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It's going to be a hot protest summer. Here are six tips to build a movement. I'm Jim Drastic. I'm Nick Kudson. And I'm Tiffany Drastic. And today on the Dangerous Ones, we are talking about six ways to build a movement. Cuz let's be honest, starting a grassroots movement, it's [ __ ] hard, right, Nick? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Sounds great. Well, where do you start? Yeah. Right. You have a voice, you have a passion, but how do you organize? How do you even begin to come together? So today, that's what we're talking about. Six things we've learned from building social media and also organizing protests that really help a movement grow, the kind that spreads, the kind that lasts, the kind that makes noise where it counts. This isn't about going viral or being perfect. It's about building something that matters and getting people to show up for it. I agree. And and what a these are great tips uh that we have for everybody because uh just so everybody knows, Tiff and I have uh not only uh obviously done online protesting with building uh creating videos, we've also put together and organized um street activism protests. Our first protest literally had six people. Uh and I think our fifth or sixth protest had four blocks of people. Yeah. And we did it through using some of these tips. And Nick, you've built an entire online army. Yes, I have. Yeah. Yeah. uh didn't didn't uh I yeah you know there was a lot of fits and starts and learned along the way but uh I yeah I've definitely learned how to uh grow a big batch of people who are missiondriven and take action on a daily basis. So here are six tips to build a movement. Number one tip Tell Your Story number one tell your story like it's life or death. You got to get people to care about what you have going on. It doesn't matter if it's political. It doesn't matter if you're trying to save the monarch butterflies or organized labor. If you're excited, you got to get people excited. So, you can't get hemmed up in the details. And you know, you know that if the monarch butterfly dies, all this crazy [ __ ] is going to start happening. But to get in the meeting, to get just your foot in the door, you got to get people excited first. Yeah. And and you got to let them know, you know, listen, we live in a world now where fear sells. Yeah. you know, and the attention span is 3 seconds long. You got to get them, you know. Yeah. So, um, telling your story like it's life and death, make sure to always, um, make it sound like if they don't take action now, then what they fear will happen. All hell is going to break loose. Yeah. in the way you word things, in the way you present things, all of that, the colors you choose, everything has to feel like it is immediate because you may only get one chance ever to reach that person. So, I love that one. Tell Design For Sharing your story like it's life and death. Make sure it feels urgent. Um, not just online, also with like print media. Uh, everything you do has to feel every email you send off to somebody, it has to feel urgent. You need people to take action. And in this day and age that is very hard when you know when you see things like the NBA is having a hard time getting eyeballs you know right it you know we're all up against each other so yep absolutely tip number two is design your content for sharing. Uh every post video and graphic should be built to be shared. Uh that means short, emotional, bold headlines and then if you're making videos, subtitles on every video and clear calls to action. Uh and doing things like tagging a friend. Um listen, when it comes to uh especially with videos, uh the the subtitles on videos is extremely important. And also when you think about social media and the different ones there are, there's YouTube, there's, you know, Twitter, um the Facebook is already seeing it. So if you if you're on Facebook, do what is native to that platform. If you can upload the content to that platform, do it. Don't direct them to go to another platform if you can avoid it. Yeah, we have learned that in our own. Don't give them two steps. Yeah. Don't give them two steps. Give do it there. Yeah. Um, you know, even in this podcast on every platform, we tailor what we do to that platform and and let me tell you something else. It is a lot of work. Do not expect it to be fast and easy. Get some help if you can. And some platforms don't allow you to do native uploads because they don't have you can't upload something that long. And so, you have to give them two steps and it it sucks. Yeah. So, let's take an example. If you're trying to save the monarch butterflies and you have five followers online, uh you think about that you have no following online basically and you really are passionate about saving the monarch butterflies, then your posts about that, every post Be Bold you make has to be bold. And by the way, I'm going to show two examples right now of a good post and what is a clumsy post in my opinion. Okay? Um they have to be very clean. They have to be short. Don't write a TLDDR, too long, didn't read. Um, you know, when it comes to these posts, keep them short, punchy, and make it feel like it's urgent. Um, that is, I mean, to me, designed your content for sharing. And, uh, and also one more thing is on platforms like X and Blue Sky, which are different than a lot of other platforms where it really is uh, other people sharing your content. It's not just the algorithm on those platforms that are making things