Proof Through the Night

The Core Exercises

Part 1: Benefits    Part 2: Voter Registration    Part 3: Picking Candidates

Part 4: Get News and Info    Part 5: Know Your Officials    Part 6: Easy Advocacy

Part 7: Know Yourself Politically    Part 8: Basics of Gov't.   Part 9: Don't Be Fooled

Part 10: Analyzing Issues    Part 11: Money & Politics    Part 12: Total Advocacy

Take the Test!

The Online Course (Introduction)

Course Purpose

This course is designed to help you get all the knowledge and skills you need to be an effective citizen. Doing this course will increase your political power. Increased power will allow you to stand up for your rights and your beliefs, and increased political power can help you to help others.

What you will learn – and how the course is organized.

The course is designed to take people up the following Ladder of Political Empowerment, from the bottom to the top:

Top level:  A voter who can analyze issues intelligently and who does higher-leverage advocacy.

Third rung:  A citizen who knows a little about issues, votes intelligently and also does some simple advocacy based on their current views and political beliefs.

Second rung: Voter who knows about candidates and can make somewhat intelligent choices.

First rung:  Mere voter. (Knows almost nothing about the candidates.)

Ground level: Non voter.

The advantage of this arrangement of the materials is that if you must stop without finishing, you will still gain some political power. Many organizations would be delighted if most Americans got to the third rung, but we are aiming for something greater.

Here’s what you need to do to climb to each rung:

To get to the first rung, do parts 1-2 of the training (benefits of political action, voter registration). The total time commitment is about 30 minutes.

To get to the second rung, do part 3 (picking candidates). The additional time commitment is to do the pre-election study: only about two hours, twice a year.

To get to the third rung, do a small section of part 4, and all of parts 5 and 6. (This includes getting news, learning about your officials, and doing simple advocacy).

To get to the top rung, do the rest of part 4 (news and info) and parts 7-11 (basics of government II, understanding your views, issue analysis and critical thinking, simple economics, advocacy II)

How you’ll learn

Some basic and widely-accepted educational ideas were used to design this course:

1. People learn information and skills more easily when they can see how they can help them get the things they want.

2. You retain things better when you work with something actively. -- That’s why we often make you search for information, rather than just have you read it. That’s why ask you to write down things, or answer questions orally if you are doing this course with someone else. That’s why we will ask you to write actual emails to your representatives, and why we ask you to analyze actual issues.

3. Repetition and review helps you to remember. That’s why we will ask you to review this information in four or eight years, and to retake our proficiency test.

4. Teaching someone else something helps you learn it more thoroughly. (Helping a friend become politically active also increases your political power.)

Ready to go?! Begin here: Part 1: Benefits of Political Action