Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government Back - part 10

Chapter 5 The Art of Practical Politics (continued): Meetings of political clubs and public speeches

Set the date of the first public meeting of the newborn political club at least two or three weeks later than the just held organizational meeting. This will give you time to prepare the documents adopted at the meeting, send out invitations to the next meeting by mail, ring the invitees, and if your club can afford, print and distribute leaflets. However, all of the above should be dealt with only after you find and rent a room to hold a meeting. Look for a small room. Firstly, it is cheaper to rent it, and secondly, and more importantly, it is much better to completely fill a small room, even if all those gathered will have to stand than to lonely call out in the emptiness of an overly large hall. I don’t know anything more discouraging than a meeting in which half the seats are empty. Twenty people in a small room will hold a magnificent meeting, preparing a brilliant election campaign, while hundreds of people sitting in a five hundred room can fall victim to infectious melancholy.

Come to the meeting place in advance in order to have time to fold and remove most of the chairs standing there. Do not reach them until they are needed. Coming to political events always sit on the very back rows of vacant places (I don’t know why, but I myself do so). This habit makes your half-filled room an even more dismal sight. So if the room is too large, leave a minimum of chairs in it, and fill its far part with tables with refreshments, questionnaires, and agitation.

One more note about the chairs: in your local funeral home there are surely more comfortable, and not as creaky chairs as standing in the hall. The bureau owner, for the sake of a good cause, can usually be persuaded to donate them for the duration of the meeting - even if he himself votes for another party. Explain that the chairs will be needed only after the end of the working day, and will be returned on the same evening, or in the morning - before the start of the working day and at all appointed funerals. A few dozen stacked chairs fit into the trunk of an ordinary car. And when you have chairs, you can hold meetings in an unequipped hall, for example, in the store of a member of your political club. In this case, place the chairs between the counters.
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In many states, public events are allowed to be held on school premises, and I have successfully used this. Although I do not recommend to follow my example, because, most likely, you will have to choose between an assembly hall that is too large for your purposes and a classroom where adults feel very stupid sitting in pairs at small desks. In school buildings, it is usually forbidden to smoke, and most likely you will need to vacate the premises until 10 pm. In addition, state law often prohibits collection of donations in school premises, and it is necessary that the cost of maintaining a political club is evenly distributed among all its members. But, despite all these shortcomings, many successful meetings were held on the school premises that brought decent results. So, based on local laws and conditions, decide for yourself how comfortable the school premises are for your meetings.

More suitable meeting places are the Masonic lodges and the premises of the small branches of the American Legion - the organization of war veterans. And if you look carefully, you will find many small halls above the shops, or on the backs of restaurants, the rental cost of these halls is surprisingly small - from $ 3 to $ 10 per evening, along with the cost of electricity and heating, or even less if you rent them on an ongoing basis. But before you rent a room for $ 10, please note that rent should cost from 10 to 15 cents per evening for each person present. Think about how large the number of visitors will be, and how generous they will be when raising funds to cover club expenses - the generosity of the contributors mainly depends on the average welfare of the voters in your district. The reimbursement of the club’s costs is likely to be the only financial problem you face. What can be said about the organizational issues of club management, which will be many.

Advertising the first public meeting of the political club

Do not think that those who attended the first organizational meeting of the club will come themselves, bring friends, and provide you with a sufficient number of visitors at a public meeting. Initially, all of them will burn with enthusiasm, pour promises, and some enthusiastic blockhead will tell you that if each of those present brings ten friends to the meeting, then a whole hundred people will gather (or even two hundred). For the repetition of this beaten stupidity, it would be quite worthwhile to shoot him on the spot, but do not do it.
It is better to agree with him diplomatically, and say that this is exactly what you need, but at the same time, remember that the question of attendance at the first public meeting should be decided by you. Some of those present will indeed bring friends with them, but the aforementioned brainless optimist will most likely not even appear at a public meeting.

So how do you bring a crowd of visitors to a public meeting? This problem is the cause of the early gray hair of many amateur politicians. The most important thing you have already learned - do not let the hall where you are meeting look half-empty. The next important point is how you will attract the public. Contact central party organizations to provide you with a good speaker with a well-known name who will attract the public to your meeting. Just do not look for it through the party card index of speakers: those speakers that are listed there, in terms of eloquence, can be compared with a wooden log. Go immediately to the secretary of the party organization, and insist that he find you a good and famous speaker. Explain to him how useful it is for the party to have its own political club in your area. And if they do not give you what you ask, threaten to stop working at the club at all. Beat your fist in the chest, sob, in general, do what you want, but get a good speaker, even if you have to write it out of the capital itself.

Take care of the entertainment part of the meeting. For example, tap dance performers are quite suitable for you, even an amateur level. You probably will find an orphanage in your area, whose head will be only too happy to arrange a performance of their charges. Just do not let him occupy his concert for more than fifteen minutes, and let all this time be occupied by dancing. Reject all offers to come out with melodeclamation, excerpts from the plays, and singing. Never give pop music performances at your meetings unless it is Paul Robinson, Frank Sinatra, or Bing Crosby. But for you it will be worth its weight in gold a man who is decently playing the piano, and who is able to sing known, beloved songs to the accompaniment of such an accompaniment. Surely, in your neighborhood there will be a supporter of your party with such skills.

