Organize an Action

Your legislators are home in their local offices in November and December, which gives you an opportunity to meet with them or get their attention. Here are criteria for organizing a successful action, and a few ideas to get you started. If you’re ready to get organizing, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll guide you through the process.

Criteria for a Good Action:

• Your action is focused on a legislator, e.g. one of your Senators.
• It is fun, creative and unexpected.
• It calls for the legislator to act, and “puts power” behind our policy goals – by presenting petitions, letters or large numbers of people; or by getting media coverage for the issue.
• It increases the size of our network, in the form of petition signatures or new volunteers for your chapter.

Ideas for Actions:

Invite your legislator to lunch. This could be a media event at a school, or a meeting at the legislator’s office where kids bring their school lunch with them. In either case, you should work in collaboration with the school, so as not to misrepresent them. Some good “hooks” could be: delivering petition signatures on a tray; having kids “dare” the legislator to eat school lunch; showing what school lunch should be or theatrically showing the effects of eating unhealthy food everyday (don’t be afraid to make a statement, so long as you do it with integrity: a lunch tray full of diabetes medication is very memorable).

Invite the press to lunch. This would work especially well if you invite the legislator to lunch and he or she turns you down: leave one seat at the table empty. Again, you should always work in collaboration with the school.

Deliver petition signatures to your legislator, or his/her staff. This would probably take place at the legislator’s office, but you can also ask him/her to come to a public event. Meetings will be effective if you can show your power – by presenting petitions, letters or statements of support from influential people. Bring kids, and have them do the talking. Bring food, blown-up photos of school lunch, people dressed in costumes or reporters.

The $1 Challenge. Organize a media event to show how hard it is to cook a healthy meal with only $1, or publicly challenge your legislator to do it. Get kids involved, and make it clear that they’re the ones being short-changed. Some “hooks” could be: challenge chefs or celebrities to cook with $1, ask your legislator how much he or she spends on lunch or show how much Congress spends on things other than children’s health.

Get creative. Get kids to film a video and show it in public, help kids do a media stunt or highlight the $1 in creative ways. If you’re trying to get media coverage, tailor your action to what editors looking for: short, punchy events in which everyday people who resemble their readers do something visually interesting.

No matter what you choose to do, the campaign team is here to guide you through the process of planning an effective action. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) us your ideas.