go viral. We've gone viral, you've gone viral many, many times, but we only achieved that through the sharing from larger accounts, other accounts. Build relationships. Yes. Um, having said that, Nick, what is tip number three? Create Core Community So, tip number three is create a core community, not just a crowd. So, you've uh you've told your story like it's life or death. you've uh been sharing effectively online. You've got people who are starting to come to you and wanting to get involved. You it's really important to make sure that you have like champions like sort of uh uh super volunteers uh sly interested people who are super who are very passionate about the cause that you're you're working on behalf of. We at Demcast have have worked really hard to create this core community. We we do so uh in various places on on social media platforms, Facebook groups, that kind of thing. Signal groups, uh Slack, everything. We we use all the tools. We try and uh meet people where they are. And um it's I will just say it's a lot of work. Yeah, it's this is not an easy one. Number three is not easy. Uh it takes a lot of caretaking. You can't just like set up a a community space for people to engage and interact uh your your core community members um with and and then just hope that it like works. Yeah. You got Yeah. You got to nurture it and tend to it like a little bonsai tree. Exactly. It's it's care and feeding. I mean we have we have many many groups. We have moderators for all those groups and then we have super volunteers. Hey Brandon, Jennifer who who moderate our moderators, right? And help them understand sort of what uh what to do in certain situations. People have personalities. They're there's going to be conflicts. Anytime you set up a a group of people, people are going to have different ideas about how uh how to communicate uh effectively about the the issue that you're passionate about. Um so you need to have rules in place. It's it's a thing. Yeah. But how Yeah. And how it starts is like when I started How We Started I didn't know anybody. I was just like there was a problem with getting supplies to homeless people in Portland. And so we thought what can we do? So we organized like a clothing drive. We started with nothing. Like we're out here getting paid in lols. There's no this is a side hustle that pays nothing. Like we're all interns out here. There's no I don't know in the whole time I've been doing this not one paid protester in Portland. That is not a thing. We are out here because we are passionate about it. We care about it and we love the people we're doing it with. Can I add one thing to that is is when you are building a core community, one thing that I would suggest is on um platforms like X and Instagram and Blue Sky is if you want to get celebrities or even politicians uh to care about what you're doing is don't just mass send things out. find the celebrities who are like have already posted about like wanting to save the monarch butterflies, you know what I mean? That has helped us tremendously. Get in their comments. It's easier, I will say this, it is actually easier than you think to get celebrities to help share your stuff as long as it's good and it's what they're passionate about as well. Yeah. So, it's not an unclimbable mountain uh when you're building that and and then you'll find that they'll they're willing to help out. let me know the next time you make a a video or something like that. It's it it is possible. Tip number four Be Visible Offline is be visible offline. So, in real life, get in the streets, start going to the protest, start putting up flyers, start putting up stickers. The thing I love the most about being an activist is you can do it in super petty ways to just tell the man to [ __ ] off. And you and I went on a road trip one time. We had little stickers made for 11 films everywhere we went. sticker for 11 films, sticker for 11 films, sticker for 11 films, and somebody years later goes, I saw a sticker for 11 films in like Boise, Idaho. So, you don't like these little butterfly effect things that you can do. If you have messaging on a Be Loud t-shirt like I have a t-shirt that says give a [ __ ] and vote that I picked up at the DNC. You can do little tiny things to just be loud. You can blast in 11 films when you drive by a mega church. Just anything to get messaging out there. Be sure to film it. Like you really have to be like kind of a born again Christian and all my ex four square kids will know what being what that is. You have to be that friend. Like oh here comes Tiffany. She's going to [ __ ] talk to us about how Flint has no water still. Right. Yeah. But the truth is is people don't want to just see that you have an online movement. They want to see that you're actually putting your own boots on. You got to walk it. And I've, you know, I one time we were doing a boot, we were doing a protest downtown Portland. And I remember we were making soup and food for the houseless. And it was raining. It was extremely cold. It was extremely hard, but we, you know, we got all of the I mean, we had so many people show up with clothes and all this stuff. Um, in the rain, you know what I It was pouring down rain because they had seen us do it over multiple events and knew that by coming out to this event, we would be there like we said we would. We were, you know, feeding people like we said we would. And the clothes that they were bringing would go to uh a good cause. And not just that, like we were every time we'd get together with