Three Venues for Conservative Activism

By Drew McKissick

Whether you’re organizing for a campaign, a group or just an issue you care about, there are three areas that it pays for conservatives to focus their time and efforts in order to have the greatest potential impact.  And each area has different benefits, but also its own challenges.

Organizing by precinct:

Organizing by precinct is more geographically focused and as a result it can have a more direct and greater potential impact on a specific area.  This is because the American political system is built around the precinct.  Meaning that elections are held in political districts (school board, city council, county council, Congress) which are built on different combinations of precincts, and if you’re organized in the precincts you can influence an election – or an elected official who wants to run for re-election.

This also applies to the political parties, since the parties (for the same reasons mentioned) are organized around precincts.

The bottom line is that good precinct organization provides you with great leverage.

Organizing in churches:

Organizing in churches allows you to work with people you’re probably already more familiar with, and are likely to have more in common with politically.  It also has the benefit of involving people across multiple neighborhoods (which also means precincts), which can “sow the seeds” of activism in more than one area.

Remember the old saying: “hunt where the ducks are”.

Online organization:

Online organization can exist on its own or as a compliment to church and/or precinct organization, (ex. online “groups” via Yahoo, Google, Ning or Facebook; or online petitions and campaigns at AktNow.com – or a combination).

And when you organize online, you make it easier to share informatoin with others and for others to find you.

Where to focus your time?

In order to determine where you should focus your time and efforts, ask yourself the following questions:

* What specifically do I want to impact or accomplish? Is it more educational and/or issue related, or is it more political?

* Where do I know the most people who think like I do, and who are willing to help? (Hunt where the ducks are!)

Whichever type of organization you plan to focus on, remember that it all comes down to people.  Politics is people.

You get enough people together with a common purpose, and you’ve got grassroots organization.  And grassroots organization leads to political impact…which leads to legislative and policy success.

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