it would be amazing if all one had to do to set a strategic event in motion was, like dorothy, click one's heels 3x and there you have it - a Legislative Letter Writing Lobby Day...

ahhh - but it doesn't happen THAT way - it's a lot of planning, coaxing, evaluation, encouraging, and - oh yes - the necessary detail of work, work, work...

consider just yesterday, february 28th, the day before the 4th annual tcask march 1st write-a-thon...you see, tcask uses international death penalty abolition day as a statewide collective action tool and...

and our state office creates an organizer's toolkit, selects the politicians to target, generates the primary message in letter form, supports local organizers with advice and ideas, handles both media advisories and press releases - well i think you get the idea: we empower local volunteer leaders by supplying them with all the tools necessary to make it easy for them to organize a successful event...

consider some details from yesterday...

• check and make sure that all media advisories sent out monday went to the proper media contacts for each event
• send to all potential letter writers(~1200 tennesseans) an updated target list (including chairs and vice-chairs of the house and senate judiciary committees) with full addresses and the recommended letter text
• create customized letters addresses to the 7 primary targets (the 4 above plus, governor, lt. governor, and speaker of the house), customize the text as necessary (ask the governor to exercise party leadership rather than support bill #), and e-mail them as attachments to the local leaders of organized events, uh, adding additional letters for their specific district representative and senator as possible...
• write a press release for march 1st, customize it for each organized event assigning quotes to the local volunteer leader in each one and list them as the contact person, and e-mail or fax it to the media representatives in their specific communities (as was done with media advisories the day before)

then go buy a bottle of cheap merlot, catch the #10 bus, transfer to the #26 bus, stop off at kroger's to get your mother a gallon of milk, walk a mile more to home, eat some rice-aroni knock-off for dinner, and crash before you get the cork out of the bottle ...

wake up the next day and start all over again...

so when you read about a successful, strategic collective action remember what the details are behind its success...but check your ego at the door - it's just what organizers do...