Spending time on tweeting in this #DeclareForDemocracy citizen effort should be evaluated in comparison to other modes of FightingBigMoney in the coming months.
Democracy Spring is currently the lead organization pushing to FightBigMoney at the Congressional level. (Its website says "Democracy Spring has thus far been organized by a coalition of over 120 organizations, including a steering committee made up of 99Rise, Avaaz, Democracy Matters, Energy Action Coalition, MAYDAY.US, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), and the United States Student Association (USSA).")
Democracy Spring's April civil disobedience action targeted Congress and sought to force "immediate action to end the corruption of big money in politics."
Now Democracy Spring is transitioning to this:
From here, we need to take the fight home to states across the union, challenging candidates and elected officials to take a side, lifting up those who declare their support for fundamental reforms to fix our democracy, and exposing those who refuse to do so as defenders of the corrupt status quo. We will disrupt their fundraisers, their debates, their press conferences, and ultimately, their chances at the polls. . . . we will make this election a referendum on whether our democracy should belong to the People as a whole or to the billionaire class alone.Currently, the Democracy Spring website gives almost no information about actual grassroots activities going on in the country.
There is a map of numerous regional organizing hubs for contacting, but how activated these hubs are for what Democracy Spring is transitioning to following the April civil disobedience is unclear.
There was a Democracy Spring webinar last Thursday and also on Sunday. Subjects that were brought up during the Thursday webinar included (i) a Democracy Spring tool kit being prepared, (ii) paying greater attention to publicizing the corruption issue to the public (compared to April's targeting of Congress), (iii) actions directed against the party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, and (iv) identifying Congressional races to target.
It would seem highly uncertain at this time how much and what kind of grassroots activity will take place between now and November 8th. It would also seem that it is going to be exceedingly difficult for Democracy Spring to achieve anywhere near what it desires to achieve before November 8th, and thus that any grassroots activities should be encouraged by Democracy Spring, no matter how small.
If you are a FightBigMoney warrior who wants to do something concrete at the Congressional level, currently you will have to strain to seek it out.
I believe my 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations citizen effort is a credible grassroots activity worthy of consideration by any FightBigMoney warrior who wants something concrete to do.
When the Democracy Spring tool kit is put out, the 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations effort can be compared with grassroots activities that Democracy Spring proposes to its supporters.
I have been working on 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations since November, and it is concrete and well developed. Right now it is limited to Twitter.
I have sent more than twenty thousand tweets since November, there have been almost 50,000 page views of this blog, and there have been hundreds of retweets and likes of my tweets, which I interpret as supportive of my efforts.
There has been, however, virtually no sending of tweets (other than by myself) to candidates and to other voters, as set out in Tactics.
For serious FightBigMoney warriors, I ask these questions: Do you agree that it is going to be extremely difficult for Democracy Spring to engender meaningful grassroots activities before November 8th? What concrete things do you imagine yourself doing before November 8th? Do you agree that retweets and likes regarding 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations achieve very little? Do you agree that, if 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations is to have any chance of being worthwhile, there needs to be lots of FightBigMoney warriors who are willing to spend time sending tweets to candidates and to other voters, as set out in Tactics?
I know that sending tweets to candidates and to other voters likely lacks the social element which is present in person group activities of demonstrations, sign carrying, distributing written materials, and phone banking.
At the same time, the tweeting being sought can be helpfully done with modest amounts of time (an hour a week could be very adequate), and is very flexible for individuals to schedule themselves.
To try to make it easy to send tweets to candidates, I have sent my own tweets and have embedded my tweets in blog entries or put suggested tweet messages in blog entries, and these can be copied and pasted by a reader of the blog entry to send the reader's own tweets to the candidates. I have also created links in my blog entries which can be clicked on and the tweet in question pops up in a Twitter box for the reader to send via the reader's Twitter account. For an example of these, see the blog entry Tweet and shout at MD08.
For sending tweets to other voters, I have developed tweeting banks. See FL19 tweeting bank and CA12 tweeting bank as recent examples. California - U.S. Senate is a current work in progress. My tweeting banks were started at the Presidential election level, and CALIFORNIA - Last tweeting bank for Sen. Sanders is viable for use until June 7th.
Let me conclude this entry with these further questions: How can I persuade you to go beyond retweets and likes of tweets, and for you to send tweets to candidates and to other voters, as set out in Tactics? What changes or recommendations would you suggest for this blog that would make for more success in getting people to send tweets to candidates and to other voters, as set out in Tactics?
Please feel free to communicate with me by means of leaving comments below on this blog entry, or by emailing me at rdshattuck@gmail.com, or by becoming a member of this 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations google group and having discussion there.
UPDATE 5/26/16
A. The Democracy Spring Toolkit
Democracy Spring has released its Forcing a Choice Toolkit.
The Toolkit directs Democracy Spring workers to make email, tweet, telephone, and in person office communications to candidates/incumbents, with the object of getting them to sign The Equal Voice For All Declaration. The Toolkit gives guidance for selecting candidates/incumbents to target. The Toolkit provides links for logging contacts and logging signatures that are obtained, which are to be used by Democracy Spring to coordinate the collective effort being made.
If a candidate/incumbent signs The Equal Voice For All Declaration, the Democracy Spring worker is supposed to "lift up" the signer on the social media by praise and thanks in tweets and Facebook posts, and by sending letters to the editor, and "generally generate as much positive publicity as possible around their commitment to reform."
If a candidate/incumbent will not sign The Equal Voice For All Declaration the Toolkit says that Democracy Spring workers should start organizing to expose the candidate/incumbent as a defender of the status quo, and Democracy Spring will be providing more support and guidance for local organizing soon.
