Advancing Our Agenda in Virginia
by Michael Smart, Field Coordinator for Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland
The John Birch Society was founded as an educational and activist organization. As such, members should not only participate in organized chapter activism, but also look for opportunities on an individual basis as well.
In the commonwealth of Virginia, opportunities abound. For example, Richmond, Virginia, chapter DAVF, under the leadership of Dick Snider, has been active in many ways to build the informed electorate we need to save our Republic. Members Raymond Hagenbuch and Don Blake have distributed cases of The New American to groups and “influencers” on a variety of topics. Other DAVF members have spoken at school-board, city-council, and county-commission meetings as well as regularly pulled a shift at our JBS booth at the Richmond Gun Show.
Other Virginia chapters have also been making a big impact. On top of hosting a couple of The Constitution Is the Solution series every year, Tom Redfern of chapter QKOT in Petersburg, Virginia, has been leading our efforts to stop an Article V constitutional convention for several years. Led by Tom, members from all over the commonwealth have been working tirelessly to educate their fellow citizens and state legislators on this dangerous effort.
Whether or not you’re involved with a local chapter, please ask yourself: What are some effective pieces of literature I could be using for outreach? Keeping our Power of 500 strategy (which you can view at https://jbs.org/power500/) in mind, distribute JBS/TNA literature such as our Congressional Scorecards, found at TheFreedomIndex.org. Find your members of Congress, and print and distribute the Scorecards with the goal of building an informed electorate. Follow up with our “Back to Basics” pamphlet or another piece of literature on a topic of interest. When the time is appropriate, organize a group presentation using Overview of America or The Constitution Is the Solution, which you can find at https://gojt.us/07k4 and https://gojt.us/8z65.
Remember, the key to saving our Republic is an informed electorate — an electorate that understands and desires constitutionally limited government. That is simply not going to happen unless we take the responsibility upon ourselves. The best way to accomplish that is through active membership in The John Birch Society — and our chapters in Virginia and elsewhere are testament to this.