- Hi friends, we did it.
Well you did it, well some of you did it.
You created changes in your local
and online communities by throwing a party.
In the last episode we talked about how the first step
in creating the change that you want to see
is to find some people to help you,
get them together and make a plan.
But you might as well make it a little festive
while you're at it so I threw a party
to talk about supporting undocumented immigrants
because that's an issue that really matters to me,
but so many of you stepped up to join me.
For some of you that meant getting a group
of people together to call or write letters
to your elected officials or voters
and for others it meant trying to breathe
new life into an issue you cared about for a long time.
But I'll let these folks share what issues
they organized around and why.
- So I have a pretty small apartment,
most of it is actually in the frame right now,
but luckily I'm on good terms
with the owner of an arcade.
I'm glad they let me bother their staff
and patrons into hosting an event
which had the aim of showing people
how easy it is to get politically involved
by reducing the barriers to getting involved.
- I'm not that kind of person
who grew up with politics in their blood.
I didn't you know talk about politics
around the dinner table, I didn't really think about
activism when I was growing up
and it wasn't until college where I felt this
call to be more informed and to be more active
in you know community affairs.
It was during the 2012 elections
and I hosted a phone bank in my apartment in Boston
and got a bunch of my friends together.
We ordered a big pizza and sat on the floor
of my living room and made a whole bunch of calls
for two or three hours.
- I didn't pick an issue, I picked the task of
like friends were going to come over
and we were going to contact our representatives.
I know that I am not an expert in any of this,
but there are so many people now especially
who are very smart and knowledgeable
putting together very like wonderful,
easy to digest like step by step instructions
of okay this terrible thing has just happened,
here's what you do.
This in particular I used the,
I think it's called the Weekly Action Checklist
for Americans of Conscience.
And that I picked because it is in a Google Doc form
which was easy for me to print out a copy of
and distribute to everybody via the Facebook.
- Right that's the thing, these are organizing events.
So after you chose an issue that you cared about
you had to throw a party.
Here's how Nicole, Katrina and Margarita
got ready for their big events.
- I pretty much just looked at my calendar,
picked a day a couple days in advance that worked for me,
got on Facebook and invited like ten of my closest friends.
Because I had done something like this before
I already had like a box of cards and pens
and stuff like that, this is as you can see
very fancy and very organized.
I also have little pieces of paper
with our representatives contact information.
I just keep that box like in my living room
so it's there and ready to go whenever I decide
to do a thing like this.
I also ran to Costco after work, before the thing
because giving people snacks and wine
is a really good way to get people to come to your event.
- I came with research and letter writing materials
to help people contact their federal representatives
about what matters to them.
All together we wrote 13 letters to our representatives
and only one person did it as a joke
so I sent out 12 letters to our representatives.
I had the goal of getting people politically engaged
and I did it.
- I felt bananas because I really wanted
everything to go right.
I was just like this has to be perfect
and this had to be perfect and this has to be perfect.
It really didn't need to be.
It was just getting a bunch of people I knew and trusted,
people I knew who cared about the same things I did
and inviting them over for pizza and phone calls.
You're not going to be called upon
to know every last thing about what's happening.
You're just going to be appreciated
for wanting to make an impact.
- Okay so here's a twist Rikki's held in person
organizing events like her captioning workshops,
but her organizing started out online,
which actually works kind of similarly.
It starts by you asking a group of friends
to help you do one specific thing.
So Rikki started small just by asking her friends
to share her message online about asking people to caption
and from there more people started hearing
and talking about captioning and the circle
just got bigger and bigger.
Using digital tools can help spread your house party
beyond just the room you're in at the time you're in it.
- I think that digital tools are extremely powerful
when it comes to trying to organize or mobilize people.
And it doesn't really need to be complicated,
it can be as simple as using the tools
that you use to communicate with other people
every single day.
You know you can put together a little email list
and sort of send updates about the things you want to do,
the meetings you want to have,
the protests you maybe want to start tomorrow.
- As I posted the doc in the Facebook event
one of my friends who wasn't able to come
was able to like go home and do all of the same things
from home after she got done with her other commitments.
So that was really cool and helpful.
- If you have a group chat where you gossip about people
and talk about the latest episode of Riverdale
like you can so very easily put together
a group chat about you know the cause that you want
to organize for.
- So a digital house party can work just as well
as a physical one or it can be a way
to check in on the people you invited over
and keep the momentum going.
But whether you decide to meet up physically
or digitally get some friends together and start.
- I want to do this again, I plan to do this again.
Partially because the smallest box of envelopes
I could buy was a box of 50 envelopes
so I might as well use the rest of those up.
But I got to hear people's stories
and learn about what matters to them
and I hope I can use that information
to throw a better house party next time
and hopefully get more people involved in political action.
- Afterwards it was almost like exciting
to sort of have that group feeling
of like as a group of people we did this thing.
Given the number of times I have called my representatives
in 2017 you would think that at a certain point
it would get easier and less terrible,
mostly because it was a group of people working together
on the thing just felt far less isolating.
- And how I felt afterward was you know relived
and accomplished that I got something done
and was able to get my friends together
to make a whole bunch of phone calls
for candidates I really cared about.
Know that what you, the problem that you want to solve,
the change that you want to see will drive you
and your passion for it will make everything go well.
- Now this is the last video in this series,
but this is not the last time we will be talking
about community organizing on this channel
so subscribe if you want to stay involved,
leave your questions for me, Katrina,
Rikki, Nicole or Margarita in the comments
and if you're going to do a project of your own
say hi in the comments or on Twitter
so I can help you make it happen.
Toni Morrison said that if you're free
you need to free somebody else
and if you have power it's your job
to empower someone else and I believe
that you and I and all of us do have the power
to fight back against hate and fix what's broken
in our communities and in our world.
We just have to decide that it's our job
to do something about it.
So what do you say guys are you in?
(clapping)
For more infomation >> Winter Essentials & Favorites (subtítulos en español disponible) - Duration: 15:50. 
For more infomation >> 网友称安以轩"一腿万年"，安以轩表情包逗趣回应显率真 - Duration: 3:47. 
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