Now that JBS.org has launched its new community, the question is how to get the most out of it in terms of furthering the mission of The John Birch Society. In other words, is the community on the website just a place for our registered users to post information and pictures about themselves and debate the issues or is it something more?

The first month of operation really has been about getting to know the community itself and using it to make connections with others who are interested in the Society and the preservation of our great republic and our freedoms. In fact, over the first month of operation, hundreds of new people have used the community to introduce themselves to the Society. On that basis alone, the project has been a great success.

That said, there is yet one more piece of the puzzle that, once in place, will make the JBS.org community different, and we think much better, than any other online community. That missing piece is the ability to use the community not only to organize and inform, but to actually make direct efforts to put pressure on legislators at both the federal and the state level.

Concurrently with the launch of the community in December, we have been working to move our legislative action center to a new platform as well. Our new legislative action platform will open up brand new areas for important grassroots activism. In the past, we offered only a means to contact legislators at the federal level. With improvements that have been made, our online activists will also be able to access tools that will allow communication with legislators at the state level as well.

How does this tie together with the community? There are many possible scenarios, but consider one possibility: REAL ID. The federal legislation on REAL ID has resulted in a large amount of implementing legislation that has had to be fought at the state level. This has made fighting the measure in all 50 states critical, but actually carrying out that fight has been difficult because there was no one single place to track information and take action.

With the JBS community and new state-level activism tools, it will now be possible to track critical information on an issue like REAL ID, coordinate action, and get your voice heard by legislators, all at a single website: JBS.org!

It might work like this: A state-level group in the JBS.org community might keep track of important legislative issues for that state. When a hot topic like REAL ID comes up, group members are informed by the group and are able to use the legislative action tools right on JBS.org to contact their legislators.

And that's just one way the community on JBS.org might be used to coordinate grassroots action. The variations and the possibilities are endless. Success is only a click away.

Action Summary

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