So, umm… I am not sure that IS the main focus of our strategy discussion. Strategy is about achieving goals. Our goals are to change policy and ultimately politics in Australia. Engaging members is important, and part of a good strategy going forward, but it is not what we are trying to do here.
What we are trying to do is be an organisation that people want to join, that people want to contribute to (including people who are already members) and want to vote for. We want everyone in Australia to think of us when they think of digital and civil rights, we want everyone to think that we have the solutions for the future.
Re-engaging members is a means to that end, important work to do because we need more people putting in more hours so we can do more. It will be a part of the strategy going forward, but not the strategy itself.
We need to be focused outward a lot more. We need to do things to challenge attacks on human rights, on civil liberties, on injustices too. Having good policy is worthless if no-one bothers to look at it and if no-one bothers to try to make it a reality. (IMO the party focuses way too much on policy and not enough on campaigning, but it’s what people want to work on.)
Doing stuff needs to be more than having a nice press release(PR), we haven’t got media from a PR for months, journalists are not interested unless we are doing something interesting to report, our opinions are not enough.
Local Crews and Meetups stuff is all good. Will try and get the state branch stuff sorted out before the strategy meeting.
The Greens are close to us politically and we should work with them where we can. They do a lot of actual activism that we can collaborate on with them. NSW is probably the worst state to do this due to the factional fights within the Greens at the moment, but there is fertile ground in other states, where the party is likely to be a lot more reasonable. It is still possible in NSW, just harder because of their radicalism.
The Science Party has the most in common in terms of approach, principles and outlook. They too are IMO better targets for collaboration than any of the other parties listed, with the possible exception of Reason.
The most important thing to remember with collaboration is that any effort we put in must result if benefit for us. I think some previous proposals for alliances and collaborations have no benefit for us that I can fathom. I don’t want to spend energy promoting another party, I am here because I want us to succeed.
Activism
I’m going to try and tie together bits of the Marketing and Alliances topic here. (This idea popped into my head as I was thinking about the post, it isn’t fully formed or completely thought through yet).
Back at the first ever Congress we planned on having local crews as the geographically founded sections of the party and (if I recall correctly, I couldn’t find the documentation, even on the wayback machine) Squadrons for campaigning around specific issues.
The idea of Squadrons is based on swarm principles, where interested members come together to campaign on a specific issue regardless of geography. We could resurrect this idea to get energy focused on campaigning for change.
Much like the idea for state branch formation I proposed last week, it would consist of 1-2 ‘Officers’ and n volunteers who want to contribute. These Squadrons would organise the parties’ campaign on the issue, help make advertising materials, organise actions, liaise with other parties to make shit happen etc.
We can pull off smaller actions by ourselves, but with the help of other organisations we could organise much bigger actions with much more potential to raise our profile apply more pressure to the government over the source of our ire. Collaboration with other organisations around clear goals are worthwhile collaborations.
The Squadrons would need at a minimum an Organiser to call and Chair meetings and coordinate with the NC, then an optional Bureaucrat for documentation (we could give them Piratical names, like Captain and First Mate if people like).