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Writer's pictureTim Ellis

What's next: Between now and election day

It's been a busy couple of weeks since Not One Seat launched on April 12th!


Since then, our launch video has been viewed 35,000 times; our campaign was profiled in the CBC and Toronto Star ; and most important, hundreds of people from across Toronto and around Ontario have signed up to volunteer and begun working to make Doug Ford a one-term Premier.


We're thrilled by the success - but we're just getting started. A long road remains ahead to build a grassroots operation that's strong enough and effective enough to deliver on our mission.


Here's where we'll be turning our attention for the next few weeks:


Finding our rhythm


Thanks to the surge of support, we rapidly scaled up our onboarding process and brought a flood of new volunteers into our operation. Each volunteer was invited to join one or more of our action teams, and equipped with a toolkit describing step-by-step how they can plug in to achieve the necessary tasks to reach our goals.


Now, those teams are settling into a groove as the individual members get acquainted with our operation and with each other. We're organizing meetings and group chats, scheduling skills trainings, and building on Not One Seat's week-by-week strategic plan with team-specific planning. In addition, our many new volunteers bring with them new skillsets and expertise - and we're incorporating that knowledge to streamline our processes and expand our reach.


From the beginning, Not One Seat was envisioned as a grassroots, people-powered organization, built to scale up rapidly and learn as it went. Thanks to that flexibility, our volunteers are able to quickly bring their unique skills to bear improving our operation. There is power in community.


Building our on-the-ground organizing teams


We're working with our volunteers to identify leaders in all 25 Toronto ridings who can be the nucleus of our on-the-ground operations. The local riding teams will meet with non-PC candidates to help inform our endorsement assessments.


On May 7th, we're hosting a training session to equip our riding teams with with the skills and resources to build an expanding network of local organizers in their riding, who can go on to connect with voters in their area. Those voters will be asked to sign our Unity pledge, vote together behind our identified Unity candidates, and plug into our operation to expand our reach and get us to critical mass.

Speaking of which...


Launching our Unity pledge


The Unity pledge is the keystone of our on-the-ground organizing efforts. Local riding teams - with support from our expanding online amplification network - will be working hard to connect with voters in their riding and pledge them to vote together in support of the candidate our data analysts identify as best positioned to unite the vote and defeat Ford's conservative candidate.


Remember: we don't need every voter to pledge. We don't need most voters to pledge. We only need enough voters to pledge to vote together to secure the margin of victory.


The Unity pledge will launch on May 4th, the same day the election is expected to officially begin.


High-viz Tweetstorm


Our on-the-ground organizing is supported virtually by our grassroots amplification network, a constantly expanding network of social media users who are coordinated by our Amplification team leads. This network has experienced tremendous growth right out of the gate, and has helped us to continue to spool up by increasing our visibility and reach.


On May 5th - the day after the writ is expected to drop - we're putting the network to the test with our first Tweetstorm, driving our hashtag #UniteTheVote province-wide and working to get our Unity pledge in front of the voters who have just started tuning in following the writ drop on May 4th.


The close integration between social media and on-the-ground organizing that powers our model has never been done before. We learn as we go, and tests like this Tweetstorm give us data to further refine our approach. Remember: on the other side of every social media account is a human being - a person with principles, and people they love, and communities they care about. There's no reason organizing and mobilizing people on social media needs to be divorced from organizing on-the-ground.

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