OCCUPIERS: Add to the scope of your messaging by OCCUPYING COMMUTE ROUTES as well with miniprotests that are TOO SMALL for any legal justification for POLICE INTERVENTION. Miniprotesting's three-part messaging allows you to combine facts with the Socratic method to add the POWER to CONVINCE to your slogans.
If your Occupy event is ongoing, create a Miniprotesting Committee by vote within your nightly Assemblies, then send some of your numbers to miniprotests along EACH OUTBOUND COMMUTE ARTERY, a dozen to each location.
to the streets in this manner too.
and advance the slow process of making righties aware of
how blatantly their support has been used
Thank you, Democracy for America and Rebuild the Dream, for recognizing miniprotesting as an idea worthy of an American Dream Scholarship to the Take Back the American Dream Conference Oct. 3-5 in Washington, DC.
Welcome, those that have found out about miniprotesting through the TBAD conference. All your ideas, all your messages, can be crafted to fit the miniprotesting concept. Let us know the specifics of what you want to say curbside through the
the Miniprotesting Forum or via email from the About Us page.
Occupiers Support the Fair America Platform
Tax Fairness: Restore Fair Taxation of Millionaires
End Tax Free Offshore Loopholes for B of A, Exxon/Mobil
Job Fairness: Restore Unions, Eliminate Tax Breaks for Offshoring
Corner #2:
Occupiers Support the Fair America Platform
Fair Elections: Paper Ballots Hand Counted, Public Campaign Funding Only
Fair Representation: Overturn Citizen’s United, Curb Lobbying Excesses
Fair Business Practices: Restore Oversight Over Industry and Wall St.
Corner #3:
What’s Un-American About
Asking for a Fair America?
Those That Fight a Fair America
Are Pandering to Corporate Titans, Billionaires
You'll notice that there is much more text on these signs than the usual main signs, so you must choose a location and time of day that sees traffic moving at glacial pace.
Exposing the freshest GOP lies or hypocrisy
Let's support the thousands of 99%ers that are standing (and sleeping) all around the nation with this main sign inscription set:
Corner #1: We Are ALL the 99%, Victims of the GOP 1% Agenda
Corner #2: The 99% Want a Fair America. Banks and the GOP Think It's THEIR America
Corner #3: Deep Down You Know: GOP is Only Out For CEOs Not Average Joes
And we can make that happen when slogans like these are substantiated by the two main signs along a protest string that lead to them:
“Today’s GOP Extending Bush’s Main Goal: No CEO Left Behind”
“Today’s GOP: Putting America on the FAST TRACK to MEDIOCRITY”
“Walker and other GOP Activist Governors Will be FTRs: Final Term Republicans”
“GOP Only Out for CEOs Not Average Joes”
“GOP Only Cares for Millionaires”
“[representative]: Classic GOP Integrity Deficiency”
“GOP Policies Take From the Needy and Give to the Greedy”
“Shameless Hypocrisy = Failed Integrity Throughout GOP”
“Today’s GOP is NOT Conservative, They Are CORPservative”
“Take Away GOP Rhetoric on Guns, God, and Gays, And What HaveThey Done For You?”
“If GOP Loves America Why Do They Loathe Average Americans?”
“GOP-Controlled House Has Not Passed ONE Bill to Create Jobs”
“Would True Christians Dump the Golden Rule to Embrace ‘For Gold We Drool?’”
Miniprotesting in a nutshell:
The concept:
- A protest string of 12 people, split into three groups of four, position themselves on three consecutive street corners along a one-way street in the outbound commute
- In each group there is a main 30"x40" sign held at waist level by the central miniprotester. The other three miniprotesters hold traditional overhead signs
- The three main signs in this protest string of three groups make a running message. For example:
Corner #3: The Verdict: GOP Only Cares for Millionaires
- Unlike regular protests that look like an unruly mob at a glance, miniprotests focus attention to your messages
- With 120 people you can make ten distinct miniprotests all around town
Why the Occupy movements should consider adopting miniprotesting:
To add the power of miniprotesting to your occupation, propose this idea to the Occupy event’s on-site assembly (often happening several nights a week) and ask that a committee be formed on site to handle the logistics. When the Miniprotesting Committee meets, either volunteer to be its spokesperson or aid the person who is voted into that role.
You can then create your own miniprotesting main sign inscription sets based on the specifics your on-site committees bring up. Connect with the heads of those committees and start applying miniprotesting to their messaging goals. Then at each night's assembly you can announce the miniprotests for the following day.
The messages:
You can get a lot of information out there with three main signs. If you combine information, the Socratic method, and a catchy slogan, then you've got a wedge into Donny Dittohead's lockstep, pride-reinforced perspective. This is the kind of message Donny should see in miniprotests while waiting to get on a freeway onramp in his evening commute:
Corner #2: $11 Trillion of $14T Deficit Comes From Reagan, Bushes 1 & 2
Corner #3: Get Wise to the GOP's Fiscal Hypocrisy
For the nine participants not holding main signs within the protest string, their overhead signs can read things like "Bush Never Put Iraq War on the Budget" or "Bush's Private Contractors Got $30 for Each Soldier's Breakfast."
