The response has been overwhelming, but now we have to settle down to the nitty gritty of work. I have four sets of details for you, based on where you live and what you wrote me. St Louis folks can roughly be split into St Charles and South County locations. There seems enough of both to throw two parties initially for introductions, then move to regular meetings if someone can offer their home. The initial meetings will be in a public location with Wifi - a Panera, a Kaldi's - a Buffalo Wild Wings. We'll introduce ourselves and talk about what we're going to do, and see who wants to pitch in. I'll go ahead and say we'll have one document party on November 1st in St Charles, and another on November 8th in Sunset Hills.
In addition to the ACORN Carnahan documents, we have fundraising reports, the MAPS accountability portal, and of course Google and Bing to look up information and build a list of contacts.
The first meetings are public because I don't want to bring people we don't know into the private homes of people, and after the first meeting, invitations can only be extended by those who are invited from a previous party. I want everyone to help, but I also want to protect the privacy of those who are stepping up.
These will be planning sessions, and introductions. Once we get the basics down, I'll be aggregating our results and publishing them for those of you outside of St Louis and across the country who wanted to get involved in your own communities.
Here are some basics.
1) Volunteer work means you take what you can get, and you thank everyone involved. This is about good government, not ego, and not self-promotion.
2) Privacy is important and should be respected. One of the things we'll be teaching is email security, as some people like to forward and replay to all on emails without thinking about what's on them.
3) Figuring out who to get information to is important. Here in Missouri, we have a number of blogs to publish information, but we also have spoken with and made contact with reporters and every publication from the Beacon to the Post-Dispatch. While we don't expect them to print everything, solidly sourced stories do get noticed. The question of what is solidly sourced is not the same to everyone, and you need to be prepared to publish your own data, but corruption is always a story.
4) Form a small advisory board of 3 or 5 people to determine what you publish. Be smart about what you find, and report only the facts. Having an odd numbers give you tiebreakers in case of controversial material.
5) Learn to work remote volunteers into your parties. Some people only have time to work late at night or from home. Make it easy for them to contribute by setting up contacts and sharing information.
6) Take advantage of free sites like Scribd, Blogger, YouTube, and even Slideshare to share information back and forth.
7) Much of the work of a document party is understanding how things work. You're not going to be an ace reporter with multiple "stories" that go national - mostly you're just publishing links and stories about politicians and donations and local events that serve as background material. Our goal is not to become the next DrudgeReport, it's to let local politicians know that a group of citizens is watching them, so that they don't think they can get away with unethical behavior. The best result is less corruption caused by politicians changing their behavior.
8) Make if fun and make friends. This is about fellowship - and if it's fun, you'll get more volunteers and more return volunteers. I'd go so far as to say you should disinvite bad apples, even the well-meaning ones. They can start their own document parties. My goal, and hopefully yours, is to train Americans on how to help each watch government at all levels. Anything that prevents that, from discord to ego, has to be jettisoned. Life's too short, and if you're asking people to take time from their families and businesses, you have to make it worthwhile.
9) Don't affiliate with any groups. The St Louis Tea Party has given its blessing on this endeavor, but document parties are not part of the St Louis Tea Party. We're not part of the GOP, or the Democrats, or 527's, or any other group. We're just average citizens looking to be watchdogs. Don't make an affiliation and ruin the objective nature of your group.
10) Focus on the information, not the people. Unlike other social endeavors, it's a bad decision to take video, pictures, or really even to talk about what you find and who is there. These are small, close-knit groups who share information and resources to spread the burden. When you start announcing who is at the event, or publicly listing locations, you're introducing a public lens that will scare off many potential volunteers. One of the strategies of the left is to make the personal political. If you become effective in your research, those who are affected will attempt to personalize the information. They want to destroy the messenger because they fear the message, and one of your greatest strengths is anonymity. Keep blogposts, twitter feeds, emails, and even casual chatter to yourself, and focus on what you find. The important information is the research, not the researchers.
More will come, and I'll even try eventually to put together a how-to list. Some people have suggested training videos and webinars, but let's get our feet wet first. More to come, and thank you for your emails. I'll be responding soon, with dates, times and locations for the St Charles and South County locations.
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