Setting up a local group

Setting up a local peace and democracy group

Lessons shared from the set-up of North Shore Against War /
North Shore Peace and Democracy, and other groups represented at
a workshop at a Peace Conference in Sydney in March 2003.

Groups we are aware of started in many different ways. Examples: in Tamworth, half-a-dozen people at the local peace march in February 2003 shared phone numbers and began to meet; in Marrickville, posters on walls invited people to an inaugural meeting; for ourselves, one of us placed a small ad in the Mosman Daily classifieds inviting people who were interested in peace to phone - the following Tuesday, 6 of those who replied met round a table and agreed to set up a stall at the next local market (for the rest of the story, see the minutes of the meetings - by the end of market day we had more than a hundred members.

It clearly isn't going to be so easy to get interest now as it was in the hectic days running up to the war itself. However, it is clear from the reactions of people to ongoing events such as our forums (fora?) that there are still a lot of people out there who haven't yet given up on peace and democracy. If you can use any means to get together 5 or 6 of you that think it's worth some effort, then you have the nucleus of a group - and can move on to the next stage ...

The next stage is to find as many as possible of the people in the local area who think this way too! There are a whole lot of ways of doing this: as already mentioned, we got most of our original supporters list (around 90 of whom are still with us eighteen months later) by leafletting and collecting names at the local markets on Saturday mornings. Ads in local papers can be expensive, but there are usually local noticeboards etc where a short description of aims of the group and contact numbers can be left.

Once you have a core group together, probably the best way to attract others is to hold some events that get people together: the forums we organised each attracted many new members to our list, but earlier on we held picnics, trivia nights, and so on, where we could get messages out to people in a less preachy way - and also in many cases get some funding together for the group.

Anyone who has been involved in running a group like this will tell you that, however many people you can sign up, there will be a core group of 6-10 people who do all the work, and once you've got the makings of the core group together, you can get things going.

Keeping that core group together and working is the hard part. If you are anything like the North Shore group, there will be a lot of different views within the team, and these have to be accommodated and worked through if people aren't going to drop out.

We have found it important to run the group on the basis of a general attitude of "yes and" rather than "yes but" - by which we mean that we try not to waste too much time debating the relative merits of ideas that people bring to the group, but rather to try and move forward on as many ideas as possible at once: if the idea has more than one supporter, then there are enough people to get the idea going, maybe in a sub-group, the only exception being where a substantial number are actively opposed to the idea (not just of the opinion that there are better things to do - they can be getting on with those "better things" at the same time).

As part of that spirit, it is important t hat everyone feels that their opinions are being valued and listened too - it doesn't take many instances of negative responses before people wonder why they should bother to come again.

The other good thing about taking everyone's ideas on board is that it doesn't leave any space for "we should have" - or, worse, "what you should have done is ...". "We can", "I can" and "well, we tried" are all more positive.

Another important aspect is dealing with factions from political parties. We have active people from Labor, Greens, Democrats and even some Liberals: many other local groups have significant Socialist Alliance groups within them. It has been our view that we need to stay free of political affiliations and party political positioning: if we had become wedded to any one party position we would have risked losing many hard-working members from the other parties. If people want to push one party's agenda, they can do that through the party organisation, but there is plenty of common ground on issues of democracy and peace that can be worked through together in an organisation set up for the purpose. Consensus-building takes time - sometimes a lot of time - but it is much more productive than divisions, arguments or recriminations.

Most of the things we want to do take money to get going - even though sometimes you can get some of that money back later. Each forum that we ran cost between one and two thousand dollars to put on, and most of that money had to be spent in advance, even though donations at the door eventually covered most of the costs. So we needed to raise money in advance: even though some group members have been incredibly generous in advancing or donating funds for particular costs, it is a mistake to be asking the same people who do all the work to also put their hands in their pockets all the time. We were lucky to have raised a substantial amount of seed money in our first few forays into Mosman and North Sydney markets, giving purple ribbons for peace for donations, plus we raised significant sums selling t-shirts before the big rally on Feb 16th 2003. By the time the war was under way, all of that money had been spent.

Simple things raised enough to get us started again: a trivia night, a group outing to a show where the individuals bought tickets at full price and the group took the group discount. Advance sales of tickets for the forum brought in the rest of what we needed before the night (see our Accounts for details of what came in and went out for each phase of our existence). As with the rest of our operations, this is a "yes and" thing - we simply followed up just about every fund-raising idea anyone had - some worked, some didn't, but saying to each idea: "great idea - can you see about organising that?" worked better than wasting too much time on debating the pros and cons of each. Some of the best ideas didn't work, some of what looked unpromising reaped dividends.

Getting people to your events is what makes them worthwhile. The most difficult thing is letting enough people know that it is on. We have found that you have to try as many avenues of publicity as you can find, and pursue them all.

The only one that realy doesn't seem worthwhile is door-to-door delivery of leaflets - for one of our picnics we got our members to deliver 10,000 (yes, really) leaflets to just about every door in Mosman and Cremorne - and less than 100 people turned up,almost all of whom we knew before the leafletting.

E-mail everyone you know, and ask them to pass it on, including any relevant lists you may be attached too (eg, both the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition - nswpeace.com, and the Stop the War Coalition). Local community radio is also welcoming to interesting local events and news, both before and after the event. It helps if you can provide someone articulate to talk about the event on the 'phone or going to the studio during the day Also contact websites like Active Sydney, and campaigning press (eg Green Left Weekly).

Both local and national papers should be contacted if you have anyone coming who may be of interest outside the area. With local papers, we have found that it is well worth placing a reasonable size ad in the paper as well: it is just one of those facts of life that you have a much better chance of getting good editorial coverage in a local paper if you are paying for an ad as well. We paid for three column-inches of ad in the relevant local papers for each of our forums, and also got many multiples of that in editorial coverage. It is a good idea to have some contact with local paper editors well in advance, so that you can sound out angles and what his or her position might be on what you want to discuss (and what makes it newsworthy for them).

We have also contacted radio and TV journalists in the past, and had reasonable responses from the ABC radio national, but not many others. For some unknown reason, we also had TV coverage on a global Chinese-language satellite station for the second forum.

Street leafletting around the chosen venue is something we have also tried: it's more effective than door-to-door, mainly because at least you don't waste leaflets on people who are obviously disinterested, but the jury is still out on how effective it is. We also put up posters in shopping centres and ferry stops, etc.

Get names and contact details, particularly e-mail addresses, from everyone who comes to an event (and if possible from any other interested people you meet in markets or wherever - then you have a good starting list of people to inform abour the next one!