askchapo

Does your chapter already have any campaigns?

We started the year with a public transit advocacy campaign. We tried to improve the level of service of our bus lines because they are notorious for simply not showing up when scheduled. That campaign ended a few months ago, long story, and we switched to tabling in public places up through the election. Our goal was to get more people comfortable talking about Socialism in public. It was kind of successful but hard to know since there were no measurable metrics for this kind of activity.

Are they going well?

Better than years past. We keep growing as a group and getting better at being effective. Still have a lot to learn and we have several flavors of "left" in the chapter that makes it hard to have a strong coherent stance on anything besides "Capitalism bad"... see this post. That's the downside to being a "big tent" kind of organization.

Are they represented in this list? If not, why not?

These are all new campaign ideas. Part of this list is coming from comrades gaining more personal experience and doing more reading. I think the general consensus is we're trying to find what we can realistically do and not just spin our wheels as a group.

Are there opportunities to grow or modify those campaigns?

Yes, after our last meeting we held a straw poll to see what projects people were most interested in seeing developed more before the final vote on what we pick in January. The Membership Development proposal got the most votes, while the other three were roughly even in votes. We're working on merging the three proposals into one project (agitprop, mass line, and crisis pregnancy centers)

What worked well last year and what had room for improvement?

Our main project didn't go so well, but we learned a lot of lessons from it! Be more proactive when forming coalitions, don't just take people at their word, do your own outreach work, and don't assume just because you are in front of news cameras that you will actually be covered. We had lots of camera time during our campaign and that translated into ZERO screen time on the local news. Now we know the corporate media, even local branches of it, are going to avoid us. We have to be our own media.

Are you working in any coalitions? If so, have you talked to them about strategic planning for the next year and identified any projects? If not, could you identify organizations with which you'd like to work in coalition?

Food Not Bombs is the big one, but there are others. I'm most proud that we made inroads with the local CPUSA branch (who aren't in line with their national line), local PSL people, mutual aid groups, the local Maoists, etc. That work will hopefully continue next year and only continue to forge bonds across the community.

Do any of these proposed focuses have planning documents and committees? Timelines, bottom liners, budgets, goals? Any opportunities to help your members gain leadership and organizing skills?

All of these have timelines and need to have clear goals plus steps for running them. We learned that we need more planned out ahead of time because we can't plan well "on the fly". At the same time we need to be flexible and able to respond to changing conditions so I'm curious how this will play out next year.

Do you plan on recruiting? If so, what will "new recruits" do? Do you have a political education pipeline and people to lead it? How do you handle and/or minimize toxicity or harmful liberalism?

We need to figure this out. We have a "rose buddies" program where new members get paired with an experienced member to be their "buddy" for a few months, help them learn how to jump in, when the meetings are, etc. Most poli ed is needed at this stage for sure especially since we get a lot of recent ex-Democrats joining us.