Calling all activists. Retake has spent months now creating teams and structured opportunities where you can become involved in a sustainable, meaningful way. You are the change we are waiting for, but you have to take the step. This post provides you clear information on how you can be part of the solution.
If you want to get active and contribute to developing our growing activist community, Retake has organized several teams and a few opportunities for people who want to operate on their own. If we are going to Retake Our Democracy, if we are going to achieve the kind of world we want, we need you to do more than attend a meeting or two; all of you needs you to find a niche, a sustainable role that you can play on an ongoing basis. None of us wants our grandchildren to inherit the world that will result, if we are not very active. Please take a look at the list below and when you find something you’d like to get involved with, just email us at vounteer4retake@gmail.com. Its fun; you’ll make friends; and you’ll go to bed at night knowing you are doing your best to restore sanity to this crazy world.
Community Conversations. Sunday, July 30, 4pm 1420 Cerrillos. Retake Our Democracy is launching a citywide campaign to conduct what we are calling community conversations. When doing traditional canvassing, you go door-to-door with a tightly structured message that is to be conveyed at every door, no matter who answers. Community conversations is nothing like that. Let me tell what we have in mind. First, we explored a canvassing technique called Deep Canvassing, a research-based approach to canvassing that is entirely different from traditional canvassing. Deep Canvassing is all about listening to people, asking them questions that help them connect with their values, and not trying to convince them of anything. After piloting that strategy, we made some adjustments, simplifying it significantly, aligning the approach to our purposes and Community Conversations was born. With Community Conversations you will start by walking your own block and neighborhood and talk informally and mostly listen and you will discuss what the kind of community and the kind of state in which you and your neighbors would like to live. Based upon our experience piloting the technique, you will find most people very welcoming and you will have deep, long conversations. We will be holding Community Conversations ‘launches’ every Wednesday and Sunday at 4pm at 1420 Cerrillos, the first of which will be this Sunday. You will be provided a very easy to follow script, some handouts and a brief training. But Community Conversations is so intuitive, so easy, so natural, it will take you no time at all to feel perfectly comfortable. Best of all—you will get to know your neighbors, as you will start on your own block.
The primary goal of this campaign is to help your neighbors identify how by being more involved in the community, they can advance some of their deepest moral values and help achieve economic and social justice and through this process to identify those people who instantly are offended by the depth of injustice in our City and want to get involved and to identify others who may not be ready to get involved, but want to be kept informed. In other words, the process helps us build our base of informed power so that we can effect change at state and local levels. We kick off on Sunday July 30 at 4pm and you can get a brief training and head out on your block with a canvassing partner. If you know someone who might want to canvass with you, that makes it more fun. Otherwise we will pair you with a new friend. You can then talk with neighbors for as long the weather and daylight allow. If you want to join us Sunday, just write to volunteer4retake@gmail.com.
Other Ways to Get Involved: Statewide Advocacy & Research & Conversations on How to Create Justice in Santa Fe
Roundhouse Activism Team. Tuesday, Aug 7, 6pm-8pm. Location DeVargas Mall Community Room In November, the Democrats retook the Roundhouse, but in the 2017 legislative session a great many bills failed to even get to either the House or Senate floor for a vote. Why? This team is trying to figure this out through interviews with progressive lobbyists. In meetings so far, we have made much progress in identifying specific committees and specific Republicans and Democrats who impeded passage of key bills. We have plans to develop a list of highest priority bills and to work with advocates in districts with elected representatives to build a strong, local constituency to pressure or replace legislators who do not support our values and priorities. Again, building power to effect change. Click here to review our strategy, although at this meeting we may adjust it with input from you!!. Click ere to RSVP on Facebook or email us at volunteer4retake@gmail.com. After this meeting onemveting at DeVargas Mall, Roundhouse Activism Team meetings will occur on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month at 1420 Cerrillos.
Activist Research Team. Thursday, Aug 3 and Aug 17, 6pm-7:30pm. Center for Progress & Justice, 1420 Cerrillos. In our second meeting participants divided up responsibility for researching specific policies identified in the Chainbreaker Collective’s People’s Platform and creating one-page summaries incorporating information about how other jurisdictions have effectively implemented these policies. Others are taking a deep dive into how development decisions are made in Santa Fe. Our goal is first to become fully informed and then to use the information and knowledge to inform our community, again to build an informed, engaged base of power to create progressive change. More folks needed to expand the research and great conversations emerging from the work. Click here to review the Report. Click here to review the People’s Platform. Click here to RSVP on Facebook or simply write to volunteer4retake@gmail.com. We encourage you to bring friends and if you want to select one or more of the planks from the 10-point People’s Platform and do a bit of digging, we want to identify effective programs, policies and initiatives that have been implemented in other communities that relate to the platform.
Monthly Retake Town Hall. Saturday, August 19, 3-5pm. Center for Progress & Justice, 1420 Cerrillos. We need to get together regularly as a community and so Retake will launch monthly Town Halls on the 3rd Saturday of every month, from 3-5pm, always at the Center for Progress & Justice. In August, we will share an update on our efforts to engage the Democratic Party in dialog related to their current relationships with Wall St and other corporate interests and their failure to commit to any specific policies that speak to the majority. What is A Better Deal? How can it become more meaningful and compelling? We will also update you on our implementation of Community Conversations, our progress in identifying effective urban policies to prevent gentrification, and to let you know what our developing list of state legislative priorities is looking like. And we will make a practice of holding open mic each Town Hall, 15-20-minutes where we will hear from you. Afterwards we will have informal conversation. To RSVP, either email us at volunteer4retake@gmail.com or click here to RSVP on Facebook.
There you have it. Several ways you can be involved; several ways you can make a contribution to our future; and several ways you can become more a part of our community. It is amazing what we are starting to get done with only a few of you showing up. Join the work so we can discover what is possible with more of you active. Again, just write to volunteer4retake@gmail.com or RSVP on Facebook at the links provided above.
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Actions
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