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.

Rural Organizing Project
PO Box 1350, Scappoose, OR 97056

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

office@rop.org

May 2008 Activity

Attention Freedom Voters: What Will Your Legacy Be?

WHY THIS ACTIVITY? Over the last 8 plus years our Constitutionally guaranteed rights have been thrown away with the strike of a pen. If you can walk into the DMV in any Oregon small town and end up in a detention center in Tacoma, Washington 12 hours later, where is our due process? If community members literally disappear from buses and aren’t heard from for weeks or months, how can we say we live in a democracy?

There will be a lot of promises made this campaign season. And while there is much energy and hope around the possibilities for change this election cycle, no single candidate is promising to overturn the wrongs that have moved our country further from democracy and closer to authoritarianism.

Turning the tide on authoritarianism will take more than a new President in the White House. It will take the rising of many voices demanding that our country adhere to the values and promises of the Bill of Rights. It will require all of us to look beyond campaign promises and ask truly tough questions not just of our candidates but of ourselves: What will our legacy be? Will we leave our children with a country further entrenched in consolidated executive power, lack of due process, and unending war or can we turn this tide and renew our democracy?

WHAT IS THE ACTIVITY? The Freedom Voters Campaign is designed to bring this conversation to the doorsteps, the public gatherings, and the minds of our community members. Asking our neighbors, “What do you think about authoritarianism is this country? How do you think our democracy is doing?” is daunting. But asking our neighbors to talk through a short survey on some of the issues coming up this election cycle is manageable and actually kind of fun. Asking them to take the Freedom Pledge and leaving them a Freedom Voters Guide with ideas on how to better use their vote before Election Day brings us one person closer to having the people power we need.

ROP has launched www.freedomvoters.com as an online home for these conversations. This month’s Kitchen Table Activism is for your group to review the Freedom Voters Campaign and decide how you might use this year to have deeper conversations in your community about the state of our democracy and how we bring the Bill of Rights to the forefront of this election and beyond.

STEPS TO COMPLETE THE ACTIVITY:

1. Gather your human dignity leadership together to discuss how your group will use this election year to get out the vote for democracy and expand your local network of human dignity activists.

2. Visit www.FreedomVoters.com and peruse the website that is a portal for this campaign. Download the Freedom Voter materials including:

3. Discuss how your group is going to bring this conversation to your community members. Use the attached Story Card as a guiding tool to decide who you will talk to, what tools you will use, and how your group will contribute to your congressional district’s collective Freedom Voters effort. Download the Story Card here in Word or PDF

4. Return this card to ROP by May 30^th and we’ll compile the collective story of how rural Oregon is bringing Constitutional Rights to the forefront of this campaign season.