Hi everyone,
A wild decade just got wilder in the last 35 days as the USA pivots to full fascist. That is why joining this year's *Campaigning Forum (ECF) event in Oxford April 8-10* is more important than ever: *the world has changed (not just this year) and we need to pivot too.*
*Apply and see more at https://fairsay.com/campaigning-forum-2025/ https://fairsay.com/campaigning-forum-2025/* *(late rate kicks in after this Friday Feb 28th). *
*Every story of social change (good and bad) has at its inception a story of people connecting in-person to share, bond and plan.* The annual Campaigning Forum (ECF) event is designed specifically for this. Our opponents are organising. You need to show up to be part of what comes next.
A *true* community event is rare Most events that call themselves "community events" are simply designed to be training and product promotion events. You can see the difference in the agenda: true community events have mostly empty agenda slots for participants to fill. Non-community events pre-select all the agenda time-slots based on the organisers' goals.
*Don't be confused that ECF events are for training - they never were and never are*. Yes, you learn a ton of new ideas and approaches. But this is a by-product of what ECF really is: a campaigning community event: it is designed to build life-long connections and confidence to learn how to learn together. *That is key for us working together over our careers to make deep sustained change.*
I've incorporated your input... The big picture is that current events are leaving us all anxious and feeling helpless. *This is by design*. So this year I've designed the ECF event to:
1. *Renew* your hope and resilience 2. *Boost* your confidence that something can be done and you can do it 3. *Learn* from stories of successes and failure from each other 4. *Explore* how to counter disinformation and extremism 5. *Retrain* our minds to have a proactive response to changes 6. *Reconsider* what our role is in *shaping* the *next* decades 7. *Build* deep connections to expand your allies and peers to make the above continuous
Latest event updates
1. As always, you can *see** who is else is coming* so far. 23 people have confirmed and another few dozen are in the process of getting approval and applying - See the list at https://fairsay.com/campaigning-forum-2025/#participants
2. Sarah P Corbett - known for her "Gentle Protest" approaches is the lead speaker on day 1. Sarah's approach works particularly well in a high polarisation and hich anxiety environment we are in - and so it is super important more of us consider a range of approaches to organising supporters and influencing decision makers.
So I really look forward to seeing you and your colleagues and peers at the event this year. It feels to me that* if ever there was a time to show up - it is this year!*
*Apply and see more at https://fairsay.com/campaigning-forum-2025/ https://fairsay.com/campaigning-forum-2025/* *(late rate kicks in after this Friday Feb 28th - extensions can be granted - just ask). *
Cheers,
Duane
======================================================== Duane Raymond (pronouns: he/him) FairSay - Making Campaigning Count UK: +44 (0)207 993 4200 Switzerland: +41 (0)43 538 3641 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/duane Web: https://fairsay.com/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/fairsay.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/fairsay
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Duane Raymond (FairSay)