Open letter to Tim Canova

Dear Professor Canova,

This open letters seeks to inquire about your next steps in the FightBigMoney battle (following your loss to Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the FL23 primary yesterday).

To begin, I wish to call your attention to Democracy Spring's recently announced five phase Grand Strategy



Phase 01 has gone by, as has most of phase 02.

Phase 03 is to "mobilize voters [in the 2016 elections] to elect  a President and federal and state legislators committed to honor the reform mandate."

It is late in the game to go to work on mobilizing voters in the 2016 elections. (I am sure you wish there could have been more voter mobilization in FL23 prior to yesterday's FL23 primary.)

However late the game is, a central question in the Grand Strategy is how will Democracy Spring "mobilize voters" around the country in the next two months.

There is no indication that Democracy Spring has funds to advertise on the TV or radio or by U.S. mail, or to pay for other means to get its message spread in the public domain. Democracy Spring may not even have volunteers to do door to door canvassing, phone banking, or handing out of leaflets during the next two months.

Instead, Democracy Spring's plan is for "a robust and decentralized national network of local teams performing coordinated acts of civil disobedience from coast to coast, who will make it clear to the nation that We the People are rising and we will not rest until we have the democracy we were promised. From now until election day, we will disrupt, shame, and isolate candidates who defend the corrupt status quo and lift up, celebrate, and support those who publicly commit to passing fundamental reforms."

To get into the public consciousness during the next two months, it seems Democracy Spring is going to be basically looking to news reporting of "its coordinated acts of civil disobedience from coast to coast," in order to generate voter mobilization in phase 03 of the Grand Strategy.

Based on the news reporting of Democracy Spring's April disobedience action and the Democratic convention acton in July, the goal to "mobilize voters [in the 2016 elections] to elect  a President and federal and state legislators committed to honor the reform mandate" may be far fetched. (Keep in mind how MAYDAY raised $10,000,000 in 2014 in order to embark on a two year plan to elect a reform minded Congress by 2016, spent most of its funds in test 2014 Congressional elections, and basically gave up in 2015, and how Lawrence Lessig attempted a "hail Mary" Presidential run in the fall of 2015, which foundered in a few weeks.)

However farfetched may be significant mobilizing of voters in the next two months, all stops should be pulled out, because, as Democracy Spring says,

The opportunity of this moment is extraordinary. Over the last year, the overwhelming public consensus that we need to get big money out of politics had exploded onto the national stage. Throughout the primaries, presidential candidates from both parties have repeatedly raised this issue; progressive candidates up and down the ballot are claiming it as a core element of their reform agendas; and Democratic Party leaders, including Hilary Clinton, are making their strongest commitments to date to protect and expand voting rights, establish publicly funded elections, and overturn Citizens United.

For more than a year I have been advocating the use of tweeting banks to mobilize voters in the 2016 elections.

As laid out in Template for Congressional districts, the basic idea is "I/we are tweeting to you, with a link to here, and I/we solicit you to join in the tweeting, and we thereby grow our numbers, and tweets." (i.e. a pyramiding of tweets that engenders and embodies significant voter mobilization). (You are probably aware of the FL23 tweeting bank I tried to get going, but that I could not get going.)

What are your thoughts about phase 03 of Democracy Spring's Grand Strategy?

Do you agree that the next two months represent an extraordinary opportunity, for which all the stops should be pulled out to try achieve voter mobilization?

What ideas do you have for mobilizing voters in the next two months?

Do you think my idea of tweeting banks should be at least attempted in order to mobilize voters in the next two months?

In considering the the opportunity of the next two months, what are your thoughts for groups that are focused on a constitutional amendment that skirts Congressional involvement.

I think those groups should join in tweeting banks during the next two months.

Tweeting banks are flexible, and their messaging can be tailored to particular objectives of Democracy Spring, MoveToAmend, Represent.Us, Wolfpac, etc.

With the goal being to get messaging out as widely as possible to the general public, the messaging of all the groups, even though slightly different, will be mutually reinforcing, because all the messaging will call attention to the problem of the corrupting influence of money in politics and the need for voter mobilization to force an addressing of the problem.

Further there is significant strategic complementation. As Wolfpac points out on its plan webpage, in the following quotation, taking steps to call a constitutional convention can pressure Congress.

Something to keep in mind: Near the turn of the 20th century the American people wanted to be able to elect their senators directly, but Congress was the last body of government that was going to change the way they got elected (sound familiar?!). So the states took it upon themselves and started calling for a convention one by one for the sole purpose of the direct election of senators. It took 13 years before they got within a couple states of the necessary 2/3 threshold to force a convention. When it became clear to Congress that the 17th Amendment was going to happen with or without them, they decided to preempt a convention by proposing it themselves. Calling for a convention on a specific issue is the strongest message we can send to Congress, and the most effective way to restore our democracy in the United States.

By the same token, ostensible failure of Congress to act in the face of widespread citizen demand will heighten citizen reaction to the effect of "OK, you Congress refuse to act, and we the citizens are all the more impelled towards the constitutional convention route."

I hope you are persuaded by the tweeting bank concept, and, in taking your next steps in the FightBigMoney battle, you will urge that all FightBigMoney organizations join in tweeting banks during the next two months to generate voter mobilization.

A final matter I solicit your consideration of (if you are persuaded by the tweeting bank concept) is what tweet messaging and what linked webpage will be most effective in drawing in voters who receive tweets to join in and do tweeting themselves in the tweeting bank.

Also, I would emphasize the idea of "decentralized" activity that Democracy Spring refers to in phase 02 of the above Grand Strategy. In Alabama, I am currently working on Be an Alabamian who wants to know. That tweeting bank is not complete, and I need to add to it appropriate Twitter follower lists in Alabama for participants to send tweets to, in the vein of "Tweet for Alabamians who want to know whether their Congress is corrupt. http://al6thcongdist-ihaveuntiljan13.blogspot.com/2016/08/question-to-al-congresspersons-re.html"

Thank you for giving whatever consideration you can to this letter.