Rural Organizing Project

supports the growing grassroots movement for social justice in small-town and rural Oregon by assisting locally-organized human dignity groups. The ROP provides human dignity groups with many forms of support including skills training, strategic planning, outreach development, and opportunities to plug into statewide grassroots organizing. ROP works with members and member groups in every county in the state. Contact us at office@rop.org for more information about a group in your area, or for support in developing your local human dignity group.

Rural Organizing Project
PO Box 1350, Scappoose, OR 97056

(503) 543-8417 Fax: (503) 543-8419

office@rop.org

Rural Organizing Project

Mobilizing our communities for Freedom and Democracy on November 4th and beyond!

Join ROP's Freedom Voters Campaign

Annual Rural Caucus & Strategy Session Saturday, April 26th * Hood River, OR
The Caucus is the one time of year that the ROP membership gathers from all corners of the state. This year's Caucus will include strategy sessions relating to our next steps in Dismantling the War at Home and Abroad including voter education and mobilization for elections 2008, defeating anti-immigrant and mandatory minimum sentencing ballot measures, and ongoing training and resources to strengthen the local capacity of our human dignity groups. Attendees are asked to register ahead of time for the Rural Caucus and Strategy Session. If you are not registered but would like to attend email cara@rop.org.
Download an Agenda (pdf)
Directions and Lodging Information (pdf)

Dismantling the War; at Home and Abroad

During WWII, African American soldiers would wave a Double V for victory abroad over the Nazis and victory at home over racism. Similarly today, while we are working to stop the war in Iraq, there is a domestic front to that war being waged here at home on the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community. All of this in the name of "security." And all of this to the benefit of the same private corporate contractor few that claim to do security well, never mind civil liberties or human rights or economic justice. Read More on Dismantling the War at Home and Abroad.

December 2007

The only answer to organized money is organized people. ~Bill Moyers

Dear Friends of the Rural Organizing Project,

You don't get to choose your moment in history but you do get to choose how you act in it.

As we enter 2008, we find the majority of Americans leaning to the 'left', with the Democratic Party poised to regain political power in the country. Still, the problems that led to the Democratic resurgence remain intractable: a war that Congress cannot or will not stop, the danger of military escalation, a pro-torture Attorney General approved with bi-partisan support, and behind these problems, the relentless rise of a 'privatized' government, from Blackwater to Halliburton, that uses the expanding disasters of our world as opportunities for private profit. The challenges vary, but they are often dire.

Yet there is also a positive aspect to our times. Since the old fixes are not providing solutions, we get to be smart, creative and local, building concrete alternatives for the future we desire. READ MORE

Background

ROP is a statewide organization of locally-based groups that work to create communities accountable to a standard of human dignity: the belief in the equal worth of all people, the need for equal access to justice, and the right to self-determination.

Starting in 1992, ROP’s challenges to the anti-democratic right have earned ROP a national reputation for being an effective grassroots organization that takes on the hard issues. The catalyst for ROP was the Oregon Citizens Alliance and their outrageous Abnormal Behaviors Initiative, which targeted gay and lesbian Oregonians for legalized second-class citizenship. Oregonians in small towns across the state were mobilized, many for the first time, as basic tenets of the Constitution were at risk through this ballot initiative. ROP stepped into this organizing opportunity to fill a niche the radical right was trying to claim.

ROP today works with 45 member groups, and another 25 contact groups, to organize on issues that impact human dignity and to advance inclusive democracy. Click the button below to read the annual report.

2008-2013 Five Year Plan