If you do want to form a group, here are our recommendations on how to go about it:
- Decide you’re going to start a local group dedicated to making your members and LOCAL CONGRESS REPS (MoCs) aware of their constituents’ opposition to the leftist agenda. This might be a subgroup of an existing activist group, or it might be a new effort — it really depends on your circumstances. Start where people are: if you’re in a group with a lot of people who want to do this kind of thing, then start there; if you’re not, you’ll need to find them somewhere else. The most important thing is that this is a LOCAL group. Your band of heroes is focused on applying local pressure, which means you all need to be local.
- Identify a few additional co-founders who are interested in participating and recruiting others. Ideally, these are people who have different social networks from you so that you can maximize your reach. Make an effort to ensure that leadership of the group reflects broad conservative appeal.
- Email your contacts and post a message on your Discord, Facebook page, WhatsApp, Twitter, on any local groups that you’re a member of, and/or other social media channels you use regularly.
- Invite everyone who has expressed interest to an in-person kickoff meeting. Use this meeting to agree on a name, principles for your group, roles for leadership, a way of communicating, and a strategy. Rule of thumb: 50% of the people who have said they are definitely coming will show up to your meeting. Aim high! Get people to commit to come — they’ll want to because saving culture is fun.
- Manage the meeting: Keep people focused on the ultimate core strategy. Other attendees may have other ideas — or may be coming to share their concerns about the left — and it’s important to affirm their concerns and feelings. But it’s also important to redirect that energy and make sure that the conversation stays focused on developing a group and a plan of action dedicated to this strategy.
- Decide on a name: Good names include the geographic area of your group, so that it’s clear that you’re rooted in the community — e.g., “Springfield Right Wing Organization” "Upstate New York Conservatives"
- Adopt means of communication: You need a way of reaching everyone in your group in order to coordinate actions. This can be a Facebook group, a Google group, a Slack team — whatever people are most comfortable with. It may be wise to consider secure or encrypted platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp. Promote on Holla Forums when you can.
- Agree on principles: This is your chance to say what your group stands for. Broad conservative concerns are:
- It's strongly recommended to focus on defense against the left agenda rather than developing an entire new alternative policy agenda - It is time-intensive, divisive, and, quite frankly, a distraction.
- Volunteer for roles: Figure out how to divide roles and responsibilities among your group. This can look very different depending on who’s in the room, but at a minimum, you probably want 1-2 people in charge of overall group coordination, a designated media/social media contact, and 1-2 people in charge of tracking your local & congressional office’s schedule and events. In addition to these administrative roles, ask attendees how they want to contribute to advocacy efforts: attend events, record events, ask questions, make calls, host meetings, engage on social media, write op-eds for local papers, etc.
Expand! Enlist your members to recruit across their networks. Ask every member to send out the same outreach emails/posts that you did.
- Places you can find new potential members: Shooting ranges, hiking groups, fitness groups/at the gym, airsoft and paintball groups, hunting groups, gardening clubs, church organizations, car cruise night events, art/craft groups, flea market vendors and shoppers, free public concerts, veterans halls.
- Always try to expand online, too. Recruit and promote on chans and other conservative sites that allow discussion about meetups. Try advertising on sites that are for meetings. Even craigslist posts will attract people. Always be clear about what it is you are promoting and always have a way for people to contact you or other organizers.
- Keep threads like this BUMPED