Step 1: Contact the National Office at #646-851-6739 or email [email protected]
Hosting the National Tour in your area and contributing in this way matters a great deal and means that you are united around the unique mission of Refuse Fascism– uniting with all who have stood up and reaching out to everyone who hasn’t to take up the single unifying objective to drive the regime out, manifest the power of NO everywhere, meet every new outrage from the regime with greater and greater resistance, all working and aiming for the time when millions can be moved to stay in the streets night after night day after day demanding, and not stopping, until the trump-pence fascist regime is driven from power.
Step 2: Clear your schedule and run with the tour!
Hosting the tour does not and cannot just mean all of you helping us. It means your active participation is needed! This is a crucial part of the tour being a success and forming the beginnings of Refuse Fascism chapters in the areas where the tour stops. Run with the tour while it is in your area, to contribute to the work of spreading this message and to learn as much as you can from tour volunteers before they continue to their next stop. Follow the calendar online to see when it is coming to your area and contact the national office to register to join the tour for the rest of the first leg.
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This document is laying out a lot of ways you can host the tour in your area. Most people will likely not do all the things listed, but we are providing people with this list to help focus in on some of the key ways you can contribute to the needs of the Tour and towards it having maximum impact when it arrives in your area. All plans developed need to be shared with the National Office so we can share this with the tour and promote this on our website and through social media.
Call to Action
Read it! This Call is the glue to everything. It is what binds this movement together. It is a diagnoses of the situation we are in, and how to respond. Return to it frequently. Share it with everyone you know. Ask friends, family, co-workers or others you know if they’d be interested in helping in some way with the mission laid out in that Call. At every step, as you reach out to new people, share this with them first and discuss it – this is why their involvement is so important, and what it will help achieve. Let us know what kinds of responses you get or if you run into questions you need help answering.
Book a meeting/event space
Reach out to your local bookstore, coffee shop, progressive church, community center, LGBT center, or bar about hosting a speaking engagement/meeting/fundraiser. If you are a high school or college student, or a teacher or professor, can you book a space on your campus to host a speaking engagement/meeting/teach-in? Are you connected with an immigrants’ rights group, women’s rights/abortion rights group, environmental, LGBT, anti-police brutality, in your area?
Building for the Tour
Once you know the tour is coming to your area and plans have been made, start publicizing this everywhere!
Poster cafes and laundromats, telephone poles and campus bulletin boards, church bulletin boards, local coops, art spaces, and more.
Create a Facebook event page and invite all your friends and encourage them to do the same. Make sure to make it a public page so people can find it and add themselves. Ask other FB groups in your area to post and invite their lists – campus organizations, political activist groups, religious congregations, and others.
Reach out to local media outlets, campus media, local newspapers, radio stations, etc. to interview Refuse Fascism volunteers and/or to promote the Tour and the particular local events.
Outreach
Identify places that are good for broad public outreach and organizing. When the Tour comes through, it helps to know where are the busiest places to encounter people and set up displays. This can be a campus quad, the main street that gets foot traffic, a popular park. We’ll want to go out with you and reach out to new people. Are there any big events happening in your area? Concerts, book events, sports events, festivals or other public events that draw together crowds of people. These don’t just need to be political events – anywhere that will draw crowds of people are good places to go out with signs and flyers and interact broadly.
Housing
Obviously, the folks on the Tour need places to stay, but there’s more to it than this. Finding housing for the Tour is a great way of involving new people and organizations. Do you have a spare bedroom or couch, open basement, or even floor space? Do you know anyone else who does? What about community centers or progressive churches that would host people? It is preferable that as many people as possible stay together in one place. No one stays alone at anyone’s place. If you meet someone that says they can only house 1 person, that will not work, but see if there is any flexibility for more people to stay there as well, even if it is on the floor. Folks who offer housing need to let us know about any pets for those with allergies, as well as the parking situation, as we will have at least one large van. For anyone providing housing, do not share this via social media. This is for security reasons, for the safety of our volunteers as well as those housing them.
Fundraising
Raising money for the Tour expenses is a critical way to support this Tour and it’s a great way to get many more people involved. Donate to the Tour yourself and ask others you know to do the same. Local restaurants and cafes might want to host a dinner, or congregations may be willing to take an extra collection.
Organize fundraising projects like bake-sales and yard sales.