Tag Archives: civic action

An Action Plan

I’ve been getting the same anguished question from friends and family members who feel helpless in the face of the sustained assault on everything that makes America, America. Other than participating in protests, what can one person do? What can I do? Goodness knows, I don’t have an answer to that question. But I recently received an “action plan” from a local reader that lays out steps that she has taken–steps that have “activated” her friends and neighbors–and I think it is valuable. I’m sharing it, below.

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Organizing for a Better Future

For those of us who are devasted by the re-election of Trump and are watching news reports, reading newspapers and on-line communication which indicates that America is headed down the path to authoritarianism, here is an idea that may be helpful to many who want to save our democracy, but are not sure what to do.

Find your peeps

If you belong to a book club, exercise group, play bridge, mahjong or pickle ball, have neighbors or other groups of friends, you can begin to form an affinity group based on your interests, values and available time.  These are people that likely know how you think, share your frustrations and want to make a difference.  It can start with just you and one other person.

Find a political activity that interests you and invite a friend or two to go with you

Find an event, a rally, a protest, a town hall, a Democratic club that interests you and make plans to attend. After attending, talk with your friend about how you felt and create a list of others who might want to join you to attend a future event.  Go on-line to find webinars, meetings, activities that appeal to you. Invite your friend to do the same and decide together what you want to do.  Gather all the information you need and each of you then contact others who might be interested.  Organize a carpool or two if necessary. 

Recap, review, recall your experience in a relaxed social setting

Make plans to meet with this small group for coffee or a drink a few days after your first event. At this first gathering let everyone talk about their feelings and how they best cope with the overload of bad news.  Encourage participants to share their meditation, exercise, relaxation tips with others.  Ask them to talk about their current volunteer activities such as food banks, soup kitchens, classroom volunteering, environmental cleanup, working with teens who need support, etc. Ask what they think might be the most effective thing to do next and get each to commit to researching and organizing a next step. Talk about who else could be in this group and invite each one to invite one or two others to join.  Decide if you need to meet again or if you just want to “get in action.” Record what you talked about and send the notes to the group with details about the first activity this larger group will do.

Focus

While it may be difficult to affect what’s going on at the national level, you can make a huge difference by learning from and supporting your local candidates. Go to their town halls, send a donation or two to candidates (even a small donation gets you on their communication list), write a letter to your local newspaper, host a fundraiser for them.  Share what you learn with others. Always be on the lookout for new people to join your efforts.

Educate

Educate yourselves and get involved as a precinct chairperson or vice chairperson, volunteer to knock on doors or work on a campaign to really learn how “the sausage is made.”  Did you know that if the Marion County November, 2024 voter turnout had been 68% instead of 54%, Indiana quite likely would have had Jennifer McCormick as our governor and Destiny Wells as our Attorney General.  Marion County is a huge factor in Indiana elections and we need to participate in the current structure and make it better.

Communicate

Ask each person in your group to send you (the leader of this effort and the monthly email communicator) information about activities that someone or all the group may want to participate in.  Try not to overload the group with too many emails – send something about once a month unless you need to finalize details about an activity.  Some folks will decide not to participate – always ask if they still want to be on the mailing list or opt out. 

Keep communication simple

Encourage participants to share activities and ideas with their families and friends outside of the group.  Have them forward your emails, but don’t get bogged down by adding random people that you don’t know personally to your email list.

Grow

Hopefully your group will grow – if it does, ask 3-4 of the most active people to be on the “Lead Team.”  These are the ones to call on to get a read on what to do next or to help solve an issue.  Plan purely fun social events to build relationships.  Continue to add new people.  Create mutual support among the members – people have illnesses and surgeries, jobs and travel, loved ones need their time and attention, some just get burned out.  Always have a Plan B if someone doesn’t come through.

Author’s Notes

This plan is written by a retired senior and indicates how her peers might be most comfortable with emails and in-person meetings.  A younger group could take some of the ideas and use social media to organize activities.  Our group consists of about 20-25 neighbors in our condominium community making it easy for social events, carpooling to various venues, getting together to make rally signs, etc.  We originally met in early 2017 to plan our participation in the Women’s March and kept in touch loosely as we worked on campaigns for Carey Hamilton (IN State Representative), Dee Thornton (5th District Congressional District), and Valerie McCray (U.S. Senate).

For more information or if you have questions or ideas to share, please contact Jayne Thorne at 317/694-5615 or [email protected].

Here are additional suggestions provided by ChatGPT:

Additional Ideas to Build and Expand Affinity Groups

1. Skill-Sharing Circles

Host monthly “skill nights” where members teach each other something useful—letter writing, public speaking, using Canva for activism, or calling legislators.
These gatherings build confidence and deepen the group’s leadership bench.
2. Affinity Pods for Action

Break your larger group into smaller “pods” based on interests (climate, education, voting rights, etc.).
Each pod meets independently and commits to one collective action a month—attending a meeting, writing op-eds, organizing phone banks, etc.
3. Storytelling Gatherings

Host small storytelling events where participants share how political decisions have affected them personally.
These emotional connections build solidarity and provide content for persuasive outreach and social media.
4. Intergenerational Exchanges

Pair retirees or older adults with younger activists for skill swaps and dialogue.
Older adults bring lived experience and institutional memory, while younger members may offer tech skills or social media fluency.

