This guidance was given:
Right now, there is no systematic way to track support on specific bills other than looking up who is co-sponsoring what. That’s not really the point of the EVFA Declaration though. We want to force politicians to take a side on the core fundamental reforms that the democracy movement is unifying around: voting rights, citizen-funded elections, and overturning Citizens United. We want to make 2016 a referendum on whether or not candidates will fight for that reform so that we have a credible mandate going into 2017 to get it passed.
Also it’s worth noting that the four bills we’ve identified thus far are not the be all, end all. The more we build and demonstrate collective, organized power, the more we will be able to credibly demand and win. Doing outreach with the EVFA declaration is the first step to making candidates and elected officeholders choose which side they’re on. Those that side with us in principle can then be pushed to support the final reform agenda. Those who refuse will be increasingly isolated as candidates are forced to join the democracy movement in order to be reelected, resonate with their voting base, or avoid being labeled as a pro-corruption, establishment candidate.
It was brought up that MAYDAY had recently revised its website to abandon totally the Congressional level. https://mayday.us/ It was asked why this had happened, and what bearing did it have relative to DemSpring effort at the Congressional level, It was pointed out that, up until a day or two ago when MAYDAY made the website revision, MAYDAY had up a list of about 189 members of Congress committed to reform, and now that list had been taken down from the MAYDAY website. It was queried why DemSpring effort did not start with the MAYDAY work that had already been done and build on that.
Also it was mentioned that the very recently formed whowillfightbigmoney.org was also now embarked on a similar exercise as DemSpring.
An answer was given that WhoWillFightBigMoney is a campaign backed by MayDay and several other orgs that had a degree of overlap with MayDay's own existing wok on targeting incumbents, and that could be the reason why MayDay has removed the Congressional focus from their own site, to avoid work duplication. As to the similarity of WhoWillFightBigMoney, it was said there were a few key differences between the approaches that make them distinct and worth simultaneous pursuit, to wit, MayDay (and now WWFBM's) process targets **incumbents** exclusively whereas DemSpring targets candidate. Additionally, FightBigMoney questionnaire with checkboxes, which is be filled out by incumbents, has a different bar for participation than DemSpring's simpler sign-on declaration. Also, though MayDay is a member of DemSpring steering committee and supports the nonviolent direct action approach of Democracy Spring, the MayDay/WWFBM's approach doesn't include a mechanism to hold their incumbent supporters accountable, which DemSpring does (i.e., nonviolent direct action.)
Also it was mentioned that the very recently formed whowillfightbigmoney.org was also now embarked on a similar exercise as DemSpring.
In advance of the Slack discussion, links had been given for the purpose of raising the topic of a "tweeting bank" tool, said links being http://2016candidatesdeclarations.blogspot.com/2016/05/getting-going-faster-rather-than-slower.html and http://2016candidatesdeclarations.blogspot.com/2016/05/whowillfightbigmoneyorg-and-tweeting.html. Two other links were also given for consideration in of the Slack discussion, which were http://2016candidatesdeclarations.blogspot.com/2016/05/same-questions-for-whowillfightbigmoney.html and http://2016candidatesdeclarations.blogspot.com/2016/03/suggested-sanders-campaign-statement.html.
With the Slack discussion that took place as described above, the above links that were given for consideration before the Slack discussion did not come up in the Slack discussion.
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