Let's get this campaign into full gear

April 6th, 2008 by rossl

We, as Gravel supporters, need to form a cohesive group in order to support Mike Gravel. Without us working together to promote and inform people about Gravel, we will fail and this campaign will fail. We are few in number compared to the major candidates, and that gives us more responsibility to our candidate than it does to the supporters of McCain, Obama, and Clinton.

So what can we do to form a cohesive, effective movement? Just by looking at the Ron Paul people, www.meetup.com is a place to start. Right now, there are less than 10 groups dedicated to Gravel. LESS THAN 10! We need to start a few more groups (I'm trying to start one for the Deleware Valley region and its surrounding areas), and advertise these groups. We need people that visit this forum (whether regularly or not) to find these groups and actually meet up.

An idea I have from a Ralph Nader rally that I went to is to pass around sign up sheets at Gravel events for the Gravel mailing list. Nader had people pass around sign up sheets that had a spot for name, email address, and zip code. With this, we can find more Gravel supporters. This might be a job for the campaign, though.

Another job that might be for the campaign and that I took from Nader is to pass around buckets for donations at the end of or during Gravel's events. Nader put this into perspective last night - if each person there were to donate $15, he would have raised over $3,000 in that single night.

Any other suggestions?

Comments

I was with the Paul

Submitted on April 8th, 2008 by minorgrey

I was with the Paul grassroots campaign when they had 2 meetups and only 25 member on their forum. This is exactly how they got organized...

step 1. Create a central hub (preferably a forum separate from the campaign)

step 2. Promote that hub on every youtube video, digg article, blog post, news article you find.

step 3. Use that hub as a starting point for every Gravel promotion that starts. The hub will draw in a ton of creative people and a ton of different ideas.

step 3. Every time someone comes up with a new idea make sure you have someone that will create a video, write about it on a blog, and send out the info to the different Gravel meetups.

step 4. When someone makes a youtube video comment, rate, and favor it. When someone has a news article comment if you can, submit it to digg, and pass it on to the hub so others can do the exact same.

Eventually the meetups grow and come up with their own ideas for their areas. It is EXTREEMLY IMPORTANT that the grassroots be separate from the campaign. A campaign will slow down the volunteers and many of the ideas will be shot down because it's illegal for the campaign to do them. If you are independent from the campaign you can get more done and don't risk derailing the campaign. Gravel needs an independent grassroots because he doesn't have the campaign organization (or the money) to carry out something the size of Obama's group.

I've been trying to straighten out the State Contacts Table

Submitted on April 7th, 2008 by Jaywin

I've been trying to straighten out the state contacts table. There were a few names listed there as directors who haven't been directors for awhile.

And there were a couple of directors who weren't listed.

I've even been able to find some contacts for states that weren't there previously.

If anyone is from a state that is listed as not having a director, please let me know. I'll put you down for at least a contact for those who are willing. (For that matter, anyone who wants to be an additional contact for even those states that have a director would be great, too. I can list you as a contact for your county on an individual state page.)

Getting state contacts for every state would be an important first step for greater national coordination for this campaign. If your interested, feel free to send me an e-mail.

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Jason

National Staff

Volunteer Moderator

Jason@Gravel2008.us