Facilitators: Ron Gross, NYSUT Second Vice President and Jennifer Kaseman, NYSUT Director of Membership Growth and Organizing; Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office

The Local Action Project (LAP) is about building power within locals. This session will provide an overview on the steps teams will take over the next two years to build power and accomplish their goals. Participants will review pillars of LAP — Organizing, Social Justice, Political and Community Engagement and how each relate to their project. Teams will explore the differences between strategic planning from year one and the campaign planning that will be the focus for their work in year two.

Facilitators: Loren Fountaine, Labor Relations Specialist, North Country Regional Office; Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office

Do your vision, mission, and values:

• Build local capacity?
• Inform the selected campaign?
• Benefit your members?
• Impact your recruitment, engagement, and development of new and current members?
• Need to be tweaked?

In this session, participants will be asked to review the work they did last year surrounding their vision, mission and values.

Facilitators: Deborah Lloyd-Priest, Labor Relations Specialist, Southern Tier Regional Office; Jennifer Romer, Labor Relations Specialist, Capital District Regional Office

How will you move your LAP campaign? Participants in this workshop will reflect upon their current leadership structure. They will analyze their local data to create a strategy to “expand their bench.” This will be essential to moving their campaign and other LAP initiatives.

Facilitators: Loren Fountaine, Labor Relations Specialist, North Country Regional Office; Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office

Campaigns are used for a variety of situations including, but not limited to funding, negotiations, non-contractual issues, contractual issues, school budgets/budgeting, Board of Education elections, coalitions and addressing concerns in the community. A tenet of LAP is the ability for the locals to create and sustain campaigns around issues that are important to their union and the community they serve. This workshop will familiarize participants with core components of a successful campaign.

Facilitators: Jennifer Kaseman, NYSUT Director of Membership Growth and Organizing; Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office; Kathryn Dein, North Babylon Teachers Organization

Facilitators: Jennifer Kaseman, NYSUT Director of Membership Growth and Organizing; Loren Fountaine, Labor Relations Specialist, North Country Regional Office

The first step in developing a campaign is identifying an issue and determining the demand. Participants in this session will review the best practices for choosing an issue to organize around and create a campaign that will resolve or mitigate an identified issue.

Facilitator: Loren Fountaine, Labor Relations Specialist, North Country Regional Office

Before you plan your strategy, you will need to assess the political and community landscape. In this session, you will learn how to make political assessments to determine support for your local’s campaign demand and how to conduct a power analysis to determine members of the community who can lend their support to help you win your campaign demand. Locals will have time to review their specific political landscapes and conduct a power analysis around their issue and demand.

Facilitators: Emiljana Ulaj, Regional Political Organizer, Tarrytown Regional Office; Louisa Fletcher Pacheco, Regional Political Organizer, Western New York Regional Office

Once you have determined your issue and campaign demand, you will create a strategy for winning your campaign. This session will walk you through the steps needed to create a strategy that will move the decision makers to “yes.”

Facilitators: Rose Hennessy, Organizer, Western New York Regional Office; Ada Martinez, Organizer, Headquarters

An effective leadership and activist structure backed by reliable action teams is critical to the success of any local. Participants will analyze their current leadership and activist structure using charting and mapping. Teams will create a plan to recruit an action team that is reflective of the membership, while in collaboration with the current leadership structure.

Facilitators: Rose Hennessy, Organizer, Western New York Regional Office; Ada Martinez, Organizer, Headquarters

Participants in this session will discern what makes a good tactic based on their issue, goal/demand, target and strategy. They will examine the best practices for developing, analyzing and escalating tactics to achieve their goal.

Facilitator: Deborah Lloyd-Priest, Labor Relations Specialist, Southern Tier Regional Office

This session will focus on the best practices for digital campaign tactics that use social media and other digital communication tools to organize members/community and move decision-makers.

Facilitators: Jennifer Kaseman, NYSUT Director of Membership Growth and Organizing; Tom McMahon, Labor Relations Specialist, Tarrytown Regional Office

This session will examine the significance of one-to-one conversations. Participants will have an opportunity to develop one-to-one conversations to move members or communities into action relevant to their campaign.

Facilitators: Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office; Jennifer Romer, Labor Relations Specialist, Capital District Regional Office

In this session you will learn the power of your relationships and how to move decision makers from marginal support to full support of your campaign. Locals will brainstorm tactics to move political targets in their campaign.

Facilitators: Emiljana Ulaj, Regional Political Organizer, Tarrytown Regional Office; Louisa Fletcher Pacheco, Regional Political Organizer, Western New York Regional Office

This session focuses on what you have learned throughout the week and understanding how to apply that learning to your campaign plans along with your own relational resources. Locals will brainstorm tactics to engage the community in moving targets in their campaign.

Facilitators: Emiljana Ulaj, Regional Political Organizer, Tarrytown Regional Office; Louisa Fletcher Pacheco, Regional Political Organizer, Western New York Regional Office

Communicating effectively within your union and to the outside world is crucial to running a successful advocacy campaign. In this session, participants will create a communications plan based on their campaign objectives. Participants will then identify the best practices for key campaign communication tactics.

Facilitators: James Morrison, NYSUT Director of Communications; Ben Amey, Media Relations Representative, Communications

Participants will demonstrate how to identify specific goals in their campaign timelines. The overall goal of these tactics is to apply pressure on the targeted outcomes. Participants will have an opportunity to take inventory of their tactics and determine the placement of tactics on their “campaign mountain.”

Facilitator: Steve Lagnena, Labor Relations Specialist, Suffolk Regional Office

In this session participants will review the booklet your LAP team will use to identify campaign demands, targets, strategies and needed resources. We will review campaign phases and timeline, and discuss best practices when thinking about your resource requests.

Facilitators: Jennifer Kaseman, NYSUT Director of Membership Growth and Organizing; Jeff Lockwood, NYSUT CFO, Director of Finance

This workshop will feature our 3^rd year graduating LAP locals.  The 1^st and 2^nd year teams will have time with each of the 3^rd year locals.  The 3^rd year locals will be giving advice and lessons “from the trenches.”  1^st and 2^nd year locals will also have time to ask questions of the 3^rd year locals.