Week of Action

Here is the “official” week of action outline for either the week of April 10-16 or April 17-23 - whichever makes more sense for your own campus calendar. You can start soon to announce the week in all the other outreach and events you do to build up the excitement about a whole Week of Action.

The three main actions are:

1. Organize a Lobby Visit with an elected official. We want you to plan and organize a visit with your elected representatives (or their staff) either at the state capital or in your local area to talk about the importance of stopping the corporate take-over of our democracy by reducing the impact of big private money in our democracy and giving people a real voice in political decision-making.

There are many options here – you can take students for a day to the state capital and talk to many different reps as well as your own. You can organize a visit to your school’s state representative who no doubt has an office pretty close to campus. Or you can go to the local office of your member of the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate. Any of these is fine.

The idea is to get as many DM members to lobby in this way. But it is also possible to offer this action more broadly to non-DM members as well. This is a great recruiting idea as well.

We will be sending you pointers on how to go about how to lobby effectively, but the first job is to decide where you want to go and then call that rep’s office; find out what dates in April she/he meets with constituents in the office; and make an appointment for the day that works best for you and your DM members. Do this right away. They make appointments far in advance. Talk to your staff link about how to most effectively “demand” an appointment with the rep you choose.

2. Organize a Campus Photo Campaign. The idea is to engage other students in conversation about the issue THEY care most about; tell them how that is affected by the corporate take-over of our democracy through big campaign donations; and get them to take an action by filling out the white board with their issue and taking their picture.

So get a big white board, take your camera phone or a camera and get out there with your members to talk to random students! Don’t sit behind a table, but go to where students congregate. Wear your DM button and after they are done, ask them to sign onto your email list, and hand them information about Democracy Matters at your school (maybe they will come to the next meeting!)

Send the photos to Megan; spread them around on your facebook and send them to the students to put on their own facebook; and even print them to take or send to your elected officials.

Again we will be sending you more specific information about this, but there isn’t a lot of preparation until a week or so before your Week of Action!

3. Organize a significant Creative Action/Campaign on your campus.It could be a movie showing, an open mic on the quad, an improv theater idea, a number campaign, a forum with faculty on issues of money and politics, or anything else you think of (see Take Action/Action Campaigns). Discuss this with your Staff Link soon so you have plenty of time to plan it.