Missouri State News

Vol. 1, No. 6--December 23, 2004

Greetings Fellow Progressives!

I am happy to report that The Progressive Caucus of Missouri has been moving along nicely with growing membership and more organization lately. We have been writing our bylaws and have filed our paper work to become a 527 PAC.

In addition to all of that tedious paper work, the Missouri Caucus has been networking with other groups so we can form more charter groups and form more allies across the state. We have reached out to groups from several communities in the state who have expressed an interest in becoming charter groups, as well as several grassroots progressive organizations who have already come to speak at our meetings, including Missourians for Single Payer Healthcare, Instead of War, World Peace Day, and West County Democrats. We have also been reaching out to numerous other groups and have been getting positive feed back all around!

We have also been forming organizational committees this past month in order to spread out the work and be sure that our organization continues to grow strong. We ultimately hope this will allow us to do more outreach and grow our numbers. We used some of the ideas from the Iowa committees, with a few modifications for our own committees. We may also consider other models to help shape them further.

The committees have been formed primarily with the St. Louis group since it is the group that has been organizing the caucus. However, the St. Louis group is really a charter group within the caucus and we are hoping that other charter groups around the state will form some of the same committees, as they choose, so our committees can work together as one state organization.

Some of our organizing committees in the St. Louis area include, a Communications Committee that will be divided into two parts. One for our local group and one for the caucus. The caucus committee will take responsibility for communicating up to the national level (primarily with PDA) and out to the charter groups in the caucus. The charter group committee will be responsible for communicating to the caucus as well as the individual members within the St. Louis group. These committees will also take responsibility for facilitating networking communication between the grassroots progressive organizations created by the caucus and local groups state wide and locally, respectively. These two committees will actually act as one for now.

We have a Membership Committee that will take responsibility for keeping track of the members and finding new members. Folks from this group will do a lot of the paper work and figuring out how the group can attract new members. They will do some of the work of getting new members on their own, but will expect other caucus members to share that effort, as well.

There is a PR Committee that is responsible for putting out publicity for the group. This committee will put up and maintain the website, create posters, do press releases, and so on. Again, this committee will do some of the work of putting up posters, etc., but will expect other caucus members to share that effort, as well.

We also have a Grassroots Alliance Committee that will be charged with the responsibility of finding and reaching out to grassroots organizations. They will try to find out how we can best work with these organizations by finding out their needs and offering to help. This committee will help coordinate people-power for the helping with the needs of the groups when we can provide it, help us learn about the issues the groups are facing, and coordinate with the membership committee to help discover how we can promote our group within these organizations. They will also work toward getting people from the group named as liaisons. This committee will coordinate with the membership committee.

There is also an Elections Task Force Committee that is charged with finding open slots within the Democratic Party and filling them. This is not for putting folks into office voted on by the general public in major elections, but for getting progressives involved in precincts, getting them to become precinct chairs, getting them to take over or get a strong voice in County Parties, and so on. This group will be responsible for educating the group on the importance of filling those positions, finding open positions and letting the group know about them, teaching the group about the rules on how to run for those positions, and so on.

The committees above should be able to help a lot toward the continual organizing work in the organization and will prove invaluable throughout our existence.

In addition to the organizing committees, a few issues committees began to form, though we focused primarily on the organizing committees last month. Examples of the issues committees included the following: election reform task force, health care committee, environment committee, standard of living committee, civil rights committee, and a peace committee. The elections reform task force is up and going now because of the issues we are facing in Ohio and other states. And other committees will become active very quickly because we are going to be facing a Republican House and Senate majority along with a Republican Governor in the next few years.

The Progressive Caucus of Missouri is up and running. We welcome all progressive folks from the state to join us!

Watch for our new web address to appear on the PDA website by the end of December thanks to the generosity of Clint Raulsten. Thanks, Clint!

In Peace,
Debra Penna-Fredericks
Progressive Caucus of Missouri

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