Our "Big Meetup" went quite well. Users registered on dom.navalny.ru came offline to meet one another in person. It’s hard to give an exact number of participants, but by our estimate it was around 4,000–5,000 people. That’s 20% of the platform’s users. A good result, and we’ll aim even higher. Some campaign cubes (street canvassing stands) were absolutely packed.
Some places had smaller crowds, but local celebrities showed up instead.
In some places, it was just plain fun.
In some places, people even brought homemade pies.
Most importantly, here’s what we saw: 1) it works, 2) the feedback is positive, 3) people are happy to find like-minded others not only online but offline as well, 4) we are successfully accomplishing practical tasks — during the evening of the "Big Meetup," 450,000 copies of the third print run of our campaign newspaper were successfully distributed. That’s impressive.
Let’s build on this success right now, because we’re in the final stretch of the election campaign. Pensioners. This is the most important group for canvassing — a group the Kremlin crowd sees as its own turf. In fact, they more or less say so openly: it’s impossible to win elections here, because we have pensioners whose minds we shape through television. But we know for sure: pensioners are an extremely friendly and receptive audience for campaigning; grandmothers and grandfathers like to talk. I’ve held 80 meetings in Moscow neighborhoods and near metro stations. About 70% of the audience at these meetings were pensioners. I know what I’m talking about. Specifically to strengthen the impact of these meetings and to campaign among pensioners and other local residents who are devoted TV watchers, our headquarters has had a publishing operation running all this time, which produced a neighborhood newspaper after each meeting. They’re titled things like "Navalny in Butovo," "Navalny in Troitsk," and "Navalny in Otradnoye."
Each meeting gets its own issue covering the topics discussed there. We distribute the newspaper through professional mailbox delivery as well, but we also want to distribute it through you. Experience has shown that activists do a far better job of distribution. Right now we have 300,000 copies of newspapers for different neighborhoods in our warehouse. Today we’ll send them to the campaign cubes (street canvassing stands) in the relevant districts. There, they’ll be carefully packed into branded bags so they’re easy to carry away.
It’s very important that today you go to the campaign cube nearest you via Dom.navalny.ru where a neighborhood newspaper is available (these are marked in yellow, and the operating hours are listed for each one), split into pairs or groups, and head out for a short walk around the neighborhood: the more grandmothers, grandfathers, and other local residents you can give a newspaper to, the better. Good places for handing out newspapers include courtyards, transit stops, polyclinics (public outpatient clinics), Sberbank branches, and other places local residents visit. This is what it should look like where you’ve been:
To make campaigning together more enjoyable — and to help you discuss afterward how to make it better — we’ve launched district chats and an option to share your contact details with one another. In other words, it’s now easier to get to know your neighbors. If you want people to be able to add you as a friend, click on your profile and check the box next to “share data” — then strangers will be able to see your name and avatar. If you don’t want to make your profile visible, everything will stay as it was. Take part. This is a crucial canvassing action. The local newspaper is being received very well. In just a couple of hours, you can do a huge amount of good and make a real contribution to the election campaign. dom.navalny.ru