Democratic Town Committee
of
Carlisle, MA
"Real change, enduring change, happens one step
at a time."
"If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 3/1933 - 9/2020
Partners, 2024 and Beyond
The following is a list of organizations with whom we have worked. We seek partners who offer eduction and work in our priority areas who organize events and work of the type we like to do: texting, phoning, postcards. Eventually we hope to get back to door-to-door canvassing.
Swing Blue Alliance (formerly Swing Left Boston)
Focus: National elections, goals and plan based on substantive research you can access directly if you join them as a writing organizer. Nancy Kronenberg, one of the threesome who are packaging postcards for Carlisle, is registered with SWBA, and also uses their research to write a strategy document each year. In 2020, they led the charge to hold the House, take back the Senate, and recapture the White House. They don't stop in "off" years.
Where: Local grass roots with national impact.
What they Do: Deploy grass roots volunteers from the Boston area (but you can sign up from anywhere) to swing states in the country. Define clear goals and a strategy which they revise throughout the election cycle. They are led by some very knowledgeable and dedicated people who will answer your emailed questions. Join to get newsletter. If you want to host postcards, you need to register for this, but they have very complete arrangements, making it easy for packagers and volunteer writers.
Reclaim Our Vote
Focus: Voter Suppression, underserved minorities.
Where: National
What they Do: ROV is a 501C3 (nonpartisan) organization that works to get voters enrolled, particularly contacting those who have been purged. They offer postcarding, phoning, and texting close to elections. We wrote postcards for ROV in 2020. This year they are off and running with post cards again and we the CDTC will support them in large quantities.
NextGen - Recruiting the Youth Vote
Focus: That elusive demographic, the youth vote!
Where: National
What they Do: This organization offers texting, phone banking, and canvassing with youth in various states. Right now, this very minute they are offering texting and phonebanking in PA and AZ with youth!
Sister District Project
Focus: State Legislatures. This area is important because many states put their legislatures in charge of gerrymandering, ooops, we mean in charge of districting. State legislatures also set election law and voter suppression tactics.
Also, if 2/3 of the state legislatures in the country (34) are under one party's control, that party can require Congress to call an open (any topics, no rules) Constitutional Convention. (Governor sign off not needed.) However, proposed amendments require 3/4 (38) of the state legislatures to pass.
As of Jan 2024, the GOP controls 28 state legislatures, and the Dems control 20, while 2 states are split. The GOP is 6 away from being able to call an open constitutional convention. Note that quite a few state legislatures have open seats at any given time.
Where: National, and regional, MA-RI
What they Do: They identify strategic seats in swing districts. Volunteers in “sister" blue states canvass, phone, text, write postcards and fundraise for candidates who will further democratic agendas. This is one of the few national organizations that connects grass roots workers with key open state legislature seats, and they work at this all the time, including seats that become open, irrespective of the election cycle.
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Because this project reaches down into states, this is a good organization to donate to and let them select the important races.
Mobilize.us
Focus: Local to national events of all kinds, posted by grass roots groups all over the country.
Where: You can search for event type or groups you prefer. All parties and major other organizations list on this site. Create a log in, and Mobilize will track your sign up calendar for you.
What they Do: They like to promote events in your local area for you, which is getting to be an old-fashioned idea! Here's the quick route to find events in which you are interested:
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Click https://www.mobilize.us/ and then click filters. Select Type of work you want by clicking the selections, for instance, Text Banks.
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Set a date range.
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Select Campaign(s) and/or Organization(s), for instance, Democratic Party of Georgia, and Working Families Party.
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Click Apply Filters and you will get a list of matches.
Environmental Voter Project
Focus: A national organization that encourages people to vote in a demographic that is often overlooked: people with an interest in the environment (including of course climate change) who have spotty voting records. At the moment they are focused on phone banking.
Where: National
What they Do: They text, phone and write postcards to get these folks voting again. They also train canvassers and may be canvassing at times when others are not. They follow up with public voting records to see how much difference their contact work made in votes. At present the are phone banking with just a little canvassing (in person).
Concord Indivisible
Focus: Local volunteers with national impact
Where: Local volunteers with national impact -> Zoom events
What they Do: Organize and support local demonstrations. For 2020 we connected to a member who made endless post card packages we picked up and distributed to people in Carlisle who wanted to write post cards for Reclaim Our Vote (helping those in areas with high voter suppression) and also directly with the FL Democratic Party. This is a good group to join. To get a flavor of all they offer, they have a neat timeline of their events here:
Act On Mass
Focus: Issues in or effecting MA, very active in trying to introduce transparency into the MA House, which they call The Transparency is Power Campaign. Join to get more access to notes, training, news.
Where: MA, senior staff mostly in eastern MA.
What they Do: They publish clear documentation on problems and goals and work to be done. They visit groups around MA to educate and recruit. They publish state legislature vote results in areas of interest. They align with us on many issues, such as climate change, MA House transparency which effects all legislation, etc.