There is more than a decade's worth of GOP legislation, currently choking the middle class as intended, to choose from. There are hundreds of lies and mountains of traceable hypocrisy to expose. But tying them all into now is critical, and miniprotesting should continually beat the drum that GOP legislation gave corporations tax breaks for sending jobs overseas last decade and that is why almost 50,000 factories have closed since the Bush era began. If Donny Dittohead is exposed to more and more GOP atrocities every week, we can put the dots so close together he can't help but connect them. Occupy events don't have the capacity to do that.
The strategies:
So how do we best change Donny Dittohead's mind?
1) Expose all lies, misrepresentations, corporate bias, and policy ramifications immediately. While Donny is practicing his new talking points, show him just how wrong they are.
2) Show him how far today's CORPservatism is from the conservatism he grew up with.
3) Tear down his GOP idols using terms that he clings to. Portray lies as breaches of integrity, corporate bias in terms of lost job opportunities, and corrupt banking foreclosure practices in terms of fairness.
4) Do not insult or berate Donny. Attack the politicians and corporate allies only. Once Donny is comfortable with the truth, we'd like him to understand former Republicans will be more than welcome in the Democratic party. They'll get applauded for their wisdom, strength of character to recognize what is right for their families despite all the media
propaganda for GOP policies.
5) Despite #4, it is possible to show Donny that he has been duped without calling him stupid. Show him that the GOP thinks he's stupid, using his blind faith in them to stifle his future.
How to use miniprotesting locally:
What's great about miniprotesting is that anyone can put it together in an hour or two if they've got a dozen people, an idea of what to say, and a good place for your curbside activism to have maximum impact such as one-way surface streets leading to a bridge or freeway on-ramp. You can create a set of main sign inscriptions around local or state politics, what nonsense Rush Limbaugh just uttered, or specific national issues. If you have 60 people then you can have five miniprotests spread around town with each reaching a few hundred commuters in a two-hour period.
You can coordinate with other progressive groups in your town. If you have multiple protest strings hitting the streets, you can have each with different themes. If you have weekly miniprotests, then you can rotate the themes without paying for more messages being printed up.
How to use miniprotesting nationally:
This is where the stunning power of miniprotesting can be used to change public opinion, put pressure on corporate tax dodgers, and scare Republicans into adjusting their platforms if they want to have any hope for the survival of their political careers. Both statewide and national progressive organizations can employ miniprotesting strategies in these Direct Target actions:
1) React to and lobby for/against pending legislation by blanketing all inbound or outbound arteries to STATE CAPITOLS and ON THE STREETS LEADING TO THE US CAPITOL in DC. This is our chance to give Republicans the foreboding notion that their actions will make them FTRs: Final Term Republicans. We can refer to bills by name, politicians by name and lie, and provide a spine to wavering Democrats.
2) Protest strings can be dispatched to streets leading to town hall meetings, tea party rallies, and political fund raisers. Focused truth will diffuse every upcoming talking point.
3) Groups can hit the streets leading to home offices of media liars, defense contractors, offshore tax dodgers, and corporate masters of the GOP. They'll all know they can no longer operate in the shadows unchecked.
These Direct Target curbside actions are conceived to reach the very eyeballs of decision makers and those that directly support them.
For statewide or national General Target actions the goal is to connect with every Donny Dittohead possible.
Miniprotesting messaging can be used to:
1) Taint the GOP brand through exposing all the lies, hypocrisy, corporate ties, and destructive policies.
2) Shedding light on statewide or national candidates well before the 2012 elections. This can be organized nationally but executed locally.
3) Proving to Donny that what he thinks is conservatism is not reflected at all in the GOP CORPservative agenda.
What national use of miniprotesting will look like:
If major national progressive organizations utilized miniprotesting, this might be how the process would flow from idea to curbside action of hundreds of thousands just like you:
1) Topic ideas come in. They can be in-house or by suggestion. They can come from GOP lies, critical legislation, or topics heard on progressive media such as the Thom Hartmann radio show or Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC.
2) Quick fact checking. With the Randi Rhodes radio show she provides a "homework" section with links to her sources. With Glenn Beck or Rush this would require finding the facts that they are bending. The clearly made up stuff would be easiest.
3) Create several main sign inscription sets. Using previous themes such as "GOP = FFF: Freedom From Facts" could be employed.
4) Convert inscriptions to pdf files and send these out to ALL regional heads. Tweet the text content nationwide as well so all potential protesters know something is pending and what the theme is for their supporting signs that go with the main signs.
5) From this point the regional heads take control. They determine timing and locations and tweet that info and a request for confirmations.
6) The regional heads tally the confirmations, determine how many protest strings will be manned. They'll email in the pdf files sent from national or some of their own to FedEx Kinko's. They'll take off the main sign inscriptions from the last time, store them flat, and take the bare signs to Kinko's where they'll affix the new messages.
7) They drive the signs to the locations. Printing costs can be covered by each participant chipping in a dollar.
8) Perplexed Dittoheads see their world unravel.
National groups can take this a step further, by coordinating with other groups as to what days they'll be in what locations. MoveOn can take Tuesdays, the PCCC Thursdays, etc.
That's the world we need to create. The Great Republican Overreach of 2011 deserves to bring out the complete obliteration of the Republican Party as it stands now. Let's make that happen, and rejoice at every tangible step along the way.
