Building Your Community:
Welcome to Red Wine & Blue’s TroubleNation!
Connection is at the heart of organizing. Extremists want us to feel isolated and alone — but when we come together, we’re unstoppable. The antidote to division is community building.
This is why Red Wine & Blue launched TroubleNation — our national grassroots organizing program — to supercharge your power to build community locally.
Whether you’re forming a new group or growing an existing one, TroubleNation will help you find other Red Wine & Blue members who live near you and share your frustration with the rise of extremism in their communities.
With new members and groups joining every day, our movement is unstoppable. Even if you feel alone where you live, we guarantee you are not!
Why Community Matters
In these chaotic times, group members need a safe gathering space that they can depend on. In the community groups we form, people want to:
- Make friends
- Feel less isolation
- Vent frustrations
- Share ideas
- Learn new things
- Take action in their community
- Build collective power
Take a quick look at what our experts — like Heather Cox Richardson — have to say about why community matters so much!
How to Build Community
Think about building a community in three stages: starting community, sustaining community, and growing community, keeping in mind that your group will constantly be flowing back and forth between these stages, and can even be in multiple stages at one time.
Growing Your Local Group
Identify opportunities to engage with people beyond your group and invite them to join you.
Sustaining Your Local Group
Nurture a strong community by helping your members replenish their energy and feed their spirits.
Starting Your Local Group
Building relationships, creating connections, and establishing trust will be essential in the work to come.
A Note on Hope and Joy
Keep in mind that sustaining your group means being intentional about self-care — both individually and collectively. Don’t forget to take time to check in with each other and make sure you are all getting the support you need.
Avoid the trap of despair. While it’s easy to feel a sense of gloom and doom about all the things out of our control, we can’t get stuck in that feeling. It might be tempting to throw up our hands and hide under the covers, but remember the people throughout history who have fought to make this country the free, safe, and vibrant place we know it can be.
Be engaged, and let go of what doesn’t help. Stay informed without getting sucked into the cycle of doomscrolling and cable news drama. Think outside of the (news) box by finding trusted sources like Heather Cox Richardson. Subscribe to the newsletters and podcasts of organizations you trust to keep you informed (like ours!). If you find yourself getting frustrated and angry, walk away. Talk to a friend.
Stay hopeful. Authoritarianism needs fear to be successful, so focus on finding hope wherever you can. Celebrate wins, no matter how small. Toast to joy. Turn up the music. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Additional Resources: Building Your Community
- Application to start a group
- Good Neighbors Getting It Done in Western New York
- MailChimp for group emails
- Signal for group communication
- PowerPoint Vision Boards
- Join Or Die Documentary
- Marshall Ganz skill-building workshop
- The Activist Checklist for online and offline safety
- Betterworld for fundraising
- PayPal Money Pool
- Community Service step-by-step guide
- Canva for graphic design
- QR Code Monkey
- Creating a Story of Self