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Anthony Thigpenn: “The most important lessons that we’ve learned over this period of time that we’ve gone from starting doing just direct organizing and integrated in the voter participation work, first is the sustained effort – that you have to stick with it over time and build it a step at a time. We didn’t jump to thirty or sixty thousand contacts; we started with two thousand contacts, and built from there by the sustained effort. A key lesson for us, and this came from my past experience before SCOPE, was having the base first. Having spent the time doing the organizing, developing our leaders, having experience in public policy campaigns and having the staff with those kinds of experiences, was key to not letting the election begin to drive our work. But seeing that as a component of our work, but not driving our work itself.”