Missouri State News

Vol. 2, No. 2--March 19, 2005

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 by-laws and have filed our paper work to become a 527 PAC. In addition to the tedious paperwork, 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 that 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!

In the past month, we have formed organizational committees to spread out the work and ensure that our organization continues to grow stronger. Ultimately, we hope this will allow us to engage in more outreach and grow our numbers. We used some ideas from the Iowa committees, with a few modifications, for our own committees. We might 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 large 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 be responsible for facilitating networking communication between grassroots progressive organizations created by the caucus and local groups statewide and locally, respectively. For now, the two committees will actually act as one.

We have a Membership Committee, which is responsible for keeping track of the members and recruiting new members. Folks from this group will do a lot of the paperwork and brainstorming on methods for attracting new members. They will do some of the recruiting work of getting new members on their own, but will expect support from other caucus members as well.

The PR Committee is responsible for our publicity. This committee will build and maintain the web site, create posters, and write and distribute press releases, among other things. This committee will do some of the work of putting up posters, etc., but will need other caucus members to share in their efforts to distribute communication materials.

Our Grassroots Alliance Committee will be charged with finding and reaching out to grassroots organizations. They will try to find out how we can best work with these organizations by listening to their needs and offering to help. This committee will help coordinate "people power" for assisting aligned groups when possible, educate us about the issues these groups are facing, and coordinate with the membership committee to strategize methods to 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.

The Elections Task Force Committee is charged with finding open slots within the Democratic Party and filling them. This is not for electing public officials, 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, etc. They will take responsibility for educating the group on the importance of filling those positions and finding open positions and communicating position availability to the group as well as educating prospective officers on the rules and procedures of running for those positions.

We believe the committees will help us with the continual organizing work and will prove invaluable throughout our existence.

Though we focused primarily on the organizing committees last month, a few issues committees have also begun to form. Examples of the issues committees included the following: an election reform task force, a health care committee, an environment committee, a standard of living committee, a civil rights committee, and a peace committee. The elections reform task force is up and running now because of the issues we are face 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!

In Peace,
Debra Penna-Fredericks
Progressive Caucus of Missouri

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