Good morning! We have cool new stuff happening today!
Here are our happy fun exciting announcements today —
We’ve created a “Take Action” page on Substack. It’s got all the stuff on one page for any person or group who’d like to get started using this unique approach to make shift happen. Use it! Share it with your people! These are tools that can help us grow this work.
We’ve released a Big Shift Guide posted on that same page! This is huge! For real it’s long! It’s a starting point for anyone curious about how to get going on this work. If we need a PDF printable version, let us know.
We’ve released three Idea Lists on the same page. The lists together include a total of 86 ideas (!) for pushing engagement, partnerships, & pressure to supercharge democracy. People and groups can peruse these for inspiration about options for making shift happen where they are. More are coming; these are a start.
We turned on the ”chat” capability here on Substack. You can use it to communicate with other folks here in our Shift the Country community on Substack either by computer or by using the app on a mobile device (Substack app in the Apple or Google app stores).
What’s Next?
For Shift the Country — we’ve gotten baseline funding through the 2024 election to get this shift going finally! Woooohooooo!!! It has been a long, long time coming… here’s some of the back story, and where this email list came from (for anyone wondering why you’re getting all the email today).
We’ll be doing a spring action plan over the next week to help us focus how we ramp up. For now, we can all start using the materials posted on the Take Action page. There’s plenty there for people and groups to talk about, to think about, and to get started with.
You can get started with all this by talking to your own people or groups — and by checking out the stuff on the Take Action page.
If you know of people or groups who can do neat things with the ideas here, please help us get connected. The 2024 election is coming fast. We can do talks, calls, zooms, & training to get the word out. Invite us to speak or to do a workshop. Email team@shiftthecountry.com, call (515) 375-9027, or book an appointment to talk as soon as possible.
We’d also like to put together a volunteer cadre of folks who can help do these talks to other groups by late spring so holler if you’re interested.
I’ll also be reaching out to folks who have mentioned interest in getting more involved. Book an appointment if you’d like to get in on all this scheming and planning. Shift the Country will help catalyze, nurture, coach, cheer-lead, foment, promote, support, grow, and incite this work at every level as we have the volunteers, capacity, and funding to do so — so give us a holler.
Our normal stuff is happening too! Sign up to volunteer here. Join a regular online working volunteer zoom call here. Join our Community Rising Facebook group for teamwork, connection, & community to help grow this shift.
This work here has taken a long time to put together so it might be a little unbelievable that we’re finally ready to do stuff for real. Yet here we are. Intrepid. Persistent. Resilient. So Let’s do this.
And we’re fundraising! We’ve got starter money. Now we’ll need more to help grow this!
What Are You Up To?
Share what you’re up to or a bit about groups you’re working with in the comments or through the chat.
For me this weekend… I’m on my favourite weekly Zoom right now with the Network NOVA folks — a group out of northern Virginia. They are feisty, mixing it up, and super active all the time. Past episodes are available here. The call includes an after-chat. Today they’re talking gender bias and rural organizing.
This afternoon I’ll jump on a weekly Progress Iowa Zoom, and later head to an evening birthday party for the same group in Des Moines in which rural activist, influencer, and Missouri state legislator Jess Piper will be speaking. Ms. Piper is the Executive Director of Blue Missouri and hosts a weekly podcast called “Dirt Road Democrat.”
Tomorrow I’m double-booked at a Progress Iowa Summit and at our local county Democratic caucus. A new not-yet-assembled computer stand was just delivered for use with one of the two new computers I’ve been busy setting up behind the scenes. Shift is happening. And it snowed!
What’s going on where you are?