| Libertarian Party of NY |
Things to do to get a county chapter off the ground
- Familiarize yourself with the formal requirements for starting a chapter, then start getting in touch with your fellow local libertarians.
- Odd years: determine which county races are up for re-election, decide who is interested in running. Work with the LPNY political director to get a list of people who have volunteered from your county, to determine the appropriate body to nominate the candidate, and to develop a legal petitioning form.
- Even years: see what 'cross-county' districts might be available, so that petitioning can count for all levels of office in the state. Work with the LPNY political director and other counties in the district to try get a candidate and get petitioning teams together.
- Get local media for the party. Get your meetings announced in community calendars in print and on the radio. See the lpny_media mailing list to talk with other libertarians about what resources there may be to help you develop a media list.
- Communicate with the libertarians in your county
- Here's how Gary Popkin, Temporary County Chair for Kings County, started out his January 2005 note to the lpny_kings mailng list...
Greetings,
I am the Kings County Temporary Chair of the Libertarian Party of New York. My tenure as Temporary Chair ends when at least seven paid-up members of the Libertarian Party who are residents of Brooklyn meet to adopt by-laws, elect officers, and form the Brooklyn Libertarian Party, or whatever you decide to call it.
Here's what's going on. We had our first meetup...
Gary then reported on what was decided, and he promoted his weekly cable access talk show, using the Meetup for Brooklyn and a couple of mailing lists. In the February note: same thing.
- Bonnie Scott started up a (dead-tree) newsletter for the Northern region to communicate with its far-flung members, most of whom we didn't have email addresses for. A weekly phone-conference is also in the works, so that our activists in Clinton and Essex counties can easily share ideas with those in St. Lawrence county without having to drive four hours and pass through US Border Patrol checkpoints.
- LP Manhattan has the benefit of an extremely dense population, so their meetings are well-attended. Their mailing list is the most active regional LPNY list, plus they have the "Village Choice" for an announcement list: coming out far more regularly than the state announcement list! (Weekly vs about 8 times a year.) They are starting to get into cable access.
- Blog your activities so that other people in the party know what you're doing! When you blog your progress, the webmaster and newsletter editor for the state party can easily include your news in their productions, and the political director can easily see at a glance what's new in the counties. Contact the webmaster about getting a password to blog for your county.
- Work out your priorities for supporting or opposing current county-level legislation, and keep in touch with LPNY Legislative Director about state and even national issues that affect your region.
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