Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Messaging re Congress to advance Sanders candidacy

Including messaging about Congress as part of advancing the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders believes Congress is broken and not doing its job properly for the American people. Bernie Sanders believes the primary cause of this is the corrupting influence of money in politics.

This corrupting influence of money adversely affects most all of us, Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

Calling attention to our broken Congress, and the reason it is broken, will help make the case, and broaden support, for the Bernie Sanders candidacy.

Our local Bernie Sanders 2016 Community is going to include a messaging component about the foregoing, which messaging we believe should be used in our State and our Congressional district(s).

We are working on developing that messaging component, and will lay it out for our Community in due course.



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Monday, July 6, 2015

#FeelTheBernHeat tweeting by Bernie 2016 Communities

I am endeavoring to join and post in Bernie 2016 Facebook Communities.

In seeking to do that, I wish to be clear to the Communities about my objective, so the Communities can decide whether they consider what I am doing to be appropriate and whether I should be allowed in the Community.

I am promoting something I have called #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting.

This is an outgrowth of an effort I made in 2014 to run for Congress in the Republican primary in the Alabama 6th Congressional district.

My campaign contended that Congress was "broke" and failing to do its job properly for the American people, and that the main reason for this failure was the corrupting influence of money in politics.

The other candidates in the 2014 primary I ran in, including the ultimate winner Gary Palmer, ignored me.

In the past six weeks, Bernie Sanders has become the leading national spokesperson on the "money in politics" issue, and he is doing fantastically in the campaign he has launched.

I am using the Sanders phenomenon to continue to push on Congressman Palmer. See #FeelTheBernHeat starts in AL06.

I am further trying to get #FeelTheBernHeat to be used by voters in other Congressional districts. See Will you tweet this to your Representative?.

I have solicited the Alabama for Bernie 2016 Community to consider whether they would like to participate with me in my effort to make Congressman Palmer, and Alabama's Senators and other Representatives in Washington, to #FeelTheBernHeat.

I am contacting other Bernie 2016 Communities  to solicit whether they would similarly like to participate in efforts to make their Representatives in Congress #FeelTheBernHeat.

The Communities I am approaching need to decide whether that is appropriate given that their mission is to get Bernie Sanders nominated as the Democratic candidate and elected as President.

There are very legitimate reasons why a Bernie 2016 Community might decide not to allow me to participate in the Community.

I wish here to try to make a case about why I should be allowed to participate in the Community.

I believe the "money in politics" issue is not a Democrats versus Republicans issue, and it is something else.

On the front page of the MAYDAY.US website (at the lower right of the front page) there is a quotation from a Forbes magazine article that Communities should think about it. The quotation is:
“The mortal struggle at hand today is not between the right and the left. It is not between Republicans and Democrats. It is not between the Congress and the president. It is between us (currently outsiders to our own government) voters and the Washington Insiders.”
I subscribe to that quotation, and the leaders of a Bernie 2016 Community need to decide the extent to which they agree with the quotation.

If the leaders agree with the quotation, that affords the Community an avenue for making a much broader appeal for support for Bernie Sanders that can include Republicans.

My #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting idea that is ultimately directed at Congress would be a means for publicizing the "money in politics" issue to get the attention of all voters, including Republicans.

I appreciate that my #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting idea requires careful evaluation by any Bernie 2016 Community. I hope Community leaders will think about it, and when they decide, to please let me know what they have decided.

Thank you very much.
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Saturday, July 4, 2015

Bernie 2016 Facebook Communities

I am in Alabama. I am promoting #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting, locally and nationally. This tweeting is ultimately directed at Congress. See Will you tweet this to your Representative?.

Yesterday, I initiated contact with the Alabama for Bernie 2016 Community. See
To: Alabama for Bernie 2016 Community.

Are there Bernie 2016 Facebook Communities in your area you would recommend I approach?

Thank you.

Update 7/5: I have initiated contact with MO, GA, NH, SF Bay Area, and Hampton Roads communities as indicated in below tweets.









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Prof. Lessig's July 2nd email

Prof. Lessig sent out an email on July 2nd, bearing the subject line "it's working". The text of the email is appended below.

In laying out the activity of the campaign finance reform movement, and giving a status report of the same, the email makes no reference to the phenomenon of the Bernie Sanders 2016 Presidential campaign. That campaign is bursting with numbers, energy and momentum, and at the moment, as a vehicle for the advancement of campaign finance reform, Bernie 2016 would appear to be dwarfing what the campaign finance reform movement has been building for the past several years and what the CFR movement is currently doing. This would include MAYDAY, and Every Voice, Represent.US, Wolf PAC and Take Back Our Republic, which are mentioned in Prof. Lessig's email.

