Step-by-Step Organizer Toolkit for the People's Campaign for the Constitution
Building a Core Group
As an individual, you can take initiative to help start a core group, which plays an important role in forming a coalition. In order for that core group to function effectively, you’ll need other leaders to join you. This core group coordinates outreach to other groups and works collaboratively to bring people together to adopt common demands and strategy.
Groups start in many different ways. They can begin as subcommittees of a larger organization or start with friends, family, and/or colleagues who recognize a need to come together to defend the Constitution. The first priority is to begin, but the next is to bring in new people who can put their creativity and energy toward developing a local campaign.
At the first meeting, members of the group can agree to call other local organizations and people who might be interested in helping organize locally. Participants can decide to split up the list of potential local contacts and make commitments to call them personally. Those outreach calls are an opportunity to explain the group's purpose and to inform others about the group’s next meeting. Here are some people and organizations you may have in your community that could be likely allies:
- Local chapters of national organizations
- Teachers, professors, students, and student groups
- Librarians
- Attorneys
- Political party chapters
- Civic groups and neighborhood associations
- Religious leaders
- Activist groups
- Union locals
As you build your core group (sometimes called a “steering committee”), consider to what extent different parts of the broader community will be able to relate to its members. Other community groups will want to join a coalition in part based on the issues the coalition takes on and in part based on how they view core group members. If past experience has demonstrated that your congressional representative responds negatively to the kinds of demands you plan to make, broadening your coalition will be all the more important, because demonstrating broad support makes it harder for your representative to ignore you. Broadening your coalition may require broadening your core group.
The core group articulates to other potentially allied groups the reasons why joining the coalition will help them pursue their own agenda more effectively than by working alone. It is important to ask the groups you talk to how they define their agenda. Once you figure out how your agendas intersect and discuss concrete actions you can take, you’re closer to moving forward together.
At first, a coalition of different groups that lacks a strong common history has only its common demands to keep itself together. The situation is difficult because it involves living with differences in opinions, assumptions and personalities. Such situations can challenge our personal comfort zones. The point, however, is not to get together with the people most similar to ourselves, but to get common concrete demands met.
Further Reading
Scher, Abby. “When Adversaries Become Allies: The Fight Against the Patriot Act and the Surveillance State.” The Public Eye Magazine - Spring 2006. http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v20n1/scher_allies.html
(This article chronicles how groups from both the Left and the Right came together to create effective coalitions in the Bill of Rights Resolution Campaign.)