KAPOW, Kat Abughazaleh’s organization formed after her loss in the IL-09 primary, has released their handbook, and it’s a really interesting document. The main focus is building a mutual aid hub as the basis of a campaign:
I want to be super clear about this: Our mutual aid efforts were the top persuader for undecided voters in my race. Like, by far. They were also our top volunteer recruitment and retention tool. And at a time when politics feels more about words than actions, this model of electoral organizing engaged just about every population you can imagine. (One day we had a drag queen, two Mormon missionaries, a punk kid, and a grandmother folding clothes for our hub at the same time).
The handbook is a nice piece of graphic design, and it has paths for small, medium and large organizing efforts.
There’s a flowchart at the start, then detailed descriptions about how the aid hub worked, how KAPOW volunteers helped other campaigns (the AES campaign is their example).
There are also details about how they used their Discord server to communicate with volunteers, a Q&A about the way that they dealt with common concerns about people taking “too much” at the hubs, and other experience-based advice.
Overall, it seems like a good approach for campaigns in urban areas. How a rural campaign spread out over small towns would work is another question. Still, this is KAPOW’s answer to “how to make politics suck less” and it’s definitely worth a read.
