Planting Liberally

A few days ago, I wrote a post regarding the three waves of supporting local progressive groups: software support, resource guides, and in-person mentorship. Since then, many people have suggested a number of existing guides to organizing local political groups and reforming state Democratic Parties, and I wanted to put them all in one place. Also, I spent some time looking at the "Democracy for XX" site for each state in the country (unfortunately, this didn't take too much time, since some states don't have a DFA presence.) In some places, like Oregon and Colorado, there are excellent, very well-done grassroots guides to organizing and reforming the Democratic Party. In others, there isn't much along those lines, or at least not much thatn I can find. Part of the point of this post is to encourage liberal reformers in each state to start putting together these guides to organizing and reforming on the ground, and to promote those who have done so. Each of the people involved in putting together the guides before have selflessly committed themselves to helping others take action. These guides are chock-full of great ideas, tips, and general information, and the volunteers who have poured effort into the guides should be highly and loudly commended. Without further ado, here's the list I've drawn up: Blog Posts NUTS AND BOLTS SERIES: Parts 1, 2, and 3 Taking over local parties Grassroots 101 - Parts 1 and 2 Grassroots in Action series: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Online Books The Citizen's Handbook: A Guide to Building Community Think Precinct Action Guide from Democracy for Colorado State Guides CA - California For Democracy Tools DC - Lobbying 101 at DC for Democracy FL - Reform Florida DECs MA - http://www.buildingthedemocraticwing.com/ OK - Feet on the Street - Energizing and Activating the Democratic Base (warning: PDF, takes a while to load) OR - Democracy for Oregon Blue Book TX - Precinct Organizing guide and a TON of great stuff at http://www.democracyfortexas.org/, including "left overs" from DemocracyFest WA - Precinct Organizer's Handbook and Washington State Election Encyclopedia (which appears to be down at the moment) Training Academies DFA Training Academy Camp Wellstone George Meany National Labor College The list above is only a start, and if you have other suggestions, please add a comment! Or better yet, go to http://www.plantingliberally.org/OrganizingGuides. I've set up this page as a place where anyone (who has registered on the site) can make changes, add resource guides, etc. In the next few weeks or so, I hope to make it a little easier for non-technical folks to add resources, and add comments for each resource. For now, we can use this as a jumping off point.