Kitchen Table Activism

Background: Kitchen Table Activism (KTA) is a monthly project of the Rural Organizing Project. Often building on quarterly themes, short actions are described in each KTA. The theory is that basic steps and tasks can lead to powerful collective results as small groups of people gather to complete the same action throughout the state of Oregon.

ROP works to keep the basic tasks easily achievable so that groups with other projects or groups with limited immediate energy can still manage to complete the KTA each month.

This Month’s KTA

KTA archive

Other ROP activities

ROP Home

May 2005

Postcards from the Edge (of Rural Oregon!)

Why This Activity?

This June, hundreds of people will set aside their lives to march in support of their values as part of the weeklong Walk for Truth, Justice and Community. Each county’s contingent of walkers will play the important role of using their bodies to declare their resistance. Each person on the march will represent dozens back home that are not able to be on the march themselves. They say that one person at the Capitol represents dozens of others who share the same values. And one postcard represents ten more who feel the same way. That is why we’ll be bringing hundreds of bodies AND hundreds more postcards from our home communities to Governor Kulongoski, our Legislators, Senator Smith, and Senator Wyden demanding that they call for bringing home the troops, funding human needs at home, and protecting the civil liberties and civil rights of everyone living in Oregon. Not only will we fill their offices with an overflow of people, but we’ll fill their desks with a flood of postcards from around the state.

What Is This Activity?

Send off your local marchers in style and give them something to carry with them! An easy way to involve local community members, gather postcards, and create publicity is to organize a local kick off for your county’s marchers. This could be as easy as a gathering at the local library where community members and local media are invited to a Postcard Potluck to send off your local walkers, enjoy light snacks, and fill out postcards to be carried to the Walk for Truth, Justice & Community. (See attached postcards). This will give your community a chance to join in this historic event, even if they can’t make it to the Walk themselves. It is also an excellent media hook; a local event that engages your community and profiles why Jane Smith is participating in a weeklong walk. 

Steps To Complete The Activity

• Chose a date when you would like to have your county kick off and postcard party.
• Consider contacting your local paper to find out a good time to get a reporter there and a story in the paper before or during the Walk for Truth, Justice & Community, June 12-18th.
• Reserve the space, plan the itinerary for the event, and decide who will talk about the Walk for Truth, Justice & Community at the event.
• Decide who you are going to invite and divide up the list to send out emails and make calls. This is a great opportunity to go back to those HOTS you met during the election cycle and invite them to a community event.
• Who will contact the local paper and find out if a reporter can be there?
• Photocopy the attached postcards onto cardstock. Start circulating them now to everyone you know, and make enough so everyone can fill out each one at your “Postcard Potluck.”
• Let ROP know the dates of your “Postcard Potluck” and how many postcards you are going to collect between now and the Walk for Truth, Justice, & Community.

Media Plan

April’s KTA: Raising A Flag of Hope

Previous KTAs are now located in the KTA Archive.