Martha published an intriguing essay on how our local Post offices could help lead the way into resiliency for our local communities.
http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-let-post-offices-lead-way
She challenged us to a thought experiment on how to make this vision practical. So last night I did a back-of-the-napkin sketch of a plan for making the vision practical. As usual, I babbled on endlessly :=) I post it here as a departure point for a c99 brainstorming session on transforming our Post Offices from the ground up.
See, what little public thinking there is about revitalizing our Post Offices after decades of corporatist kneecapping, is all about the national vision. We all know that top-down revitalization is nevah gonna happen. Unless, unless, we the people begin to transform our local PO branches from the ground up, beginning in our local communities - neighbourhoods, suburbs, villages, rural towns, small towns. So how would we do it? Where would we start? Let me show you below.

I use our two-fold distinction of personal and local resilience.
So where's what we could do as individuals, and then as a local community.

Personal:

Post packages through the PO, even when it costs more and goes slower.
Use private courier companies only when unavoidable. If we support our PO financially, it would regain some of it's ability to compete with them on price and speed.
Become friends with the PO workers.
Hear from them about the local PO. Hear their views on "what should be done." Most of all, let them know we support them and will stand by them.
Write letters to our local politicians, federal representatives, LTEs, etc to raise awareness.
Talk with friends and family about the PO and specifically the local PO.

Local Community:

1) Create an informal local interest group
- with the intention of moving towards something similar to the "Friends of the Library" groups in local communities.
Find the local folks who have a heart for restoring public services for the common good and meet over a drink, drawing in others through the seven degrees of relationships.
A lot of the Friends of the Library type of folks would have a similar interest in saving and expanding the local PO.
So activists could begin with them: sit down with their members and ask questions about who, what, where, how, why, when, and so on. Then make plans from there.

2) Next, create a formal "Friends of the PO" group
Brainstorm with interested folks. At first, all three of them, including you and your spouse :=)
For heaven's sake, make sure to include someone bright from the PO workers. Pick the sharper of the two :=)

3) Create an awareness campaign
Do conscientization.
Find resources and free media.
Think of your local civic orgs and schools; make presentations to them about the value and potential of your local PO.
Create "Support Our PO" doo-dads, like bumper stickers, lapel pins, school pencils, etc. Ask your local civic orgs - like the Lions, Rotarians, Knights of The Great Pumpkin, etc - to pay for the doo-dads.
Help the PO to create a float in the village's Christmas Parade.
Find speakers on PO/Common Good issues and bring them in. I know; the buggers usually charge a lot. See blackmailing below :=)

4) Connect the dots
Find all the similarly threatened public services in your local community and bind them together.
Join together the Library, the Food Bank, the PO, the public transit, all such into a "Protect the Common Good Here In Our Local Community" movement.
Use the library as the common meeting point.

5) Involve your local government
Do whatever you can to get some insiders onside.
Find create ways to get some of them interested in the welfare of the PO. Usually this takes food, drink, money, and/or hookers.
Oh, and blackmail, where feasible :=) "Ah, Councillor X, remember when I protected you form all the bullies in primary school? It's payback time."
The brighter ones will see the public good. Some will even care.
Find someone who is good at schmoozing local gov. S/he doesn't have to care about the PO, but maybe care about something or someone that would make them help the PO cause.

6) Find a sugar daddy
Find an outside organization or a person who can inject money and expertise into the PO project.
See for example in the resource library the links to the Institute for Local Self-reliance and others who have a heart for the common good, local empowerment, and public service.
There will be organizations at the national level who advocate for the Post office. Get them to back your group. It's time they did something actually useful.

These first six steps should have built a solid base of support for now transforming the PO through the next two steps.

7) Work on a handful of pilot programmes
Now find those great ideas out there that your group could implement: ones that could be "integrated" in unofficial ways into the life of the local PO.
For example, there must be some smaller things that the local municipality or civic orgs could run through the PO.
Think of low-hanging-fruit pilot projects, ones that would not alarm the POs or governments' bureaucrats.
Here's a quick example: our provincial health dept runs a healthy food-purchase programme in our rural towns.
We pay $10 for a large bag of fresh veggies and fruit every 2nd week.
Lovie volunteers for them - packs bags for folks. I also tried to help, but the ptsd made a mess of it.
In our village, they left the hockey arena when the bastards wanted them to pay rent. Now they're happy in our local French school.
In a similar circumstance, why not offer the PO building's back storage room? (Not the mail room :=) It's maybe not a realistic example, but it gives the general idea of low-fruit projects that would wrap the PO tightly into the civic fabric of the local community.

8) Work on longer term plans for the real transformative projects
Draw in outside expertise on removing or bypassing the legal, financial obstacles.
Build sound, flexible plans with defined action steps and responsibilities.

Example A
The most well-know example is postal banking, (very important) as close to free as possible.
So, add a credit union service to the PO.
Sneak it in. Start a local credit union and run it out of the local PO with external staff at a separate counter.
So it would in the Post Office, but not of the Post Office :=) at first.
Until these national PO advocates get laws changed or their enforcement capacity collapses (which it will, real soon.)
Make sure never to use corporatist legal frames for PO or nay public good projects. Always use cooperatives as the base legal frame.

Example B
Add a free wi-fi service to the PO.
Get the town to pay for it.

Well, that's all I could come up with off the top of my head. I hope it is helpful and I invite you to do some brainstorming: add comments, ideas, info, examples, etc. I think that c99 could do a lot of practical good if we do more brainstorming sessions together.

As Bernie says, "There is nothing we can't do if we stand together."

Thank you to Martha for introducing this important topic and for initiating the brainstorming session.
Peace be with us all, if we work towards making our local communities more resilient,
gerrit