The Incredible Untapped Power of Connection, Networking, Community, & Coalitions
We haven’t been writing much lately here because there’s been a whole lot of big picture strategy and thinking behind the scenes to figure out how we can grow something out of almost nothing here fast. It’s a huge challenge, but it’s also possible. And it doesn’t have to be overly complicated.
For me personally, one of the challenges of the work we’ve put together here is that sometimes it’s the simplest things that we’re not saying and doing as a society or as a big Democratic side coalition that could be the most powerful.
Connection, community, and coalitions are at the absolute heart of that.
But not just of politics; of possibility overall. Of big ideas and big vision. They’re at the absolute heart of what makes us human. Of our most beautiful aspects. Of our most fundamental. Community and connection help us envision together the best of who we can be… and to figure out how to get there… and then they help us do it.
So why don’t we do more with all that, and not just in a few limited ways? Political campaign work and “organizing” have started to do a bit.
But yo. We could go all out.
We could build on and expand community and coalitions to leverage what we’ve already built to get this country to this point so far.
We can take it all to new levels for larger efforts, a wider reach, and bigger effects.
We could take all the political and organizing work in this country and have it do huger things and more stuff together and in communities everywhere.
We could help people come together, truly, especially in areas where folks are scared and cut off and isolated and seemingly outnumbered but maybe not.
Because the majority of Americans don’t want the extremism that’s being pushed for this country. The majority doesn’t want the meanness and the ugly and the scary.
But we’re not doing much yet to pull that majority together. We could. We could go after it. We do it with networking, connection, community, and coalitions. They’re Thing 1 and Thing 2 in our “5 Thing” approach for good reason.
Alliances, partnerships, and communities are amplifiers. They also help us re-weave the frayed and torn social fabric. Community and coalitions bring strength, resilience, fellowship, solidarity, creativity, inspiration, and synergy to help us navigate an intensifying era; to help each other through it; and to make change as we go. We do bigger things online and in-real-life together. We can make waves, we can make news, we can drive the narrative, and we can drive transformation — at every level.
It’s been hard to figure out the next best move for how this little tiny intrepid nonprofit that intends to take root can help catalyze all this.
The answer is that we do it with connection, community, networking, and coalition-building. With you. With people you know. With groups you’re in. With other people like you, and like me.
Doesn’t have to be complicated.
Does have to involve a whole lot more of all that than what we’ve been doing politically. We are going to need to get creative. We are going to probably have to get uncomfortable and to learn and grow and evolve and all that. But the journey will also be amazing and we’ll have all kinds of new people and friends and family and lives on the other side.
We can start the work here with one-on-one or group conversations about possibilities and how we can go about this. One-on-one conversations can help us brainstorm and strategize and understand and problem-solve. And so on.
Anyway, that’s the current plan for November to grow this shift. It can help us grow a core volunteer team, to put some pieces in places, and to start communicating the ideas here. We’d like to get invitations to other groups to talk about these ideas. We’ll need to figure out good ways to do that, and to do the talking. We’ll need lots of people who can do it, too.
We’re also fixing to release a guide for how to do the civic engagement we’re talking about, with a big list of ideas. It’s kind of been on hold while we figured out this next step.
This is a quiet note on a Friday, but it’s a quiet note asking for you to do a phone call with me on this stuff and what we can build.
There’s huge potential here. Not one of us can do it alone, but together we can move mountains… and all that. It’s not just idealism. It’s actually true.
Holler.
If you’d like a normal link to schedule a call, here’s a link to schedule a call.
Please pass the word along. Also we do need the cash, so if you’re in a position to donate that would be deeply appreciated.
Be safe. Be well. Keep the faith. We’ve got good people, and we will find ways through this overwhelming, out-of-control mess. Join us.