Speakers
Get a well-known professor or an outside speaker to give a talk. SEAC’s Speakers’ Bureau is an excellent source of grassroots activists. Only the audience will be directly affected, but the press you’ll get and the fact the talk occurred gives your group and the issue visibility and prestige, as well as a new contact in academia or elsewhere. Make sure that the speaker is on a topic that builds your group’s campaigns.

If the atmosphere is right, do something with all the people there. Don’t let “political capital” go to waste. Get them to write letters, sign up for an activity, or fundraise. Hold a small group meeting after the speaker to draw people into your group.


Tabling
This means setting up a table in a central location, sitting there or standing in front of it, and enticing people to come have a look. This gives you a chance to talk to passers-by, tell them about your group, get them to write letters (try to get them to write it there or they won’t do it), sell buttons and T-shirts, sign petitions, and whatever else. Ideally get them to join the group. Always have a sign up sheet for your group mailing list! Put up a colorful banner to attract them, and spread literature over the table so that the titles show. Dining halls, student unions, outside on warm days, and events are good places to get a crowd.

Don’t just sit behind a table with literature on it (juggle, breathe fire, sing, shout revolutionary slogans, throw candy); tabling should be dynamic and interpersonal. Ask passersby a question: “Should our school invest in corporations that kill indigenous people?” As with canvassing it’s good to work in pairs, with a more experienced person training someone new. You can train by doing some role-playing with each other—coming up to the table, acting bored, interested, antagonistic, whatever. One effective method is to have one person catching the flow of people and directing them to the table, while the other person talks to them in detail, signs them up, etc.

Tabling is a good way to involve new people and build a sense of group identity; do it weekly, if you can. As with leafleting, make sure that people who are signed up are sure they’ll come, and that the first batch knows where to pick up the materials and where to leave them when done.