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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State Resolutions Toolkit

Build a Coalition

  1. Find the contact information for various Bill of Rights Defense groups in your state. If you can organize a state meeting, do it! If your state is too sprawling for people to meet in a central location, organize a conference call. (Insert INFORMATION FOR ORGANIZING CONFERENCE CALLS)

  2. Cultivate likely suspects - who are our natural allies, and how can we find them?

  • Local peace and justice groups
  • Counter-military recruitment groups
  • Universalist Unitarians
  • Quakers (Friends)
  • Other religious groups or coalitions of religious groups (Ecumenical Ministries etc.)
  • ACLU chapter
  • University professors (law school, political science, sociology, history) - maybe they'll let you speak to their classes, and you can find new recruits there
  • Military Tax Resisters
  • National Lawyers Guild
  • Veterans for Peace
  • Environmental groups
  • Booksellers
  • Librarians and Library Associations
  • Civic groups - League of Women Voters
  • Political groups - Libertarians, Green Party, Democrats, Socialists, Communists -- Sometimes you can get individual Republicans to be supportive, but you will likely not be successful in cultivating a good relationship with the institutional party itself. (A young Republican worked in my office, and he was willing to sign our petition. I asked him then to get an endorsement from the Young Republicans. He was enthusiastic, but later returned saying the Young Republicans were not allowed to support anything that President Bush opposes.)

  1. Decide whether the coalition has the energy to keep up a website, and start a bank account, or whether each local group should continue those activities separately. It's a lot of work to keep a website current. And if you truly don't have someone who's willing to devote the energy, then you're better off with local group websites broadcasting statewide news themselves.

  2. Using email and phone, contact likely supportive groups to begin to get endorsements. A local member of the League of Women Voters can learn how to contact the state League for an endorsement. A local member of a Unitarian congregation can learn if there is a statewide Unitarian body for an endorsement. The ACLU is a good contact for endorsement and support in the legislature.

  3. Make sure there is a core group vetting all information from citizen lobbyists who have talked to their legislators, and making modifications in the plan. There may be times when this group needs to:

  • make modifications in the resolution
  • rouse the email and phone lists for calls to the legislature or to a specific legislator