I have been working on pushing synergy with Bernie 2016 and I have repeatedly solicited the views of MAYDAY and other CFR organizations about the potential for that synergy, but I have heard no response.

Maybe Prof. Lessig  has not reached a conclusion about the potential of synergy with Bernie 2016, and he will say about that at such time as he reaches a conclusion. If Prof. Lessig has, at this time, concluded against it, I think it would be appropriate for him to explain why.

Sincerely,
Rob Shattuck


[Text of Prof. Lessig's July 2nd email]
Rob -- 
As we head into July 4th, I couldn’t be happier. And I couldn’t feel better about where things are headed.
We’ve made incredible progress lately, and I’m happy to report that we are (still) not asking for your money. Instead, I want to ask you to help us thank the leaders who have stepped up for reform, and to give you another reason to celebrate with us this weekend.
We launched v2 just over three months ago with a commitment to experimenting with many types of grassroots tactics, ditching those that didn’t produce results and doubling down on those that did.
From creating a call tool that enables citizens to contact Reps with ease, to coordinating in-district meetings with congressional staff, and even creating an innovative voicemail campaign that generated thousands of messages we delivered to Congress on your behalf, we’ve been pushing the boundaries of traditional campaigning.
This has been such a rewarding summer – because it’s working!
Already, we’ve seen seven members of Congress answer the call for leadership from their constituents by co-sponsoring the Government by the People Act (HR 20) in the House. And recently, 20 leaders in the Senate signed on to support the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 1538), which mirrors the House bill. 
But we didn’t do this alone.
It took veteran leaders in the movement like Every Voice, led by David Donnelly, to build the national political power and awareness over the years that we’ll need in order to fundamentally reform the way we fund campaigns.
And groups like Represent.US and Wolf PAC, who continue building a massive grassroots movement across the country that engages citizens to take action in their own backyard.
Take Back Our Republic, a new pro-reform conservative organization led by John Pudner has done fantastic work to create a place where conservatives can make the case to others that our broken campaign finance system inhibits many things the Right holds dear – smaller government, smart regulatory and tax reform, less spending – just as it blocks many things important to the Left.
But most importantly, none of this would have been possible without your belief that things could change. Indeed, things are changing. And I hope that you’re able to reflect this weekend on the progress we’ve made in just one year since launching Mayday PAC.
What you did these past few months has given me and many more an immense amount of hope. But now it's time to take that sense of hope and translate it into action that will win our democracy back.
And PLEASE JOIN US IN THANKING those who recently answered the call for leadership from their constituents by co-sponsoring the Government by the People Act. It’s easy, just click their names to open a tweet thanking these recent leaders: @SethMoulton (MA-06), @RepKarenBass (CA-37), @JacksonLeeTX18 (TX-18).
I can't say it enough: Thank you for making this all possible.
-Lessig
P.S. Check out this recent blog post from a resident in California who encouraged his representative to lead for reform by co-sponsoring HR 20. It’s really impressive.
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Friday, July 3, 2015

Alabama For Bernie 2016 Community

I am endeavoring to solicit the Alabama for Bernie 2016 Community to participate in #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting in Alabama. Please see To: Alabama for Bernie 2016 Community.

I continue to solicit MAYDAY supporters to pursue #FeelTheBernHeat tweeting in their states and Congressional districts and further urge those supporters to contact Bernie 2016 communities in their areas to solicit their participation in the tweeting as well.
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Thursday, July 2, 2015

Can I get any help from MAYDAY?

Sanders got a reported 10,000 people at his rally in Madison, Wisconsin today. There have been hundreds of tweets under #FeelTheBern in the past two hours, and I have gotten 77 page views of Will you tweet this to your Representative?

I think this tweeting campaign offers very good potential by following Sanders around as he goes about his campaign. See To: Iowa DC legislative delegation and Bird-dogging in NH today.

What does MAYDAY think?
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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

@BernieSanders has 105K followers

@BernieSanders, which appears to be his 2016 campaign Twitter account, has 105,000 followers. This is up from a reported 99,000 followers yesterday:
MOVING FORWARD! @cd5762Congrats to @BernieSanders for hitting 99,000 followers! Retweet so we can hit 100K in the next few hours!  10:00 PM - 29 Jun 2015

Could the MAYDAY Team please provide the benefit of their thoughts about building synergy with Bernie, or not, and, if so, what the MAYDAY Team thinks is the best way to build synergy, using Twitter and otherwise?

If the MAYDAY Team believes that, because of the Federal campaign finance rules, MAYDAY cannot provide any guidance to its supporters about seeking synergy with Bernie, would the MAYDAY Team so say, in order that supporters may pursue Bernie synergy on their own as they see fit? (See MAYDAY supporters interested in Bernie synergy.)

The views of other campaign finance reform organizations are also solicited about this.

Thanks.
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