friends, we would say, "Oh, we're doing this thing. Do you have anything?" All of our friends gave us bags and bags of clothing because you're just out there talking about it all the time and being that one person. But they also trusted us at that point because we had proven to them because you have to do what you say you're going to do. You can't just say it and not do it. You have to walk that walk. Absolutely. Great advice. Great advice. Nick, what is what is number five? So tip number five is build strategic alliances. Uh partner with other groups, other creators, uh other voices that have overlapping goals. Uh share your audiences, swap your content. Be a team player. Ego is the enemy of lasting movements. I have seen this so many times. Love it. Like where somebody Strategic Alliances comes in and is like, "Hey, I've got this idea about this cause." And all the people who are already involved in that cause are like, "Yeah, we've been doing this for a really long time." Yeah, you know, but it's like maybe somebody with a little more cache or or somebody who's been more famous or whatever, so they're coming in and all swaggery and they try and re recreate the wheel. Yeah. You know, and it's like, no, you know, being involved in a movement means leveraging the energy and the effectiveness of all of the other people who are involved in that movement or on the periphery of that movement. You don't have to do everything. Um there are people out there who care as well and do you know scope out who those people are as you're starting before you start and reach out to them. Love that. You know I think uh also it's like you know if there's a again I'm going to use the monarch butterfly thing. If there's somebody in your area or nationwide who is already doing that at a good level and but you still want to be uh you know use your passion too then be the you know be a niche for that complements that maybe you you know okay well I'm going to be uh ours is all about saving the monarch butterfly in Oregon and you're going to know contacts and stuff here. be something that's complimentary to that if there isn't if there's already a nationwide yes uh entity. And that's the thing about activism being a team sport is it's not a competition. It's not a race. No one's trying to beat anybody to the top or like we're all we're fighting for a cause, which means we are fighting for this thing. So, we all have to do what we're really good at. And if you're good at [ __ ] posting on the internet, go [ __ ] post on the internet. If you're good at organizing a protest, go do that. Yeah, that's a great point because by the time we got to I think it was our sixth protest and that's the one that was like four blocks long of people. It was like insane. It was it was insane. But some people had stepped in who knew about how to I mean build lines of food for people and like and grow that. They they weren't trying to here I'm going to do a protest over here that you know they were they compleimemented what we were doing and we all worked together. Yeah. And having no ego taking your ego out of it and remembering the cause is the most important thing. You know if you're getting into like you know a nonprofit or things like that you know but but internally you're like oh I'm doing it for money. Stop now cuz there's no money. Yeah. You're funny. We promise. Go for cute. Yeah. Stop now. Repeat Yourself And tip number six is repeat yourself and then repeat again. Consistency is king. Uh whether it's online or whether it's in the streets, showing up consistently um is incredibly important. It builds trust. People can see that you're doing that and that you're consistent about it. There will be multiple times that you create a whole campaign and the campaign does nothing. Oh my god. Does nothing. You get six likes and your buddy shared the one video and that was it. And it took everything out of you just to do that. We've all been there. Yeah. Learn from that. But but learn from that and make corrections, but keep showing up to the fight. As we do this podcast, we have some that do really well. We have some that we thought were going to go crazy good did okay. And then some you had no idea did well. We try to learn from that and bring our listeners and viewers what they want. Yeah. Um, and it's a creative process. So, it there is no room for ego because you're going to be wrong. You know what I mean? You're like, what I knew yesterday and what I know today just about this show is mindboggling. There's just no room to stand in each other's way or stop the process of this evolving because it's just it's alive. It's constantly changing. Yeah, I agree. So, again, let's recap. Tip number one, tell the story like it's life or death. Number two, design your content for sharing. Number three, create a core community, not just a crowd. Number four, be visible online. Number five, build strategic alliances. And number six, repeat yourself, then repeat yourself again. What? Yeah. If you have some really good tips that you'd like to share, call us at the people's hotline 503212-4600 or you can email us at shout at the dangerouswes.com. Uh if you'd like to support this show, you can go to the dangerouswes.com. That'll take you over to our Substack where you can become a paid subscriber. Folks, please like and subscribe this video. And if you're listening to us, please give us a fivestar review. Until then, be safe, get into good trouble, and remember, we are all the dangerous ones. Bye bye.

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