So, you have prepared a program for your first public meeting. How now to drag him walking public? If you know the publisher of a local or city newspaper in your party (and, at the same time, its editor and owner in one person), you should definitely get it for your organizational meeting and elect the chairman of the advertising and public relations committee. Just do not appoint him a press secretary of the club: for this position, elect someone who will actually do this kind of work - when you find the right candidate. The editor of the local newspaper will not do this. But on the other hand, in his newspaper you will get free advertising space, he will publish reports from your meetings, and maybe he will print your leaflets. Find volunteers who will distribute flyers, or do it yourself, taking two or three teenagers to help you, to replace each other every one or two hours.

In chapter 9 I will describe more advanced ways of advertising political events, but the principles are the same everywhere. The daily newspaper will print a note about your meeting, but it will contain only dry information. A very good way of advertising is putting up ads on telephone booths, however, it is prohibited in many cities. Stickers on car bumpers are also good (for more details, see chapter 9). However, the best way to ensure public attendance is to send invitations by mail, backed up by a phone call on the day of the meeting. This will require some (small) expenses, and if you cannot pay for them yourself, then at an organizational meeting you will need to raise funds to cover these costs. The rent of the hall may wait: it will be covered by the fundraising at your first public meeting.

If your meeting is held at home by a member of the club, then collecting money from those present will not look very good. In this case, it is better to privately turn to the two or three most promising from the point of view of donations to the participants of the meeting, let them fold. You don’t need a lot of money: a hundred postcards cost just a dollar, and the text of the invitations can be printed on them by the publisher of a local newspaper that you have attracted. Or rent a mimeograph and print invitations on it.
Women attending the meeting can send out invitations and call the invitees on the day of the public meeting. In addition, you will get a chance, like Robinson, to find your Friday - a woman, as much as you yourself are passionate about working at a political club, and ready to take on the lion’s share of routine office work, if you tell her what to do. When you find such a heroine, you will be surprised how your party still lived without such an employee.

You will also need to compile a list of addresses for sending invitations. Some of the addresses for the list will be collected by you, some - by others present. In addition, you can get a list of addresses of local voters who voted for your party in your party organization, but it will contain many erroneous and outdated addresses. In general, you can use any list of addresses you have or one of the participants of the organizing meeting for distribution, which are customers of a trading company, members of the country club, members of the church community, provided that, having checked the list of voters, you can thin the list by leaving only supporters of your party. Without such thinning in any case, do not use such a list for sending invitations - this is wasting your resources and unnecessarily annoying those of the recipients who are not the voters of your party.

If, after you have tried all the methods described above, you still do not have a decent mailing list, you can eventually use the list of registered voters in your district, although getting it from the election commission is quite expensive, and for sending this list is not very effective: you will have to modify it, deleting outdated information.

Your first meeting can be ended after you have allocated temporary positions on the board, discuss the plan for your first public meeting, and consider all the offers of help in preparing for it. Now close the meeting, order to serve food, and stir up the sent representative of the party headquarters, so that he will start up in memories of interesting cases of political activity, and let the others present discuss political gossip. Treats usually include coffee and muffins, or other similar simple dishes. In general, from the very beginning of the club’s activities, enter into the simplicity of the usual treats and the allocation of expenditures on them to the club’s treasury account, otherwise women will begin to compete and refine in organizing the treats, and your political club will become a culinary circle. At political events, a buffet table is only a reason for communication, and not a full meal.

Do not start drinking coffee yourself until you are sure that no one is surrounded. Brew in a teapot half a dozen tea bags - for those who do not drink coffee. As for sweets for tea and coffee, the easiest and most suitable choice is donuts, although the product is perishable. If you do not know how many people will come, buy a few boxes of unleavened biscuits, a few packs of sliced ​​cream cheese, and two hundred grams of regular cheese - this should be enough. Keep in mind also that, most likely, some donuts will remain, and they will have to throw out. (Of course, at the current scale of your meetings, you will not lose much money on this, but in the future, when you expand, taking into account this moment will allow you to avoid more significant losses. And economical spending of money is one of the main secrets of success in amateur politics).

You may wonder why I dwell in such detail on how to save money on politics. Perhaps you yourself are not short of money, or maybe even a millionaire. But the overwhelming majority of our citizens are not: the average annual income per capita in our country is less than a thousand dollars, and often even less. In addition, elections are won by a majority of votes, not dollars, although, of course, some expenses are needed for engaging in politics. In amateur policy for reimbursement of sufficiently small amounts collected from the participants themselves. But as everyday expenses grow, it is difficult to collect even such small amounts. So, develop the ability to get the maximum political results from every cent spent on politics. Therefore, even if you are rich, do not throw away unused tea bags, but save until the next meeting!

A generous waste of money you do not defeat professional politicians, because in this case, you play on their field. For every dollar you spend, they will respond with their own, if not two or three. Your weapons should be honesty and enthusiasm. You will come to the aid of the gratifying fact that the overwhelming majority of the elections in America cannot be won by bribing. In any community, there is always a non-sales majority of voters, which you, together with other volunteers, can gather and rally together, so that they knock the spirit out of any political mafia, no matter how well endowed with financial resources. You, saving money and throwing off with fellow volunteers in very small amounts, will cover all your expenses.

Part 1, where there are links to all other parts