Want to host an event? To help out our grassroots activist partners we are having different people and organizations host events associated with our brand on their own platforms to help them to build up their outreach. Here are links to discussion panels hosted by our activist partners Jay Rene of Prison Riot Radio and Kori Edens who is an activist fighting against abuse of university administrators.

The Unified Platform events have often been moderated by a team of activists. If you check out the playlist of our US Presidential debate series in 2024, you will see that we always had three to four moderators including some of the longest wrongfully incarcerated men in US history, Marc Safman, an advocate in the disability community and significant figures in the third party space such as Josh Hadley who was elected to City Council while running as a Green Party candidate.

Have you been working for years on the issues and would you be interested in hosting a discussion panel or workshop?

If you do decide to host a discussion panel or workshop your event will be listed on our Events page and CalendarYou will be able to use the UP26 logo on your fliers and you will be listed as a partnering organization on the front page. There is no cost from our side to host a discussion panel or workshop for the UP26 project.

Event Guide (discussion panel):

The purpose of these discussion panels is to help the candidates shape their policy proposals. It is recommended that discussion panels follow the following format

Program opening (optional)

Opening remarks are optional and can represent a wide variety of views. Opening remarks should not extend beyond 5 minutes.

Up to two 5 to 10 minute presentations by different relevant grassroots organizations or potential underwriters can be at the start of the program.

A main presenter with a half hour presentation can be scheduled to help inform candidates about different issues or to pitch an organization or idea. This pitch or information session should be related to the main topic of the discussion panel and provide significant value with regards to helping candidates to shape how they propose policy.

The main event

The main portion and the rest of the time should be an open discussion panel with candidates suggesting their proposals followed by discussion with recommendations by other participating panelists. If any candidates oppose the policy presented they have an opportunity to help the proposer modify their policy in order to secure their support. The moderator should attempt to maximize the number of policy proposals discussed and if an agreement does not look like it will be reached then the moderator should move things along.

The moderator is encouraged to make sure that policies can be adjusted in session to try to get unanimous support. This event is not to argue about what positions are right or wrong. These things will be decided in the vote. Suggestions can be recommended by other panelists to help the policy proposal receive support, but if the policy proposer does not want to make the adjustment then that is fine. The policy amender and the original policy proposer can submit their own independent policy proposals through the suggestion form.

Recommendations

Work to give all candidates the opportunity to speak.

Please make captions available when possible for those with disabilities. If accomodations are requested you can contact me or Marc Safman of Safman consulting for recommendations.

Discourge remarks that do not move things forward. Long winded speeches about how "wrong" something is takes away time from candidates who would like to present their proposals for productive recommendations from others. The goal of the discussion panels are to help candidates generate proposals that can obtain unanimous or supermajority report (2/3rds support) and make it into the final Unified Platform

If possible try to livestream the event and provide a way for the general public to get in on the conversation.

Event Guide (workshop):

Workshops are structured to share information in a way that does not necessarily directly build towards the Unified Platform document itself, but rather provide value to our participants in other ways. Some workshops we have planned are scheduled to help candidates learn how to run a campaign with and without professional consultants, and also a summary session to track the progress of the Unified Platform project. If you would like to make a presentation of something that is helpful to our candidates, our activists, or our audience then please contact me. Thanks!