by Dean Briggs
If you want to know more about local Indivisible groups in Massachusetts, or Indivisible Mass Coalition (IMC), this brief guide may help.
- If you’d like to find a local group, click here.
- If you’d like to join IMC, click here.
- If you’ve recently created a new Indivisible group, congratulations! Tell us about it here.
What IMC Does
IMC identifies issues that concern members or groups so they can work on them together. The scope may be local, regional, state-level, or national. IMC working teams may operate within local groups, across local groups, as statewide efforts, in coordinated actions with Allies (below), or as part of national campaigns. Actions may include rallies, door-knocking for citizen education, electronic messaging campaigns, calls to legislators, lobby days at the State House, or postcarding campaigns.
Currently, Indivisibles are focused on coordinated action with more than a dozen progressive action groups statewide to leverage our blue state strength with our state and federal legislators.
How IMC Is Structured
Indivisible across the country is, at its core, a collection of local groups. They are all part of the national organization, which we refer to as Indivisible National.
IMC is an all-volunteer statewide umbrella organization that supports and uplifts the work of Massachusetts’ local groups but does not govern them. Internally, overall coordination of the statewide organization is provided by a Coordinating Board (CB), and a chairperson. IMC receives support from Indivisible National through Indivisible’s Senior Organizing Manager for Northern New England and Massachusetts.
Members of local groups also may serve on one or more statewide groups within IMC.
IMC Coordinating Board
Indivisible members who live in one of Massachusetts’ nine U.S. congressional districts vote to elect a person to IMC’s Coordinating Board, which represents the Indivisible members in their district. Any IMC member may run in the annual elections to fill the seats. (Even numbered districts in even years, odd numbered districts in odd years, however, any district with no representative can be elected in any year of the vacancy.)
The IMC CB supports local groups so they can be successful by:
- enabling them to collaborate statewide on issues for a larger impact.
- connecting them to the nationwide movement.
- providing them with information on state-level issues.
- offering best practices or tools that small groups might not have access to.
IMC Standing Teams
Indivisibles volunteer to serve on IMC Standing Teams that provide support to the organization over the long term. They include Communications, Technology, Racial Justice and Equity, and Recruitment, Engagement andTraining. Join a team here. Have an idea for a new team? Send a message here.
IMC Action Teams
Action Teams are statewide teams that focus on a related set of issues, short- or long-term, and the most long-lived of those is the Feminist Action Team, whose chief focus is reproductive rights. Action Teams bring together activists from multiple local Indivisible groups and may coordinate with allied groups. Join a team here. Have an idea for a new team? Send a message here.
Allies
Allies are organizations or coalitions that share similar values and goals as Indivisible. IMC also participates in coalitions that our members have voted to endorse. Allies may be strictly Massachusetts-based groups or chapters of national organizations. Members of allied organizations may collaborate with IMC Action Teams, on legislation, or on joint events.
Indivisible National
The national organization was established following President Trump’s first election by its co-founders and co-executive directors, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin. They wrote a guide to political action at the local level. It went viral, and recognizing a need, the national organization grew organically and supports local groups and statewide organizations or groups. Their current political action guide is here and you can also find them on Bluesky.
Communication and Collaboration
IMC values getting together in groups, but much of our work is done remotely–using Zoom or other video conferencing services. Accordingly, participating in IMC local, statewide, and national requires a willingness to use online tools—and perhaps learn some new ones—to get the work done. These are not difficult to learn, and plenty of help is available to assist you.
Mass Communication
IMC has two main channels: our email newsletter, Mass Action, and our website blog, IndivisiBlog, both products of the Communications Team. Both publications vitally depend on contributions from members statewide: stories and story ideas, news items, notices of upcoming events, photos and illustrations, and suggestions for stories to republish from other sources.
IMC is also active on the social media sites Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Bluesky.
Events are usually scheduled through Zoom or Mobilize, and if you are on our mailing list, you will receive email messages about upcoming events. If you’re not seeing them, check your spam folder or sign up here.
Team Communications
Our various teams and individuals use Slack, a free online app, for internal communication and collaboration. It is similar to (but simpler than) Microsoft Teams. There is a wealth of online help as well as IMC team member assistance with Slack for new team members. If you want a Slack account with IMC, click here.
For group communication on team projects we recommend you use that team’s Slack channel. For person-to-person communication with Slack you can use direct messages, or DMs.
Documents are created, stored, and viewed on Google Drive. If you’ve attended an Indivisible Zoom call, you’ve seen slides, documents, or spreadsheets that are Google Drive files. From time to time, members will be sent links to documents on Google Drive.
Security is increasingly a consideration, and for person-to-person secure communication we recommend Signal, the free encrypted messaging application that can run on Macs and Windows PCs. It is also available for iPhone and Android users in their app stores.
Local Group Communications
Indivisible local groups use email, Facebook, Bluesky, or their own websites, as well as IMC Slack. You can find local groups here, and new ones are continually being added.
Dean Briggs is a member of the IMC Communications Team.
