I highly doubt there's anything pro-foss that's actually going to have any shot at forming a local group. Federated tech is niche, odds of 2 people in the same 300 mile radius is pretty slim. Let alone trying for 2 that are looking for the same kind of meetup etc...

So yeah sadly I think you pretty much gotta go with a garbage service like meetup, or even worse, facebook groups. Good federated services have to kind of lean heavily into the fact that we can pull from an international pool to make the userbase workable. Once you go down to local levels... you are pretty screwed.

Maybe ask around and request to put up posters in a local library?

Also, see if your local university has a group already, and maybe if the age difference isn’t creepy, see if you can hang with them.

Have you looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilizon and https://gancio.org/ ?

I tried to join in Nashville. IIRC, Meetup had lots of trackers showing on my query monitors. I quit trying immediately because of privacy issues whatever it was. I think I might make a shitty Reddit account on a throwaway email and try posting on R/Nashville or something. I just really hate Reddit though.