Quote of the Day:
“If we permit our constitutional rights to be watered down out of fear, we have given up our democracy. Congress must stand firm and defend the Constitution.”
— Dennis Kucinich
Subject: Standing Up
Every major telecom, except Qwest, agreed to help the federal government spy on Americans without warrant or probable cause.
Two whistleblowers, Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar, have stepped forward and told us the spying was (and may still be) truly widespread, and that in Klein’s case, it went back more than a year before 9/11.
And as if that’s not enough, the federal government has taken several steps to remove our rights and freedoms through fear. As writer/director William Lewis points out, the list includes, “The Military Commissions Act, which ended Habeas Corpus; The John Warner Defense Act, which ended Posse Comitatus; The Detainee Treatment Act, which protects torture; The Real ID Act rider attached to HR 1268, which will give us a national ID card; and a half dozen others . . .”
And as if that’s not bad enough, we have a financial crisis brought on by gross deficit spending, monetized debt, and bad lending laws.
All of these things must be addressed, and at DownsizeDC.org you can find a campaign to address most of these issues. But one issue looms bigger than all of these, and it’s this issue on which we ask you to focus today . . .
How can we begin to reverse the tide?
Put another way . . . What is our realistic strategy for actual change?
Many of our ideas seem strange and are marginalized by the powers that be. We need an approach that will make our ideas familiar and accessible.
Only one strategy offers real possibility of success. It’s the strategy of Downsize DC.
Step One: Build an army so large that Congress and the mainstream media cannot afford to ignore it.
Step Two: Use that army to get the message out everywhere, every day — an approach we call, Operation Everywhere.
And then we will win.
When will this victory come?
When will we be able to counter all of this fear mongering? . . . this Constitutional abuse? . . . this profligate spending?
The answer: When enough people have stood beside us as financial partners. Only once we’ve achieved full financial stability can we get really aggressive about public persuasion, outreach, and army growth.
The kind of marketing that we envision will educate the public, recruit new DC Downsizers, and activate first thousands, then tens of thousands, at a time. And it will educate, recruit, and activate in one seamless process — something else no other strategy promises to do.
Our budget is modest. It’s just $15,000 per month and that has guaranteed growth every single month for years now. But it’s slow, incremental growth. I hear people all the time saying, “We can’t wait. We must do something now.” Perhaps YOU have said that.
Well, here are the most important things you can do.
If you’re not already a monthly, credit-card pledger, please become one now. If you are, please consider increasing your monthly pledge. If you’ve let your pledge expire, please renew it.
You can pledge as modest an amount as $3, $5, or $10 per month, as hundreds of others are doing right now — that’s 10c, 17c, or 33c per day. Or you can pledge $148, $152, and even $235 — PER MONTH — like our three largest monthly pledgers currently do.
There are 22,300 subscribers to this list. At present, we raise $7,600 through pledges, each month, from nearly 500 people. If we had 1,000 pledgers, we’d almost certainly meet our goal, and then, about 85c of every dollar could go into pure outreach through the media, advertising, and direct marketing. No other organization is offering to do so much with so little, and to do it so well.
As you can tell, I believe in what we’re doing. And I think it’s a fantastic, high-return investment in the future we want.
And then, we can shut down the fear mongers, political abusers, and the big spenders.
If you’d prefer to make a one-time donation, we could use your support as well. Right now, we need just $1,429 to make our goal. If one person donated $1,000, I can promise you we’d make our goal by Monday morning.
Donations to DownsizeDC.org are not tax-deductible. But when you donate or pledge, we will send you a copy of The Downsize DC Vision. This glossy, 16 page report explains, in succinct but sufficient detail, our plan for Downsizing DC.
Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army,
Jim Babka
President
Downsize DC Foundation
& DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
P.S. Our mailing address is . . .
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
1931 15th St.
Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223
P.P.S. If you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation to our educational (non-lobbying) project, you can do so here, instead.