What if your organizing database felt less like a spreadsheet and more like the wall chart on a union hall wall? This week, Martha Grant of Action Network and Action Builder shares how she turned a labor organizing tradition into a tool built for leadership growth — plus how organizers are using it in ways she never expected.

Steve Pierce went from a 200-person house party gone rogue to Southern California field director for Swing Left. He joins Ocean of Organizing to talk about the fight to flip the Senate, why Maine's race against Susan Collins is a must-win, and the volunteer letter program turning strangers into voters. Plus: burnout, self-care, and the one canvassing tip every new volunteer needs to hear.

Most progressive messaging fails before it starts — vague slogans, borrowed fear tactics, and messages built by people who aren't the intended audience. Communications researcher Anat Shenker-Osorio joins the show to explain what actually moves persuadable voters: opening with shared values instead of problems, naming race explicitly instead of dodging it, and building messages your base will repeat, not just agree with.

Chris O'Connor never planned to work in fundraising. Five years into his role as Development Director at Equality Maine, he joins the show to explain why development work is really organizing work: rooted in relationships, community trust, and a clear connection to mission. From growing the annual gala from 380 to 720 guests to launching a first-ever golf tournament from a single Facebook post, Chris shares the mindset and tactics behind turning supporters into a sustaining community.

Ever wonder how Ocean of Organizing came to be? In this episode, host Benn Marine pulls back the curtain — from a 2016 statewide referendum campaign in Maine, through burnout and an independent study at USM, to the 2019 launch event that started it all. Plus: what the name "Ocean" actually stands for, and where the show is headed next.

Cooper Reed got his start in organizing at 12 years old, volunteering on Obama's 2008 campaign after a middle school class project. Now the Political and Organizing Director for the Maine Democratic Party, Cooper shares lessons from over a decade of candidate and issue campaigns — from the "persuasion triangle" to why face-to-face conversations still matter most in rural Maine.

Fresh off Netroots Nation, Benn sits down with a stream of organizers and vendors — Healthy Campaign, Civic Dinners, Tesla Collective, Center for Constitutional Rights, Vote Run Lead, National Popular Vote, GetThru, Action Network, and more — for rapid-fire conversations on the tools, tactics, and mission driving today's movement work. Plus: organizer advice from the conference floor.

Jeanmarie Gossard spent five years organizing marriage equality and LGBTQ rights campaigns across seven states. In this episode, she shares the stories that stuck with her — a Catholic legislator who changed his vote, a shy canvasser who found her voice, a trans canvasser forced to work in unsafe conditions — and reflects honestly on burnout, intersectionality, and where "winning" collides with doing the work right.

Sass Linekin's first act of organizing was helping erect a blockade on train tracks carrying fracked oil through their Maine community — a direct action that led to arrest, media coverage, and, within a year, an end to the oil trains passing through the state. In this conversation, Sass traces the path from that pivotal action to their current role directing resources for organizing and social change, reflecting on class, poverty, and what it really takes to build equitable movements.

Bestselling author Thom Hartmann joins the show to set the record straight on the Second Amendment — from its roots in fears of standing armies and slave patrols to how the NRA and the Supreme Court reshaped its meaning. He also shares the personal loss that shaped his writing and offers organizers real talk on fighting money in politics.

Monna Wong — former Executive Director of API Equality Northern California and a veteran of Maine's 2012 marriage equality campaign — talks with host Benn Marine about what it really takes to organize for the long haul: setting boundaries as a parent, measuring success by how people are treated (not just what gets won), and why asking for help should be part of every team's culture.

What does it take to build a local food system rooted in community, not charity? Urban farmer and organizer Chris Perez talks growing up without a farming background, discovering purpose through soil and seeds, and teaching LA youth that planting a garden is its own act of change.

Molly Griffard spent a decade running LGBTQ campaigns state by state before heading to law school. In this episode, she breaks down how organizers decide which fights to take on, why self-care isn't optional in this work, and what changes when you move from a single-issue campaign to a systemic fight like criminal justice reform.

Quinn Gormley, Executive Director of the Maine Transgender Network, shares how relational organizing—not campaign-style tactics—built a peer support network spanning 30+ groups statewide. From door-to-door trust-building in rural Maine to a life-saving crisis response, Quinn breaks down what long-term community organizing looks like when there's no single "win" to campaign toward.

Political scientist Francesca Vassallo joins the show to unpack how Europe's Green movement became a political party (and what organizers can learn from it), why "slow and steady" beats fast and hard, the difference between bridging and exclusionary social capital, and how France's protest culture gets results — from farmers dumping manure in Brussels to student movements ousting education ministers.

Recruitment starts with asking for help — and knowing how to ask well. In this episode, Benn walks through building your volunteer universe from the inside out, decoding "maybe" (it usually means no), and using the 5-50-500 pyramid to grow a team that actually shows up.

Sociologist Megan Brooker (UC Irvine) joins the show to unpack how social movements push political parties to change — even when their explicit policy goals fall short. From her own history in antiwar and Occupy organizing to her research on movements like Indivisible, Megan breaks down the tension between working inside institutional politics and building coalitions outside it, and why the most effective movements tend to do both at once.

Samaa Abdurraqib has organized in Maine since 2010 — reproductive justice, healthcare access, racial justice — but lately she's turned her energy inward, building spaces where Black and Brown Mainers can rest, create, and dream together. She talks about why that shift saved her from burnout, and why it's organizing work too.

Shane Diamond didn't set out to be a nonprofit founder — he backed into it after acting in a college performance about consent. Nine years later, he'd built Speak About It into a program reaching nearly 300,000 students. In this episode, Shane talks candidly about starting an organization with no roadmap, asking for help, avoiding burnout, and why "yes means yes" changed the conversation around sexual assault prevention.