We have the courage to do the hard things

While making activism easy for others

Dear Grassroots Leaders,

It was 2017 and I was trying to recruit a gardener to political activism. She turned me down, citing her new passion, vermiculture, as the reason for her lack of time to get involved. I was dumbfounded. My friend was choosing to breed worms in her backyard instead of joining the fight to deworm the White House.

While I tried not to react to her refusal, she must have realized how incongruous her response seemed. About a year later, she confessed: “Susan, I am so grateful that you are organizing to take back the White House, but I just can’t do what you do.”

It was at that point that I realized that many people would rather take on a low-stakes problem, like composting, than a high-stakes one, like saving our democracy. The prospect of taking on a big problem like defeating MAGA can be overwhelming.

Effective grassroots leaders help volunteers find a pathway to action on the issues they care about. As grassroots strategy guru Marshall Ganz put it: “Leadership is taking responsibility for others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.”

By launching Hopium Chronicles earlier this year, Simon Rosenberg committed using his powerful voice to help others find hope and community in the work of defending our democracy. Our mission at the Grassroots Leaders Bulletin is to be the voice of volunteers who organize so that others may take action to build a government aligned with our values and heal our democracy. We plan to amplify your voice by sharing your knowledge, reporting out on your projects, and helping you build connections to other leaders.

This collaboration project is not starting from scratch. In April, three grassroots groups conducted a survey on grassroots leaders’ experience working with the Democratic Party and published 69-page survey report. (Micah Sifrey of The Connector summarized the report in his post, More on the Poverty of Democratic Party Organizing.) Our group has now expanded to include some of the survey participants, and we’ve formed subgroups to tackle specific problems that surfaced in the report. We’re also working on building the infrastructure for collaboration, such as monthly meetings, a directory of grassroots groups, and this bulletin. We look forward to connecting with you.

With hope for our power together,

Susan Labandibar