Recruitment and Publicity

Mobilize feminists, peace activists, labor, environmental groups, and other progressive organizations in your community. Actively recruit activists, co-workers, progressive groups, family, and friends. Publicize the March, rally people in your community, and encourage them to come by car, bus, van, plane, train, or whatever way is the best and most convenient for them.

Set goals for delegations and marchers: Set them really high!

Get creative and set goals for this march. Remember that a delegation is a group of people who will carry a banner identifying the group. Your group can organize multiple delegations for your community or one large delegation comprised of a coalition of progressive groups. Delegations can be a mixed group of community activists, friends, neighbors, family, members, high school students, and college students. This is our opportunity to register unprecedented public support for peace in Iraq and to change the direction of our country.

REMEMBER: Don't limit yourself into thinking your delegation should consist of only your friends and chapter members. We must recruit as many progressive supporters as possible!

Recruitment:

• Contact local feminist and progressive groups who work on issues such as civil rights, queer rights, disability rights, and environmental justice. Ask to come to their meetings and make a brief announcement about the March during the meeting. Send a sign-up sheet around the room for people to get more information. Follow up with phone calls and e-mails to let people know of the next March meeting or when your group will table and/or sell bus tickets. Ask for potential participants, organizers, and fundraisers. Invite members to attend a future March meeting.
• Create a sign-up sheet and make copies of the informational flier (PDF) to use when attending meetings, fairs and festivals, and any time your group can table in a high traffic area in your community. Sell bus tickets or hand out transportation information on the spot when tabling and whenever possible. People who are interested but not ready to commit to purchasing a bus ticket can sign up to be notified of future March meetings, ticket sales, March events, and volunteer opportunities.
• Sell bus tickets and set up information tables at shopping centers, festivals, conferences, and everywhere people meet or gather. Print bus tickets (or carpool sign-up sheets or other transportation information) in advance and have them at the tables. You can adapt our Sample Bust Ticket (Word Doc) to hand out to people and Bus Ticket Sales Record (Word Doc) to keep track of sales. Have your march organizing members with clipboards, fliers, and petitions working the crowd. Direct people to the table to purchase bus tickets and/or learn about your group's transportation plan. Be sure that the table is visible, use banners and/or posters for the March.
• Send e-mail announcements about March organizing plans, updates on delegations from your area, updates from the national March headquarters, etc. Forward e-mail updates to your community organization's listserv and other progressive lists.
• Activate a phone bank to sell bus tickets and recruit more marchers, grow more delegations coming from your community, and call for volunteers and contributions. Be creative in constructing lists of people to call for the March. Lists should include the sign-ups collected from events, tabling, and other recruitment tactics.

Publicity:

• Send a press release to your local paper about the March. Ask the editor of the paper or supportive feminist reporters to do a feature on the connection between women's rights and peace in Iraq, the need for this march, and your groups involvement in it.
• Ask for a spot on your local morning television station or radio show. Have a two- to three-minute interview about the March. Make sure that you have talked to the host ahead of time and agreed on questions that he/she will ask.
• Hang up March fliers in interesting places—inside bathroom stalls and phone booths, next to copy machines and computer printers, in coffee shops, bookstores, and in local restaurants. Take advantage of a captive audience!
• Make sure to include information about the March on each of your community group's newsletters or e-mail announcements until April 29th. For fliers, you may want to have a "clip off" form for participation and for bus ticket sales/transportation sign-up. Try to get other organizations to run the March flier in their newsletters.
• Plan special march organizing meetings. Use these as a tool for recruiting new activists to help organize your delegation to the March and to keep the interest and enthusiasm of seasoned activists.