Bill of Rights Defense Campaign

BILL OF RIGHTS Defense Committee - Working with communities to uphold the Bill of RightsWe the People
Working with communities to uphold the Bill of Rights
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Community Resolutions Toolkit

This is the second page of a step-by-step sample process for organizing a community resolution in defense of the Bill of Rights. There are four pages in this process:

Public Forum and Community Education

1. Committees:

In preparation for the public forum, consider forming subcommittees.

Tools: List of possible subcommittees with descriptions of their responsibilities

2. City Government Contacts, Program Participation:

Contact and meet with sympathetic elected officials and the Police Chief about your group's concerns and plans. One-on-one dialogues with decisionmakers can be extremely advantageous to your efforts. Be sure to address their concerns as well as your own. Prepare packets of fact-based information for them. Ask one of the elected officials to sponsor a resolution. Involve these people in your forum. Invite city/town/county councilors and the Police Chief to participate in the forum as panelists.

Tools:

3. Other Program Participants:

The Program Committee can choose other participants to cover topics related to new laws and their impact on civil liberties, immigrants, and students.

Tools:

4. Spreading Effort to Nearby Towns:

Contact people in surrounding towns about your effort, and invite them to the forum. They might be inspired to organize in their towns.

5. Promoting the Forum:

To promote the forum, send a press release to media, put up posters, hold a news conference, and use your local activist network to spread the word. Send the release and poster to endorsers. You can also create a website. The BORDC is willing to post a link on this site to one created created by your community in order to further promote your efforts and to provide contact information for your group.

Tools:

6. Showing Community Support for a Resolution Through Petition Drive:

Write a petition, which you may introduce and circulate at the forum.

Tools: Printable petition

7. Distributing Educational Materials:

At the forum, place fact sheets, literature and articles, petitions, buttons for sale (see our catalogue of merchandise), and collection cans at tables.

Tools:

8. Postcard Campaign:

As part of your lobbying effort, consider a postcard campaign. At your forum, you can have a table with preprinted postcards to legislators that attendees can write their return address on and sign. If you can, provide the stamps.

Tools: Sample 2-sided postcard (Word)

9. Videotaping the Event:

Consider videotaping your forum. Your community access station will likely air it. If you decide to videotape the event, be sure to inform participants in advance and note in the program that "This event is being videotaped."

Tools: Example of a taped public rally in Lincoln, NE (MW)

10. Continuing to Educate and Gather Support:

After the forum, continue petitioning:

  • Table (with literature),
  • Write op-eds to your local newspaper,
  • Put petitions in stores and offices (including those of your endorsers),
  • Give committee members and forum attendees petitions to circulate, and
  • Place online petition and printable petition on our web site.

The process is useful not only for gaining signatures to demonstrate support for the resolution, but for educating people who are not aware of the USA PATRIOT Act and other antiterrorism that threatens civil liberties.

Consider showing a film or documentary about threats to civil liberties and/or holding a book signing by authors who support your cause.

Tools:

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