The calendar -- a tool for building the progressive community

Story:
(I don't know whether this belongs in the "Framing Story" category, but I thought it might be of interest to people in the Rockridge Nation, and I couldn't see where else to put it. Do we need more categories for posting things? Also, you should set up something for previewing submissions and something for inserting html code.)

One activity that I'm involved with, and very excited about, is a local progressives calendar (with related cards, also discussed below). I'd encourage every city to develop one, if they don't have one already. I'll tell you a little about mine here. You can see it at [http://plus.calendars.net/midtnprogressive/], but I'll point out some of its significance. The calendar takes a few hours of labor per week; try to find someone in your local group who is comfortable with making web pages.

My own calendar is called the "Middle Tennessee Progressives Calendar," since I live in middle Tennessee (Nashville and nearby areas). I think that a calendar like this works well on a city-wide basis. People are willing to drive to meetings fairly often in their own city; they are less eager to drive further. (Of course, really huge cities might want to have one calendar for each region of the city.) I, and the one other person maintaining the calendar with me, try to keep listed on it all the progressive events -- meetings, rallies, etc. -- that we know about in our area.

The calendar really is intended to serve at least three purposes.

The most obvious purpose is to give progressives specific information about when and where to find various activities.

A second purpose is to give progressives more of a sense of community -- to make them more aware of each other, more aware of progressives outside their own little group, more aware of the fact that their own little issue is part of a bigger progressive picture. Many of them have not yet grasped the idea of wider cross-issue framing espoused by Lakoff, Waldman, et al., and I believe that idea is important for the eventual success of their individual issue efforts. And THE FEELING OF BEING PART OF A LARGER COMMUNITY is extremely valuable too. Thus, one of the statements at the top of the calendar page is "This calendar is intended to help progressives get together," and I mean that statement on more than one level.

A third purpose is recruitment -- i.e., to educate more people and bring them into the progressive community. Indeed, the very first sentences after the title on the page are: "What is a 'progressive'? It's someone who cares about others, who sees that we're all in this together, that we all depend on a shared infrastructure." Those descriptions are taken from Lakoff, Lerner, and Waldman. (I wonder if I should shorten it to just the second of those three clauses.)

(A technical note: I originally used [http://my.calendars.net/], which is free. I switched to [http://plus.calendars.net/], which costs a little money but runs a little faster. I like its simplicity but I'm still not entirely satisfied with its speed; I'm open to suggestions about other hosting services.)

To further promote the calendar, I have printed up "business cards" that I carry around in my wallet; each card shows Waldman's quote plus the name and URL of the calendar. If, in a conversation, someone is hearing about the calendar for the first time, I hand them a copy of the card. I also put a little pile of them at the literature table at any local progressive event that I attend. Some of my friends like this idea so much that they've taken a few of the cards too -- not just for their own use, but so that they can help distribute the cards.

By the way, the wallet card technique works for any web page that you're trying to promote, not just a calendar page. You can fit a lot more information onto a web page than onto a wallet card, so put your URL on a wallet card! And you don't have to order 1000 cards from some print shop. Buy 20 sheets of pre-perforated cards (10 cards per sheet) at any local office supply store, and then print them on your home inkjet printer. This arrangement has the advantage that you can experiment with different slightly designs for the card. Print a couple of sheets, distribute them, and then think about whether you want to change the wording slightly before you print your next batch.