Rural Organizing Project

supports the growing grassroots movement for social justice in small-town and rural Oregon by assisting locally-organized human dignity groups. The ROP provides human dignity groups with many forms of support including skills training, strategic planning, outreach development, and opportunities to plug into statewide grassroots organizing. ROP works with members and member groups in every county in the state. Contact us at office@rop.org for more information about a group in your area, or for support in developing your local human dignity group.

Rural Organizing Project
PO Box 1350, Scappoose, OR 97056

(503) 543-8417 Fax: (503) 543-8419

office@rop.org

Rural Organizing Project

Bring Our National Guard Home to Oregon NOW! CLICK HERE

Rural Group Supports Voters from Start to Finish on Election Day:

Building Relationships Translates to Voter Turnout

Scappoose, Oregon – In a year where much has been said about the value of community organizing and small towns, rural Oregon has a story of its own to tell about both.

Rural Organizing Project started their organizing for Election Day nearly a year ago. As one of Oregon’s only grassroots organizations that engage in non-partisan voter engagement strictly in small town and rural communities, ROP began educating and mobilizing volunteers in January through their network of 62 local human dignity groups.

An initial statewide gathering of 112 rural community leaders in Hood River in April 2008 grew to a voter mobilization effort that has included more than 412 volunteers in all 36 of Oregon’s counties. These ROP volunteers have knocked on 35,110 doors, made 6365 phone calls, held 33 ballot measure forums reaching 871 people, and distributed 65,000 voters guides by and for small town voters.

According to Ann Kneeland, a local leader with ROP member group Seeking Out Democracy in Junction City, “We’ve been around as a group for 4 years now, but it’s really in the last year that we’ve made the most gains in terms of contacts with the community.”

Like Seeking Out Democracy, another ROP member group Human Dignity Advocates in Prineville began contacting the community in May using a door-to-door survey that asked neighbor to weigh in on contentious issues of the day. This listening to neighbors approach allowed the local group to learn about the concerns in their town while also taking the first step in a relationship that carries on through Election Day. Over 400 neighbors were surveyed, sent a personal thank you note, and then invited to a community ballot measure discussion in mid-October. The group’s final contact was hand delivering voters guides with a personal greeting from their local group to 1000 households representing over 10% of the population of Prineville.

"I was really expecting a lot of door slamming," said Kathy Paterno, Human Dignity Advocates leadership team member and ROP Board member, "But there wasn't a lot of animosity at all. The intention was to have conversations with the community - to give them a chance to talk about the issues. There were people from the far left to the far right. They seemed happy to give their opinion. This election was different than others because there were a lot of people disgruntled with the way things are. We felt people were paying greater attention."

This attention from local community volunteers and persistence from the Rural Organizing Project is paying off. While voter turnout rates will not be completely known until after Election Day, as of Tuesday morning, 85% of ROP contacts had returned their ballots. This compares with a statewide voter return rate of 55% on November 2nd according to the latest figures from the Secretary of State.

For more information on the rural election of November 2008, CLICK HERE.

Rural Organizing Project is Oregon’s grassroots organization that is moving democracy forward in rural Oregon. For more information, go to www.rop.org.

Mobilizing our communities for Freedom and Democracy on November 4th and beyond!

Join ROP's Freedom Voters Campaign

Annual Rural Caucus & Strategy Session
Saturday, April 26th
*Hood River, OR

On April 26th, ROPers from every corner of the state gathered along the banks of the Columbia River for a day together at the Rural Caucus and Strategy Session focused on "Dismantling the War at Home and Abroad ".

I looked around the room and thought: "These people understand me. The issues I care about are their issues, too. We don't have to pretend to be someone else or to explain what we are thinking. We are so much alike, and I am happy here." - Alice McCain, Coastal Progressives, Lincoln County

We kicked off our time together by affirming our role as movement minded human dignity activists. Read more

Dismantling the War; at Home and Abroad

During WWII, African American soldiers would wave a Double V for victory abroad over the Nazis and victory at home over racism. Similarly today, while we are working to stop the war in Iraq, there is a domestic front to that war being waged here at home on the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community. All of this in the name of "security." And all of this to the benefit of the same private corporate contractor few that claim to do security well, never mind civil liberties or human rights or economic justice. Read More on Dismantling the War at Home and Abroad.

December 2007

The only answer to organized money is organized people. ~Bill Moyers

Dear Friends of the Rural Organizing Project,

You don't get to choose your moment in history but you do get to choose how you act in it.

As we enter 2008, we find the majority of Americans leaning to the 'left', with the Democratic Party poised to regain political power in the country. Still, the problems that led to the Democratic resurgence remain intractable: a war that Congress cannot or will not stop, the danger of military escalation, a pro-torture Attorney General approved with bi-partisan support, and behind these problems, the relentless rise of a 'privatized' government, from Blackwater to Halliburton, that uses the expanding disasters of our world as opportunities for private profit. The challenges vary, but they are often dire.

Yet there is also a positive aspect to our times. Since the old fixes are not providing solutions, we get to be smart, creative and local, building concrete alternatives for the future we desire. READ MORE

Background

ROP is a statewide organization of locally-based groups that work to create communities accountable to a standard of human dignity: the belief in the equal worth of all people, the need for equal access to justice, and the right to self-determination.

Starting in 1992, ROP’s challenges to the anti-democratic right have earned ROP a national reputation for being an effective grassroots organization that takes on the hard issues. The catalyst for ROP was the Oregon Citizens Alliance and their outrageous Abnormal Behaviors Initiative, which targeted gay and lesbian Oregonians for legalized second-class citizenship. Oregonians in small towns across the state were mobilized, many for the first time, as basic tenets of the Constitution were at risk through this ballot initiative. ROP stepped into this organizing opportunity to fill a niche the radical right was trying to claim.

ROP today works with 45 member groups, and another 25 contact groups, to organize on issues that impact human dignity and to advance inclusive democracy. Click the button below to read the annual report.

2008-2013 Five Year Plan