To expand on this - I’m interested in thinking about times that a cause we support won, not only because maybe it feels good to see positive stories instead of all negative, but also because specific examples might help illustrate why it won, and reveal strategies we can use in the future.
My only-moderately-winning example - we got our state senator to co-sponsor a bill.
I volunteered with a group fighting gerrymandering in our state. Our local working group’s senator, a democrat, would not co-sponsor. We were trying to get so many legislators on board that leadership was compelled to move the bill out of committee. First we tried meeting with the senator. We got one of their staff instead, who promised the senator would look into it. A few weeks passed and nothing happened. Then on facebook their account made a post talking about their support of democratic reforms and specifically mentioned gerrymandering. So our local volunteers piled on asking why they hadn’t co-sponsored (which didn’t go anywhere) but that did give us the impression we were being put off. So we started a campaign where we went door to door in the senator’s district and got constituents to sign a letter asking the senator to co-sponsor. This was over a few weeks, and we knew word would have reached them because at least one of the people we met door to door had a personal connection to the senator. We had about 50 letters and hadn’t even delivered them yet when the senator co-sponsored the bill.
