YES, we make a difference when we work together.

[smartvoter]

I was going through some files today and stumbled across this, from when we launched the first activist corps campaign, which was a LTTE campaign dealing with Rove and the Plame outing. It immediately struck me that we were pretty damned effective and, given the letdown we just had on Alito, that it would be worth pointing out that we do make a difference around here.

The map at the following link shows where we had published letters in our first campaign:

http://www.samplespage.com/durovecamp.htm

[Somawas]

1. Cool map-

and we're not all in blue states, either. Pretty effective.

[smartvoter]

2. It was suprisingly effective. I stumbled into it today and thought

it was worth refreshing some memories about it...

[John Q. Citizen]

3. I'm not bummed by Alito. We are so much farther ahead now than

a few weeks before the Alito vote. We controlled the news cycle for 3 days.

We made the cloture vote an important and watched vote.

We got a majority of the Demos to vote like we wanted them to, both on cloture and Alito.


This was a grassroots driven movement that was undertaken by people because we wanted to block the appointment of Alito to the Supreme Court. We didn't take on this fight because we had already counted the votes and knew it was a shoe in. We took on the fight because it was the right thing to do, and I'd do it again in a New York minute.

But I have bigger and better ideas of a longer and better strategized campaign. A campaign where we use the internet, the alternative media, and people power on the ground to turn the screws on the Republicans, and to get coverage in the corporate Media.

The campaign revolves around getting the country taking about impeachment. We do this by demanding responses from the Repo congress about impeachment. We start with a letter/fax/e-mail blitz alternative similar to what we did with the filibuster.

We follow that up a couple of weeks later a national accountability lobby day (actually 3 days, like Wed. Thurs. Friday) the week or so after graduation. It would take about a minimum of 25,000 people participating nationwide. While that’s a formidable number, it’s small compared to the # who have shown up at marches, for instance. And the relatively local nature of going to your US Senator’s or US Congressman’s field office makes for easier participation by a lot more people.

We line up at least one hundred people in front of five Republican US senate or congressional offices in each state, and people go in and lobby preferably alone or in pairs.

Every citizen lobbyist would take 2 messages to their representative. One would be of their choosing or their coalition groups choosing, and the other would be impeachment. We ask if the Rep will support impeachment. We target Repos and bush loving Dems Reps (on a mid term targeted basis) for our lobby day targets , and make sure local press/tv news covers the events (our bigger target) and then National Media. Our biggest target.

We make impeachment a campaign issue. We need to know, "How do you stand on impeachment?

We use the mid terms as a fulcrum to leverage our attack.

This seems to me to be a way to insure larger returns for our efforts than say a protest march, and a way to actively involve people with their own government. The accountability days should foster community good will and donations of food and entertainment, to add to it's majoritarian broad based appeal.

[smartvoter]

4. I'm with you. nt