Grassroots Success Story
Campaign 101 started off in February 2004 as a team of 7 students, 1 adult, and the goal of getting more students involved in progressive, grassroots politics in Virginia.
We decided to work together to set up a weekend of intensive workshops to train other student activists how to organize. We teamed up with a professional political group that promised to arrange speakers and handle our finances while we provided the research and sweat equity for a weekend student training. Unfortunately, our partner withdrew in June, leaving us just over a month to completely rebuild our program from the ground up, including designing a new website, raising new funds, and doing all of our publicity and promotions from scratch.
To bootstrap the project, we turned to the fundamentals of retail politics. We reached out to democrats and progressive political groups across the state to ask for help, including NOW, the NAACP, and the Virginia Education Association. With an operating budget of zero we sent email after email (because it is free), and followed up with phone calls (because they are effective), to hundreds of students, teachers, elected officials, and political activists. We recruited at local Democratic meetings, at MeetUps, and at theatres showing Fahrenheit 9/11. And we kept the press informed every step of the way.
The local branch of the VEA offered us their space to use for free. The Fairfax Young Democrats handled the money for us so we wouldn’t have to form a PAC. Local elected officials, from the school board up to the Virginia Senate Minority Leader, and the Chairman of the Virginia State Party generously offered their time, on extremely short notice, to address the students, and Congressman Jim Moran saved the project with his generous financial contribution. Local Democrats donated meals and materials, and professional political operatives from Northern Virginia and DC stepped up to speak for free and also to use their personal connections to help us find other trainers. The training itself became an exercise in the kind of coalition-building, creative thinking, and community activism that grassroots politics at its best is all about.
The training, on July 10 & 11, was a success beyond what we ever imagined back in February. The alumni are now working together on a collaborative blog, http://c101.blogspot.com, to discuss policy and politics from a youth activist perspective, as well as organizing “The George W. Bush Farwell Tour,” a concert/rally/voter registration drive in August. And, we are all making plans for how we can get more students involved when we go back to school.
I’ll be speaking on a panel about youth activism at DemocracyFest this weekend representing Campaign 101, and we hope our experience and the lessons we’ve learned can help support other student organizers around the country.
We will continue to maintain the Campaign 101 website to publicize the ongoing projects of the Campaign 101 Alumni.
We decided to work together to set up a weekend of intensive workshops to train other student activists how to organize. We teamed up with a professional political group that promised to arrange speakers and handle our finances while we provided the research and sweat equity for a weekend student training. Unfortunately, our partner withdrew in June, leaving us just over a month to completely rebuild our program from the ground up, including designing a new website, raising new funds, and doing all of our publicity and promotions from scratch.
To bootstrap the project, we turned to the fundamentals of retail politics. We reached out to democrats and progressive political groups across the state to ask for help, including NOW, the NAACP, and the Virginia Education Association. With an operating budget of zero we sent email after email (because it is free), and followed up with phone calls (because they are effective), to hundreds of students, teachers, elected officials, and political activists. We recruited at local Democratic meetings, at MeetUps, and at theatres showing Fahrenheit 9/11. And we kept the press informed every step of the way.
The local branch of the VEA offered us their space to use for free. The Fairfax Young Democrats handled the money for us so we wouldn’t have to form a PAC. Local elected officials, from the school board up to the Virginia Senate Minority Leader, and the Chairman of the Virginia State Party generously offered their time, on extremely short notice, to address the students, and Congressman Jim Moran saved the project with his generous financial contribution. Local Democrats donated meals and materials, and professional political operatives from Northern Virginia and DC stepped up to speak for free and also to use their personal connections to help us find other trainers. The training itself became an exercise in the kind of coalition-building, creative thinking, and community activism that grassroots politics at its best is all about.
The training, on July 10 & 11, was a success beyond what we ever imagined back in February. The alumni are now working together on a collaborative blog, http://c101.blogspot.com, to discuss policy and politics from a youth activist perspective, as well as organizing “The George W. Bush Farwell Tour,” a concert/rally/voter registration drive in August. And, we are all making plans for how we can get more students involved when we go back to school.
I’ll be speaking on a panel about youth activism at DemocracyFest this weekend representing Campaign 101, and we hope our experience and the lessons we’ve learned can help support other student organizers around the country.
We will continue to maintain the Campaign 101 website to publicize the ongoing projects of the Campaign 101 Alumni.
