Our Revolution Medford Groups and Liaisons
Last updated March 2021
Membership, Data, and Security Support Team
Programming & General Support Team
Issues & Policies Working Group
Support Teams are groups that perform the administrative and coordination work required to organize our members to achieve community goals.
This group plans OR’s monthly general membership meetings and social events. Community-wide support or administrative activities that don’t fall under an existing support team or working group often end up being projects of the Programming & General Support Team. The Programming & General Support Team can also help working groups plan big events.
As an all-volunteer organization, OR Medford strives to balance strategy and visioning with action. Therefore, the Programming & General Support Team will bring together the following ad-hoc groups for a meeting or series of meetings whenever OR Medford is in need of particular strategic planning or structure discussions:
This is an ad-hoc group that can be brought together whenever OR Medford is in need of strategic planning. The group is “on-call” and will coordinate activities based on the need at hand.
This is an ad-hoc group that can be brought together whenever OR Medford is in need of restructuring. The group is “on-call” and will coordinate activities based on the need at hand.
This group chooses books, articles, or other resources to read in community with OR members that pertain to issues that are relevant immediately and locally. Study from the groups is well-documented and produces research questions for further investigation that the research team then investigates. Research is undertaken in conjunction with relevant working groups and strengthens the work of those groups.
This group meets regularly to discuss assigned reading and documents their work and ideas throughout the process. They develop lists of research questions specific to Medford or state policies that affect Medford for future research.
This group performs needed research for the community, often but not always coming out of community-wide reading and study activities.
Working Groups are groups that plan and execute campaigns and projects that members can get involved in. These are usually long term areas of work that relate to OR Medford’s People’s Platform.
This group manages Our Revolution Medford’s engagement with local, state, and federal elections - including recruiting candidates, administering endorsements, training OR members and candidates to work on campaigns, mobilizing for endorsed candidates, and developing community coalitions to achieve all of these goals.
Convenes whenever the community wants to endorse candidates and issue-based ballot initiatives.
Coordinates electoral campaigns after endorsements have been made.
This group manages Our Revolution Medford’s relationship to the Medford City Council, School Committee, and other city government bodies. They organize around regular city meetings to get Medford People’s Platform policies passed. They also manage the voting process for OR Medford joining a campaign or coalition as explained in the Campaign Launch Toolkit. In “emergency” situations they are enabled to make membership-wide calls to action that can’t fit into our normal voting process because they require immediate, reactive action.
This subgroup meets or corresponds via email with OR Medford-endorsed city council representatives before city council meetings to review agendas and issues and advise on actions to be taken. They also help mobilize for city council meetings where a larger OR presence is needed.
This subgroup meets or corresponds via email with OR Medford-endorsed school committee representatives before school committee meetings to review agendas and issues and advise on actions to be taken. They also help mobilize for school committee meetings where a larger OR presence is needed.
This group develops PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) campaign strategies and actions. They attend regular PILOT meetings in coalition with OR Somerville, and communicate with Tufts and Medford leader stakeholders (particularly the mayor) on PILOT demands.
This person helps maintain OR Medford’s relationships with existing housing groups and housing-related commissions in Medford by bringing housing campaigns led by other groups to OR to support; or bringing campaigns OR Medford is interested in working on to partner with community groups (particularly Housing Medford)
This person helps maintain OR Medford’s relationships with existing environment or transportation groups and related city commissions by bringing issues and campaigns led by these groups to OR to support; or bringing campaigns OR Medford is interested in working on to partner with community groups.
This person is our official representative to Our Revolution Massachusetts. They attend occasional affiliate representative calls, manage communication between ORMA and OR Medford as needed, particularly around endorsement and election support. This is an elected position. Any OR member is eligible to nominate themselves or a friend. The liaison serves a 1-year term and elections occur around December or January each year.
To learn about how to start a new group, go here: https://ourrevolutionmedford.com/get-involved/