You Participated In The Women's March...Now what?
"On the left side, we tend to be super intelligent, but uncoordinated," states Thiers. "We can be a bit like ping-pong balls flying around in an empty room. We need to work as a coordinated unit, and the RISE dashboard lets us do that."
This past weekend, scores of Americans took to the streets to voice their concerns about a new political paradigm under President Trump. Over 1.2 million women marched in Washington D.C. alone, while over a million participated in cities across the country. In total, there were 673 "sister marches" taking place around the world at the same time.
Which leads to the question: What is this surge of activists going to do next?
Enter RISE Movement, the newest wave in politics. (www.risemvmt.org). A group aimed at rebuilding the broken political system in America, RISE is strategically coordinating the ground efforts of the left side to win again.
"At RISE, we've created a series of quarterly reports to explain how we lost, and what we can do to win again," states RISE co-founder Genevieve Thiers. The first RISE report launches today at www.riseparty.org/quarterly_report. The report is paired to a high-level dashboard to coordinate all the armies and individuals on the ground. "There's no reason that this information should be in some DNC corner office somewhere," states Thiers. "Everyone's a general." The report is 32 pages, and explains how the left side lost, and an approach that can help it win again in 2020.
The RISE dashboard, referenced in the report, is in beta, but a template can be seen at www.riseparty.org/dashboard. The interactive version is in progress. The dashboard is powered by RISE and a number of other tech-savvy entities including flippable, ballot-ready, popvox and re:act. It coordinates over six critical pieces of how to win back the White House in 2020—everything from winning open seats to fighting bills to protesting executive actions and appointments to flipping Republican-held states to getting non-voters back to the polls and non-registered voters registered. It also contains a countdown to the 2020 elections, daily action items, a 30-day forecast, and a 4-year elections calendar.
Activists can zoom into details or stay high-level and just stick to daily activities...it's their choice.
RISE is approaching left-leaning groups now about how to best use the dashboard to coordinate their armies, and the RISE report also includes a breakout of progressive groups for readers by function, so activists can easily figure out how to manage their time. As events unfold in politics, the report will "react" in real time, designing new plans to win based on how current factors are playing out.
RISE members include former OFA-ers, Hillary team members, workers from Google, Microsoft, Apple, entrepreneurs, activists, artists, designers, developers, writers, immigrants, economists and more. "We're sort of like a tech startup jammed into a political action group," states co-founder Ellie Bahrmasel.
The group is determined not only to resist the Trump agenda, but to change politics as well. They are targeting four critical races in 2017—NC, NJ, VA and LA municipals—and building on-the-ground armies to head door to door and ask people who they want to see running, and what they want solved.
"We're going back to basics," states Bahrmasel. "People need to be a part of the process again."
The goal of the RISE field organization is to crowdsource the right candidate and solution set for an area, then galvanize local efforts around both in combination. They theorize that if people are part of making something, they will care about promoting it.
So...if you have some free time post the march, consider letting your voice RISE.