Title: People Are Our Power. So Why Aren’t We Training Them?

In every campaign, we talk about three core resources: time, money, and people.

The amount of time is fixed - and unless you’re Doctor Who, you don’t get more of it. Money? We’ve gotten better at raising it, but we still struggle to spend it wisely.

But people - our volunteers, organizers, digital activists, and local leaders - they are our most valuable resource. We have the people. We’re just not investing in them. Not emotionally - we do that. But practically. In training. In tools. In the skills they need to win.

Let me be blunt: we are failing to train the people who want to help us win.

Our people still show up. They protest. They knock on doors. They share posts. But too often, they’re using outdated tools with little support and no real guidance on how to be effective in today’s decentralized, digital-first environment.

Look at digital. We’ve got passionate supporters online - but thanks to social media algorithms, most of what they share never escapes the progressive echo chamber. And our field programs? They still rely on strangers knocking on strangers’ doors, often in communities where a Ring doorbell is more likely to record silence than spark conversation. One voter told me, “A stranger at my door just feels like a salesperson now.”

We’re still running 1990s field programs in a 2025 media world.

And here’s the kicker: the bright, committed folks who sign up to work on campaigns often don’t know how to communicate in this environment either. And we don’t train them. We hand them canned programs, outsource to consultants, or give them platforms to manage—when we should be teaching them to organize communities, create content, tell stories, and move people in lasting, authentic ways.

Here’s what I know to be true:

I’d rather have 10,000 people communicating locally in their communities than 1,000 managing tools from an app.

Everyone who wants to be part of this movement has a phone or a laptop. That means everyone can be a communicator. Everyone can be an organizer. But only if we train them.

This is personal for me. I came up in the days of Project 500, EMILY’s List, Wellstone Action, Participation 2000 - when we trained thousands of everyday people every year: teachers, janitors, students, grandmothers. They didn’t need to be experts. They just needed to know what to do. And we gave them the tools to do it.

Today? There are still great training programs out there - but they’re underfunded, under-recognized, and nowhere near the scale this moment demands.

Let’s be real: The progressive movement doesn’t have a people problem. We have a training problem.

We can put a million people on the street. But what happens when they get home?

We need a nationwide, tech-enabled, grassroots-powered training initiative that turns people into organizers, communicators, and digital messengers—in their towns, their churches, their unions, their group chats. And we need to equip the people and communities most harmed by Trump’s attacks with the tools to fight back—on their terms, in their voices.

This isn’t about another campaign app. It’s not just another webinar. It’s about real training. Ongoing support. Local leadership. Creative autonomy.

And most importantly, it’s about letting go of top-down control. The future of organizing is bottom-up, networked, and noisy. That’s where our power lives.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing ideas and proposals for rebuilding the training infrastructure our movement so urgently needs. I hope you’ll join the conversation.

Our people are ready.
Let’s give them the tools to fight.

What do you think? Comment below—or reach out if you're running a training, building curriculum, or have lessons from the field. Let’s start learning—and winning—together.