The election of Donald Trump to the presidency and the implementation of his agenda has motivated people across the U.S. to stand up for the issues they believe in and get politically active — and Cazenovians are no different. Hundreds of local residents have formed and joined a new organization called Cazenovia Call to Action, a group intent on helping local citizens learn how to be effective advocates for the issues they are passionate about.
The group is characterized on its Facebook page as a “grassroots advocacy and activism community in Cazenovia” whose mission is to “oppose elements of the harmful Trump agenda.” But, according to members of its steering committee, the group is much more than that.
“We’re driven greatly by what people are passionate about; there is no one theme or one issue; there’s lots of issues,” said CCTA Steering Committee member Maureen Zupan. “We want to advocate, we want to learn how to do it. We want to facilitate conversations in our community on the issues.”
It started as a group of women concerned about Trump and his agenda, said Steering Committee member Kristi Andersen, but quickly grew into something larger.
The overall organization is coordinated by a seven-person steering committee who act as the cohesive center, arranging and organizing the meetings, facilitating the advocacy education, outreach, online presence and more. The steering committee consists of Zupan, Andersen, Liz Moran, Joan Brooks, John Druke, Lynne Otter Berry and Elisha Davies.
The hundreds of members of the organization have been broken into smaller committees/working groups based on the specific political issues they want to address. Some of these issues, so far, include women’s rights, healthcare policy, employment, climate change, tax law, housing and education. The work groups meet, conduct research, educate themselves on the issue and then bring that knowledge back to the organization as a whole and educate the rest of the members, not only on what is happening with their particular issue, but also to consider what types of advocacy efforts would be most useful to effect political influence on the issue.
The focus of the organization is to teach concerned people how best to politically advocate for the issues about which they are most passionate. Such advocacy includes calling and writing elected officials, attending government meetings, visiting elected officials in their offices, coordinating town hall meetings and attending political rallies.
There are effective and ineffective ways to advocate for issues, Zupan and Andersen said, and the steering committee works to educate the overall organization on how to be effective, much like the Tea Party movement was effective in its political fight against President Obama’s agenda during his term of office.
The CCTA is using the “Indivisible Guide” to help its advocacy outreach and education. Indivisible is an educational guide, written by former Democrat Capitol Hill staffers, who saw the effectiveness of the Tea Party movement and wrote their own guide to educate progressives on how to organize at the grassroots level.
Andersen said it may sound cliché, but the aphorism that “All politics is local,” is correct, and one lesson to learn is that concerned citizens can have the most impact on their three members of Congress: the House member and two senators.
Three CCTA members, in fact, have already called on Congresswoman Claudia Tenney in her Hartford office to introduce the group, tell her its objectives, invite her to attend a future CCTA meeting or hold a town hall meeting, and urge her to support or oppose certain proposed pieces of legislation. “We told her we’d be watching her activities and invited her to attend one of our CazCTA meeting to speak with us in person,” according to the latest CCTA newsletter.
And this is what the Cazenovia Call to Action is about, according to Andersen and Zupan, learning how best to influence political action and enact change on the issues that matter to people.
“We are non-violent, cooperative, sharing, facilitating interaction between groups,” Zupan said. “We’re trying to influence the political process; we’re an advocacy group and a resistance group, not a protest group.”
After only a few meetings, the CCTA boasts hundreds of participants of all ages, both genders and various political persuasions, and has seen active, interesting and knowledgeable conversations on a host of issues, Zupan and Andersen said. Everyone is welcome, they said, “There is not a litmus test.” While the CCTA is primarily focused on “progressive issues and a progressive agenda,” anyone with a passion about political issues is welcome to join the group and learn how to advocate, Andersen and Zupan said.
“We’re not looking to say we all as one group feel this way on this issue,” Zupan said.
“We know there’s a lot of different points of view out there and the choice is whether we demonize and alienate them or welcome them in and work together,” Andersen said.
For more information on Cazenovia Call to Action, visit their Facebook page at Facebook.com/cazcalltoaction or contact Maureen Zupan at [email protected].
