Citizen advocacy is an art, a collection of skills that one does not learn in any school. Effective advocacy is a mix of the insight that experience brings and the creativity that the lack of experience inspires.
Click here to read more and download a copy of Beating Goliath
For two decades the Democracy Center has worked with thousands of citizen activists spread across five continents – health workers in South Africa, immigrants in California, children’s rights campaigners in the former USSR, water rights activists in Bolivia, and many others. Our purpose has always been to help each of these efforts be as strong as it can be. We have certainly learned as much as we have taught.
We have designed this new blog, ‘Getting Action’, as a virtual meeting place for our extended Democracy Center community. We’d like you to get to know and learn from one another. What you can expect to find here will vary a good deal, but will always strive to be interesting. That much we promise.
Sometimes we will post articles of our own, but much of the time we’ll be opening up this space to you, our friends and readers. We want to know more about your campaigns, your strategies, and what you are learning about the art of making real change happen. Next up, for example, we will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the protests against the Keystone XL oil pipeline from the Canadian tar sands, featuring an interview with Bill McKibben and contributions from other climate change activists.
We hope that you will join in these debates and discussions with your own views, in the comments section of the forum, and also send us your suggestions for topics and campaigns you’d like to see covered here. Write us any time at contact@democracyctr.org. We also invite you to make use of our library of free advocacy materials.
Meanwhile, to start things up please take a look at the following post for commentary from me on a current explosion of activism that has inspired the young people we work with deeply – Occupy Wall Street.
Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center
