Step-by-Step Organizer Toolkit for the People's Campaign for the Constitution
- Step 1: Reach Out
- Step 2: Build a Coalition (see below)
- Step 3: Hold Representatives Accountable
- PCC Resources
Step 2: Build a Coalition
1. Raise the campaign's local profile
Generate publicity and connect the PCC with the local community.
Write letters to the editor and opinion editorials, distribute brochures, press releases, and fliers, and hold public events to emphasize the impact of “war on terror” policies on your community. Use our Human Rights Abuse Database to research stories of abuses that have occurred in your city, town, or state and use them to explain how national policies are already directly affecting community members. Use our resources, including fliers and the Human Rights Abuse Database, to help with these efforts.
Hold a public forum on the Constitution
Use the forum to build interest in your campaign, recruit new members, educate your community, and encourage local debate. Consider asking a prominent community leader to moderate the panel. When choosing panelists, try to involve people in your community who are knowledgeable on constitutional violations.
Make sure the poster and/or program for the event include the following:
- Title and brief description (e.g., “Our Constitution in Crisis: A public forum on [topic]”)
- Date, start time, end time, location
- Names and relevant information (e.g., titles, organizations) of moderator and panelists
- Name of the group or coalition that organized the forum and contact information
- Campaign endorsers and event sponsors (individuals and groups)
- Is the venue wheelchair accessible? Will sign language interpretation be provided?
Coordinate with BORDC to spread word of your local successes
When you let BORDC know about your local campaign, we will spread news of your effort to other local campaigns and relay these stories to the national media to help build the campaign.
2. Agree to demands to put to representatives and candidates
Candidates and representatives want the public to view them positively. When people make demands effectively, representatives have to work harder to gain positive public recognition. When enough people work together to make specific demands to a representative, they can transform the political debate in a community.
The best demands are specific actions for a public official to take. Unless your demands are specific, politicians can spin them to suggest that nothing additional is required of them. Even if your representative already agrees with much of what your coalition calls for and supports bills to protect civil liberties, you can still make demands. Ask your representative to strengthen his or her position or to take on more leadership.
Research your representative’s past voting record. During election season, you can use candidate questionnaires to put both incumbents and challengers on record about civil liberties and constitutional issues. We have provided a list of sample questions for candidates as well as a list of suggested demands to put to representatives.
3. Broaden and strengthen your coalition
In order to move your representative to action, you need to build your coalition’s power. Continue and increase your outreach efforts and seek new methods of gaining community support for your demands and community participation in your campaign. Ask more individuals and organizations to join the PCC.
In doing so, it is important to avoid taking shortcuts, such as having a coalition member who knows the representative convince him or her to meet with you or attend an event. It should be the power and influence of your community coalition that compels your representative to meet with you, not the encouragement of a friend or colleague, who may then act as the representative’s protector. Avoiding shortcuts requires gaining support for your demands and your strategy with coalition partners and being able to effectively demonstrate that support to your representative.
Step 3: Hold Representatives Accountable 