The Toolkit sets out Interim Public Talking Points and indicates there will be weekly EVFA discussion on slack.
We will continue to activate our fellow citizens by informing them about the existence of real solutions to political inequality and about our collective power to realize those solutions, even as Congress fails to take action.B. Critique
1. How much grassroots activity will in fact be engendered?
The Toolkit is fine and dandy, but I don't think anyone can predict how much grassroots activity will in fact be engendered in the coming months.
MAYDAY's experience in 2015 may be instructive. MAYDAY spent most of 2015 getting its supporters to contact their Representatives in Congress to ask the Representatives to commit to one or more pieces of specified reform legislation and thereby be added to MAYDAY's list of Leaders supporting fundamental reform. There are currently shown on the list 181 members of Congress out of a total of 533.
Towards the end of 2015, MAYDAY reported that 20,000 calls and voicemails had been made to Congress, and MAYDAY teams had met with 13 Congressional offices, including 4 members of Congress personally. I believe that many of the 181 members on the list had previously committed to reform before MAYDAY commenced its 2015 efforts, and MAYDAY's efforts in 2015 yielded only a modest number of additions to the list.
In gauging the result and significance of MAYDAY's efforts in 2015, consideration should be given to the stark partisan divide on the list of 181 being comprised of 179 Democrats, Republican Walter Jones, and Bernie Sanders.
2. The partisan divide on MAYDAY's list
In April I posed A question for DemSpring about the aforesaid partisan divide and DemSpring's quest to "unleash unstoppable momentum for deep reform" by revealing "exactly which side members of Congress stand on" and making "crystal clear" who is for reform and who is for the status quo. of who supports reform. I never received any answer to my question.
As I say at the end of A question for DemSpring, I think Democracy Spring runs "a serious risk of being just another one of numerous partisan gridlock matters that the American people despair of their broken Congress doing their job about, and, as such, disappears in the fog of the perpetual political war."
You can evaluate this for yourself in making any decision to follow Democracy Spring's lead.
3. The Toolkit does little for activating the voters
The Toolkit talks about
activat[ing] our fellow citizens by informing them about the existence of real solutions to political inequality and about our collective power to realize those solutions, even as Congress fails to take action.Let's be frank: Our messaging powers just plain suck, compared to, say, tens of thousands of voters that Donald Trump can reach with a single tweet (which can get into the hundreds of thousands if his tweet is rebroadcast by the cable news). Bernie Sanders continues to get thousands of people hearing his messaging at rallies, and it too being rebroadcast by the cable news. We don't have money to do TV advertising or even US mail mailings or phone banking.
The Toolbox directs Democracy Spring workers to use conventional social media tweeting and Facebook posting to "lift up" in the social media signers of The Equal Voice For All Declaration. The reach of this social media messaging is not trivial, but I have been urging for months that the reach can be very significantly expanded. See Breaking out of like minded social media circles.
Also I have urged that we try to do messaging that takes advantage of the immense attention being paid to the Trump and Sanders candidacies. My effort to do this started last July (see Proposed messaging re: Congress), and evolved into "tweeting banks" connected to the Presidential election, such as this last one CALIFORNIA - Last tweeting bank for Sen. Sanders.
MAYDAY (for more than a year) and Democracy Spring (since February) have been unresponsive to these ideas for improving our "sucky" messaging powers. This unresponsiveness continues with the Toolbox that Democracy Spring has issued.
4. Evaluating DeclareForDemocracy against the Toolkit proposal
I will continue to try to recruit participants to this 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations citizen effort. I am very interesting in engaging with Democracy Spring about the same, but thus far Democracy Spring has shown no interest.
FeelTheBern tweeters are a possible pool of participants for 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations.
If I cannot get any participants, this will get dropped at some point.
UPDATE 5/27/16
This update is added specially in connection with tweets I am sending to those who have retweeted or liked my tweets previously. I have had at least a couple hundred retweets and likes, which I interpret as showing interest in my efforts. I have also received many reply tweets similarly showing interest, and I have passed a lot of these along to MAYDAY, Democracy Spring and other organizations. Below (from yesterday and today) is an example.
@RobShattuckAL06 this is great info! Tyvm. I'll tweet gladly! Onward! #GetTheMoneyOut— Pink Fiddle (@pinkfiddle) May 27, 2016
For months I have not been able to get any reaction from these organizations. They can best explain why, and I will not try to speculate. I will use the contact email address given in the Toolkit to call attention to this again.@pinkfiddle Thx. This needs participants. @MAYDAYUS @takebackorg @DemSpring @wolfpac @usapromise @nhrebellion @DemAwakening @StampStampede— Rob Shattuck (@RobShattuckAL06) May 27, 2016
For the instant purposes, there is not currently any help from the organizations relative to this citizen effort, and, for the time being, to the extent anyone steps forward to participate, I will need to do the organizing of participants.
From Rob Shattuck <rdshattuck@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:11 AM
Subject: 206 Congressional candidates' Declarations
To madura.tania@gmail.com
Dear Tania,
For months, many FightBigMoney warriors and many Senator Sanders supporters have expressed interest in my 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations citizen effort.
I think these people, in making a decision to participate or not, are deserving of some comment by Democracy Spring about the 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations effort. Such comment might be expression of encouragement to those persons who think they would like to participate in the citizen effort, or, if Democracy Spring has reasons why it thinks people should not participate in the 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations effort, a statement of those reasons, which prospective participants can evaluate in making their decision, or Democracy Spring may have other comment to make.
If Democracy Spring will kindly send me an email making such comment, I will post the email on this Taking the next step blog entry.
Thank you very much for your consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
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