Running a "from the ground up" campaign

I am not smart about policy. I am better at organizing. Here are some thoughts.

For the upcoming federal campaign, local EDAs are organizing ourselves through a google group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greens-eo/. If you are part of an Eastern Ontario campaign team, you should join this group.

We are cooperating on bulk sign and literature purchasing, and regional advertising through radio, bus ads, etc. We hope to cooperate on a few big multi-riding fundraising events as well.

I see this as grassroots "from-the-ground-up" organizing.The basic unit-of-organization is the "ward". A ward is 20,000 voters, of whom about 2,000 are Green supporters.

[Is there a level below wards, "polls" or "neighbourhoods"? Yes, but GPC isn't mature enough today to go that deep. In the future, we will have grassroots GPC leaders who are responsible for each 1,000 voters, of whom 100 are dedicated Greens.]

Each ward has a "ward captain" who is entirely responsible for that ward. Signs, fundraising, literature drops, GOTV, canvassing. Everything. Each ward captain is a local GPC leader and spokesperson.

There are 5 wards in a riding. This means that a riding (EDA) executive is 5 people, plus a CEO, CFO, candidate and other support staff. Yes, the candidate is support staff, in my model :-) The power comes from the ward captains. (Candidates should be chosen from past ward captains, ideally.)

In Eastern Ontario we have 15 ridings. As a "region" we will coordinate on advertising and fundraising, as I described above. This region represents 5% of Canada.