5. “Bring a Friend” Month

Designate a month when each member is encouraged to bring a new person to a meeting or event.
Offer low-barrier, friendly events like potlucks, coffee meetups, or sign-making parties to ease people in.
6. Group Texts or Chat Threads

For groups more comfortable with digital tools, use WhatsApp, Signal, or GroupMe to share updates and keep momentum between meetings.
These platforms help maintain urgency and build an informal community.
7. Create an Affinity Group Toolkit

Offer a starter pack PDF or printout with tips on forming a new group, sample invitation messages, and a calendar of upcoming events.
Empower members to become “mini organizers” in their own networks.
8. Monthly Themes

Choose a theme for each month (e.g., Voting Rights in April, Climate Justice in May, Reproductive Rights in June) and plan one activity around it.
This keeps engagement fresh and education ongoing.
9. Partner with Local Institutions

Collaborate with churches, libraries, or community centers to host public forums, movie nights, or civic teach-ins.
This helps normalize political dialogue in shared spaces.
10. Wellness and Resilience Focus

Regularly include activities for emotional well-being, such as group walks, mindfulness exercises, mental health check-ins, or laughter yoga.

Political work is exhausting—resilience practices keep people engaged long term.
 

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What Now?

The next two to four years are going to be very painful.

Upcoming Judicial appointments will make the federal courts far less protective of our liberties (especially women’s liberties), probably for the foreseeable future. Economic policies will hurt the poor, especially women and children, and exacerbate divisions between the rich and the rest of us. A Trump Administration will abandon efforts to address climate change and will roll back most of Obamacare. There will be no immigration reform, only punitive deportations, and God only knows what our foreign policy will look like.

Worst of all, Trump’s normalization of incivility and encouragement of bigotry will play out in a variety of ways, none good.

For women, the damage Trump has already done can’t be reversed through legislation, if and when America returns to its senses. During his campaign, we saw an embrace of historic cultural attitudes that objectify and demean women. His election signaled a return to widespread acceptance of “locker room” attitudes and behaviors that had finally been diminishing.

So – what can each of us do, especially those of us sitting here in overwhelmingly Red Indiana?

  • As individuals, beginning right now, we can increase our support for organizations that work to protect civil and reproductive liberties, the environment and public education, among others. We will need them more than ever. A friend of mine and her husband, who stand to benefit from Trump’s proposed tax cuts, have decided to donate every dollar they save by reason of those cuts to organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. We might even start a local “pledge my tax cut” campaign.
  • Each of us can identify a harmful policy this administration will pursue that we feel  passionate about, and volunteer with local organizations to mobilize citizens to do everything we can to defeat that effort or minimize its impact.
  • Perhaps the most productive thing we can do is focus on local efforts to ameliorate the effects of likely federal actions. Most of the innovation and action on climate change, for example, is happening in cities, and it is much easier to influence local policy than state or national legislation. Those of us worried about the environment can make sure our cities are at the forefront of urban environmental efforts. There are other policy areas where—depending upon relevant state law—cities can at least partially mitigate the effects of federal action or inaction.
  • We can–and we must– come together to create inclusive and supportive local civic cultures that make misogyny, bigotry and intolerance unacceptable. We are already seeing a substantial increase in racist, homophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic incidents; we need to create local environments that strongly discourage such eruptions. We have ready-made partners in those efforts, in arts organizations, civic and religious associations and the business community. (Former Mayor Bill Hudnut used to say that he was a citizen of “no mean city.” In the wake of this election, “mean” has taken on a double meaning. I hereby volunteer to help mount a No Mean City campaign, focused on encouraging a welcoming, inclusive, respectful civic environment.)
  • In the longer term, as I have previously written, we have to reform America’s election system. We need to combat voter suppression efforts and get rid of gerrymandering and the Electoral College, both of which operate to favor rural voters over urban ones, and generally distort the democratic process. We should work with groups like Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to make voting easier, reform redistricting and get Indiana to sign on to the National Popular Vote Project.
  • We absolutely have to improve civic education. “We the People” or a similar curriculum should be required for High School graduation. Trump made all kinds of promises that he could not constitutionally carry out. If more voters had recognized that he was totally unacquainted with the Constitution, it might have made a difference. In any event, democracy requires a civically-literate population; demagoguery relies on civic ignorance.
  • We need to combat Trump’s effort to hollow out government and enrich crony capitalists via his proposed privatization of infrastructure and other government functions. In Indiana, we can begin by working to scale back Pence’s school voucher program, the largest in the country.  Vouchers take money from public schools to support private religious ones. Research confirms that Indiana’s voucher schools have not improved student performance in reading or math (voucher students actually do worse than similar public school students) ; furthermore, public schools are where children from diverse backgrounds learn to live together. Public institutions should be strengthened, not abandoned.

There is plenty to do if we are serious about reclaiming America. And while we are engaging in these tasks, we have to resist efforts by the forces he has emboldened to marginalize and demean women and minorities–and we need to do so publicly, loudly, and persistently. We have to constantly explain to anyone who will listen why the bigotries he feeds are inconsistent with American values and the Constitution–not to mention human decency.

We can no longer sit back and depend upon the courts to protect our liberties. We will have to do it ourselves, through sustained and determined political action.

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