand we aren't requiring people to spend extra effort logging into some esoteric website daily, having them try to figure out how it works, signing up for some event, attending the event then getting no feedback. No, we simply send them an email with a list of upcoming events, have them RSVP via email, and after the event they can come to RPF to view feedback about the event or post their own. Simple.
RPF Home
Why RPF? I say why not RPF? It's a large collection of liberty supporters who for the most part agree with 90% of Ron Paul's message of freedom. We squabble about abortion, gay marriage, anarchy vs. minarhcy, creation vs. evolution, and a hundred other things that matter very little to the overall strategy. But by and large we are on board together when it comes to the message. Why not make use of the community for a truly grassroots project like this? We spend so much time and effort on this board posting our philosophical ramblings and very little effort directly for grassroots projects. So many event posts, moneybombs, and creative ideas get lost and buried on this forum that it's kind of sad. So many of us are just hammering that "new post" button and using RPF as a news feed. And if you've been on here a while you've likely seen good ideas and worthy events get ignored and buried. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could have a central group of people to send an event idea to and have it directly mailed to supporters in your area who are able and close enough to attend? Wouldn't it be great to have somewhere to point the newcomers to when they want to know how to get involved?
[[[SUMMARY]]]
So we don't need facebook, twitter, youtube or meetup to build our core around. Yes these things are awesome but they are secondary to the overall system which I believe should be a collaboratively maintained event organization and notification scheme. We build our network of supporters and we make a "footprint" on the web using a network of RPF threads so that people can see what is happening, what was happening, and have a concrete view of how the movement is growing. Wouldn't it be great to actually know how many of us there are? Wouldn't it be great to register an event in one place and have it broadcast to the right people instead of posting a thread that you bump a few times and still get only 50 views mostly by people who aren't even in your area? Yes there is some effort involved in setting this up. It might take a couple months before we get enough states up and running to make an impact and build a substantial supporter base. I think though that this effort is necessary and is not being done by anyone else at the moment. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
[[[GROUND ZERO]]]
I posted this thread after seeing all the angst and apathy surrounding the emails from the 2012 campaign indicating that they were scaling back the campaign. Many have said "it's over" and "what now", etc. What's going to happen to the movement? There's will be no more Ron Paul to glue the movement together. And why should Ron be the glue. He did his part. He carried the cross for all of us for five years. Isn't it time for us to pick it up and carry on?
I see this point in the movement as kind of a ground zero. Ron built us up so much and added droves of people who now believe in the message. Will we fall back and splinter or will we explode? I think this could be a great opportunity. We no longer have people telling us that this or that strategy isn't helping Ron win. Or that saying this or that is hurting Ron. Now the movement can unfold in whatever direction it needs to in order to bring as many people to the message as possible. We can spread our money more liberally now towards smaller elections that we know we can win. This isn't the time to give up and go home, this is the time to get off our asses and get our boots on the ground and make a difference in our community instead of following lock-step every order coming from the national campaign and ignoring everything else. Liberty supporters should be everywhere. Infiltrating the GOP the Dems, the occupiers, the libertarians, popping our heads out of your morning latte. There's plenty of events happening around us all the time. We just need people mining the web for these events, scouring meetup and facebook for supporters, adding them to the list, and broadcasting to them what's happening in their area. It's work yes but compared to how much a committed RPF'er posts about non-relevant stuff it isn't a whole hell of a lot of work.
When will the Ron Paul campaign morph back into the R3VOLUTION? When will Ron Paul Forums be Liberty Forest?
I think the time is now. I wanted to post along these lines after the campaign was over but now that it's clear in the minds of most on here that Ron isn't going to grab the nomination it's now about what's next. I think what's next is to build the movement from the ground up. To do that I believe the key ingredient that is missing in the movement is a simple event management and notification system as described above. We need our own email list. We need a network of threads that show people what's going on and how to participate. Something to me that seems obvious and simple and easy to implement.
My challenge to all of you here at RPF is to read the post and tell me if you think this idea is something we need and is a priority or whether you think something else is more fundamental. I think without this we're going to deteriorate. Without a way to keep our supporters on the same page we're going to splinter. Let's build it, let's bring back some of the supporters we've lost, let's widen our scope to bring more people in from the left and the right. We don't need magic websites or some concrete plan of action we just need to be informed of what's happening so supporters can plug themselves in. I believe setting this up will strengthen and organize the movement in a concrete tangible way and by providing event feedback we will motivate supporters to continue to participate.
That's all I wanted to say for now. Epic post complete.
