Mapping Your Political Territory

This is the second post in a series on how to organize and be heard in public discourse. It’s largely US-centric, but many principles will apply to any liberal democratic civil society setting.

I want to tell you about being a Jehovah’s Witness in the last decades of the 20^th Century.

They’ve changed a few things since then. For instance, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has a website now, and Witnesses no longer tell each other that the Internet is Satanic.

(On the other hand, if you read the comments under news articles, or just Twitter, maybe staying off the Internet isn’t such a terrible idea most of the time! Grain of truth, and all that.)

For another thing, they do less of the door-to-door ministry that I’m about to explain, in favor of standing with a portable magazine display in high-traffic areas.

Anyway! Witnesses who can do so are strongly urged to go out “in service,” from the teens on up, and spread the Word to unbelievers.

Hardly anyone is a Witness, so you’d think, well, target-rich environment, right? You can go anywhere. But there was a system to it to make sure they didn’t miss anyone if they could help it.

Every congregation in a Kingdom Hall—often, one ch…