Committees of Correspondence

[WolverineDG]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committees_of_Correspondence

This is an idea I have been toying with for a while now. When I attended Democracy Fest last year, I attended a session on using the media & began to think of ways to do so. I remembered from history that to drum up support for the Revolution, our Founding Fathers formed Committees of Correspondence to write letters to be printed or otherwise diseminated in public. (I looked this up on wiki & it seems that my thoughts on what the Committees did is a bit different than what they did in actuality, but I'm still going to use that term.)

Here's my plan: Since many papers have limits on how many LTTEs they will publish from one person in a given time period (plus the fact that they have the right not to publish LTTEs submitted), you need to gather a few like-minded folks together. The more the merrier! Come up with topics you need to talk about (why voters should elect Candidate A, why they should support Initiative B, etc), & have each person write an LTTE on that subject. See who gets published. DON'T USE ASTROTURF! Give folks outlines with talking points & sources. The next week, come up with another topic & flood the papers with letters on that subject. Try to keep this up until November. :)

Bonus: If there is a foreign language paper in your area, send LTTEs in the particular language to them too!

dg

[NMDemDist2]

1. are you going for issue education or what?

what is the purpose of the LTTEs? this seems like a great idea for a PolySci class project LOL

[WolverineDG]

2. That & candidate education

Any way to get the word out, as cheaply as possible. The Dems don't spend money in Texas & the state party doesn't send money to my area, so if the local party doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. The Repubs aren't shy about using this tactic, why shouldn't we use it?

dg

[NMDemDist2]

3. sounds like a plan then

do you have a group of people you already know?

[WolverineDG]

4. At least one in my precinct so far

& I'm trying to get others involved as well. :)

dg

[NMDemDist2]

5. i'm moving next month and checked out my local precinct

it's literally MILES across in rural New Mexico

i feel your pain........

:hug:

[JNelson6563]

9. Good tactic

For sure, a coordianted LTTE effort is a good idea, well worth pursuing.

As to the other part of your post, you might be surprised at how successfully you could raise your own money in your area. I am in the north of MI, believe me, the state party doesn't have resources to spend on the red part of the state. Dems up here mostly sat in their own poop and cried. Then we got busy. Sent out membership mailing, got lots of responses, lots of money. Had lots of events, grew the party and made huge progress. We went from a treasury of a few hundred dollars most of the time by the end of 2002 to raising $60,000 in 2004. Tons of work, an amazingly wild ride and here we are. We maintain a permanent storefront office, have a slateful of viable candidates for the first time in living memory and our future looks very bright indeed.

"Whether you say you can or you can't, you're probably right." :toast:

Julie

[sybylla]

6. I've always thought this would be a good idea

I've wanted to do it with a couple of campaigns I've worked on but the candidates were too afraid of astroturf. One of these days, I'll find one willing to give it a shot.

[WolverineDG]

7. I think it wouldn't be astroturf

if you worked out a set of "talking points" in outline form, then assigned the points around so not everyone is sending in letters with the same information. It's just a matter of working up what points you want to get across & assigning them out.

dg

[sybylla]

8. Agreed. I definitely think it can be done.

I'm going to try to rally a few county dems to do this and failing that, try a couple of area campaigns.

It might also be nice to recruit a couple of people for "research" who will put talking points together and disseminate them.