How We Can Raise A Huge Ruckus In The US This Summer
Announcing An Aggressive Zoom Call Series To Help Us Bring Pressure & Persuasion In New Ways
The tsunami of US political news is breathtaking, alarming, and often terrifying. The power grabs are real as racism, bigotry, hate, and control are being encoded into law. Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, girls, and children are being hurt, targeted, sidelined, terrorized, or restricted by everything from forced births to stochastic terror to assault rifles to weakened child labor laws. Healthcare, schools, science, and history are being eroded. No summary does it all justice. It’s a freaking ton of stuff.
We Can Bring New Pressure & Persuasion
All of that stuff is not okay. We can do more to say that in a zillion ways… and to advocate for what we need and want. We can raise way more of a ruckus and bring more pressure to change the trajectory of this country.
Big news! To raise that ruckus, Shift the Country has put together an aggressive set of Zoom calls. The more people we get involved and the more stuff we do, the more impact we can have. We could pull off a heck of a lot by this summer, so let’s get going.
Check out the Zoom call list and see what’s interesting. Check out a couple. Join a Zoom call to get involved, or sign up to volunteer here. Donate to support the work if you’re able.
Share this to all your friends and relatives. Share this to any political group or nonprofit you’re in.
Ramping up action and fuss nationwide is a key to countering an authoritarian movement. Helping each other out and staying connected is critical too. These Zoom calls do all of that — and more.
The idea here is to create enough of a fuss, buzz, kerfuffle, ruckus, or other phenomena to start turning the coverage, the national narrative, and the moral bearing of this country.
We do that together by empowering and energizing voters in the long term. In the short term, we raise holy heck in lots of new ways, and at every level. The key is to raise all of that ruckus in the communities we live in as well as nationally.
Who’s countering the extremist narrative from FOX news and right-wing talk radio in rural America?
We can.
Zoom Call Tracks
Pick a lane! You don’t have to do it all. Do what’s interesting.
Here are the different tracks, including socials, support stuff, and an orientation. This is fast-evolving. It will change by the week, and what we do over time will be affected by who joins in.
Summer Ruckus — How We Can Create Good Trouble All Over This Country. Worried about extremism, hate, & threats to democracy? These are Zoom calls to help people create any kinds of activity to counter all that, in local communities or anywhere. These Zoom sessions will build on each other and get more focused as we get going. We can have all kinds of activities in the places we live: tiny gatherings, huge parties, rallies, celebrations, vigils, art activities, ice cream socials for whatever cause, storytelling events, musical gatherings, karaoke, problem-solving series, potlucks, picnics, barbecues, or whatever. The idea is to get people together, to do things that are noticeable, to get messages and stories out, to advocate, to empower each other, to pressure or encourage elected officials, to get media coverage, to get our activities to go viral, to get influencer attention, and to do more to drive the narrative. Plus, we need the connection, solidarity, community, and hopefully even some fun. Noticeable, interesting local activity helps us get messages into local gossip networks and local news coverage about what we want to see in the world, and what’s not okay. Let’s raise a ruckus.
Shift Work — Zoom call workshops for volunteer coordination, deeper dives into the 5 Things, or other action to get this shift rolling. Join in and help bring pressure and persuasion in new ways.
A Business Pressure Group — Join us to work on new efforts to pressure or partner with businesses to support democracy, to value humans, to address climate change, & to change our country’s trajectory in an array of ways.
A Coalition-Building Group. — Join us in this working group series to help bring coalitions together. Well-coordinated coalitions are proven to push back authoritarianism.
Big Picture Takes — Shift the Country Zoom Calls For Ideas, Awareness, & Exploration.
Strengthening & Support Sessions — Coaching, community, and solidarity for people working on decency, humanity, survival, climate, and democracy.
Socials — A casual online hangout / get-together for connection & community.
Orientation — Shift the Country 101: The Basics Behind This Shift. A regularly scheduled training or refresher for volunteers.
Join in on these Zoom calls and help bring pressure and persuasion in new ways.
We can grow connection & community, build bigger coalitions, pressure businesses, empower moral courage, raise a ruckus, & drive the narrative… to support each other through chaos, to revitalize democracy, & to change our country’s trajectory. Those are the 5 Things, and they’re achievable.
Photos: The 8 Zoom Call Tracks
Summer Ruckus — How we can create good trouble all over this country:
Shift Work — Shift the Country Zoom Calls. Zoom call workshops for volunteer coordination, deeper dives into the 5 Things, or other action to get this shift rolling:
Business Pressure Group: Join us to work on new efforts to pressure or partner with businesses to support democracy, to value humans, to address climate change, & to change our country’s trajectory in an array of ways —
Coalition-Building Group — Join us in this working group series to help bring coalitions together. Well-coordinated coalitions are proven to push back authoritarianism:
Big Picture Takes — Shift the Country Zoom Calls For Ideas, Awareness, & Exploration: We can grow connection & community, build bigger coalitions, pressure businesses, empower moral courage, raise a ruckus, & drive the narrative… to support each other through chaos, to revitalize democracy, & to change our country’s trajectory —
Strengthening & Support Sessions — Coaching, community, and solidarity for people working on decency, humanity, survival, climate, and democracy:
Social – A Shift the Country Zoom Call. A casual online hangout / get-together for connection & community:
Orientation — Shift the Country 101: The Basics Behind This Shift…
Planting Seeds
This work here plants the seeds to grow a movement.
It will work if we bring enough people in and share what we’re doing.
That’s what’s behind the whole thing… bringing people in, getting ideas, making stuff happen out in the real world and online… and doing more of it. It’s everything from storytelling to rallies to parties to support to viral videos to community vision work to firing up elected officials. It can be anything.
Shift the Country is here to catalyze and inspire and empower; to bring people together; to create the space.
You bring your brain and your big ideas and everyone you know who’s fired up and worried and looking for things they can do.
We go forward from there.
How We Can Raise A Huge Ruckus In The US This Summer
Excellent stuff. Please make sure to send out notices of all the zooms individually in advance and also same day early morning. Thank for your work on behalf of our democracy.
I've been kind of absent...catching up. I just signed up for a Zoom call and look forward to seeing who shows up, what ideas they bring, and how we can start moving this crazy thing forward! Thanks for all you do, Vanessa. It must feel good to have some actual traction happening!