Grassroots outreach attempt during the virtual age of a pandemic.
Hi everyone, I’m Mike Cooper from Russellville, AR. My brother, who is a Methodist minister gave me an idea some time ago and I’ve spent the last few months working on something. After a couple practice sessions with my fellow chapter members hopefully later this week, I’ll be launching Coffee and Climate Conversation with Cooper, a Zoom meeting that people are invited to come in and talk about the climate crisis. Originally planning it as online tabling events, I realized while preparing that people could come in with all levels of understanding and concerns. If I am going to keep some of them in my room any length of time, I better load for bear. Thus, the months (instead of weeks) of preparation. Initially I’ll just spread the word (an open invitation) on Face Book and Twitter. After I get going, I may be able to enlarge my range. I am using a slide presentation I made that I can jump into at any point depending on where our conversations lead us. After the intro there are sections for: 1) local impacts and Attribution Science 2) climate opinions of others 3) using online tools to contact members of congress 4) a little Climate Change Science 5) H.R. 763 and 6) climate advocacy and CCL. Along with the slides, I have a script written; not to read from or memorize, but to help me keep at hand information that goes along with the slides as well as many Internet links I have to share if they’ll help my visitors and I in our conversations. First of all, this is all about conversations about the Climate Crisis and we might not even get into screen sharing. Final destination for any conversation will be, of course, H.R. 763 and CCL. As part of the prep work I’ve been doing a lot of the training for communications that CCL offers and I’m attending another series of webinars on “How to Talk to Anyone About the Climate Crisis”. I’ve worked hard to try and maintain the CCL brand in all of it and I’m working as a Grassroots Outreach person from my local chapter so as not to be just a rogue advocate.

I’m not sure how this is going to go, but I think it’s worth a try. Any ideas, comments or warnings  are welcome. 

Regards to all,
Mike
 
2 Replies
11/30/20 Update.
4 sessions of Coffee and Climate Conversation with Cooper done. First 2 - no visitors other than my local chapter leader coming by to say hi. I got one visitor on the 3rd session, an engineer from India and we had a great conversation. 3 visitors on the 4th session, 2 not staying very long (one of them had internet problems) and one staying for a nice conversation and a promise to return. I post on FB and Twitter. With the help of CCL (both my chapter and the main CCL group pages) and Dr. Katherine Hayhoe the posts are circulating and I'm picking up followers. I'm excited how well this is starting. If you want to spread the word. I'm on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 9:00 to 10:00 AM CST. I can go longer than 10:00 if a conversation is in progress. Here's the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7418807773?pwd=a3A2VzVJYXNpUFRwNjBkYVFOU2Jqdz09

Mike
Brett Cease
3862 Posts
Just wanted to pass on a big shot-out to Michael Cooper‍ and every CCL leader out there innovating and holding your own online climate conversations! We featured Mike's story on the recent CCL Online Outreach & Recruiting Ideas training and look forward to hearing how others are continuing to have important 1-on-1s and grassroots conversations online in their community! 😀

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