Where Do We Go From Here? Personal Touch, The Fourth Leg of the New Media

Have you ever watched a story on the news knowing that important details were being left out? You are not alone. Lots of people heard that a soldier questioned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about a lack of armor for his humvee. Most people don't know that a reporter may have put him up to the question and that his unit had not yet been released to go into combat and that only a small remaining amount of vehicles needed "up-armored" and that those were completed the next day. The average American citizen does not yet get his news from the New Media. Many folks either still get their "facts" and news from the Old Liberal Media or simply depend on the pop culture to filter out what it considers the unimportant and tell them what is important. This latter group of people get their political worldviews from Oprah, their unions, the water cooler and David Letterman. Although nearly everybody has access to the internet, talk radio and cable news, not everybody is tuned in or pays much attention to it. How can those people reached? We have a solution. Its called leafleting. And it may become the most cost-effective activism in history.

During the 2004 elections, we found that people read these colorful flyers in their entirety and each one was designed to direct the readers to come here for more details where webpages with links sent the curious to primary resources. During the election year, thousands of these were passed out in Iowa and other parts of the country, especially Pennsylvania, Missouri, California and Colorado.

Our goal is to reach millions of households at least every other week or two with a flyer placed at their front door....See samples from the 2004 elections coverage page.

Grassboots - we, (our Townhall meetup group) is VERY interested. We are located in (& around) Indianapolis. We met last night for one of our Twonhall Meet-ups and decided the focus of our group was to educate each other on various government and political issues. Therefore, educating our friends, family and neighbors on those same issues. We are not trying to shove people into being conservative, we are trying to get people to think for themselves and research topics and issues to know the full extent of information. So, what do we do next?

A little anecdote that demonstrates the need for a fifth (?) leg: personal contact.

The FR Inauguration ball tickets were too expensive to justify to non-Freepers, but by adding several other events--a Heritage Foundation reception and tour, good inauguration tickets for each person, an NC Senators' reception and photo op, a Club for Growth reception, and finally, a private meeting with Pat Toomey-- we were able to make the FR ticket and hotel cost *well worth while* for some non-Freeper guests. :-)

We then had the task of escorting the two groups--we were split between green standing and yellow standing--everywhere and making sure they were safely and quickly through security each time. We also had to ensure that everyone was warm, appropriately dressed and not *too* exhausted with the help of our fifteen-passenger rental van. (Whenever anyone whined, we reminded them that President Bush had to keep up this pace for the entire week!)

It took a tremendous amount of preparation to pre-determine the best way to navigate the Security Zones and the Metro without walking our guests into the ground.

They had a wonderful time!!!

More importantly, however, we may well have succeeded in adding some new voices to the conservative cause--perhaps not as FReepers, but certainly as supporters of Heritage and/or Club for Growth or simply as voices for conservatism. The seven teenagers, too, have a much higher probability of becoming active CR's or even Freepers when they get to college. These families literally had no idea that they, themselves, could help preserve America in a more significant way.

= = = > We learned a valuable lesson this week: These two families, randomly picked by our children, demonstrated to us that the "ground" is fertile for "seeding". FR and church may provide *us* with a comfortable environment where we can discuss and debate issues with like-minded individuals; but we realize now that we still need to find ways to bring others who have the same values, but no knowledge that they can "make a difference", comfortably into the "conservative" fold. < = = =

Perhaps it does take something like the "tour" Huber and I devised: but perhaps there is a less intense way that may work equally as well. Clearly it takes more than launching them into FR as newbies or dropping them into a precinct meeting followed by a county convention. I believe it was the personal attention and the agenda that was devised to stimulate and benefit *them* that made the difference.

Furthermore, I suspect that these two families will need very little from us beyond this event, and will eventually go on to recruit more folks from their spheres of influence, to the "cause".

Perhaps, too, we must measure success, not by how many folks show up at the "American Sector" and FR events, but by how many people hear the message as they walk past the FR counter-protests.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.