LETS ALL MEET HERE

[myschkin]

http://www.1-2-free-forums.com/mf/index.php?mforum=mtf

We have to concentrate on the important issues now:

An advertising campaign (commercials, ads in newspapers, fundraising by the grassroots movement as well as by sponsors like Barbara Streisand)

Media information (still each letter counts!)

Students information (Our last goal: a student revolution)

Celeb information campaign (contacting famous persons like Leonardo di Caprio, Sean Penn, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and asking them to bring the message out to the people - something stinks! - as well as informing Michael Moore about THE BIGGER PICTURE! We need this man! He should be the director of our TV commericals.)

The citizen movement goes right over the information canals.

Please participate - post, answer on posts, be creative, help organizing - and all this will be a self dynamic process...

If you want that something changes - you have to do something...

And we have to do this organized. Please all participate in our information effort.


PS: People who take over responsibility and help us organizing the whole thing are welcome!

[mordarlar]

1. Arnheim has been organizing similar action. Do you have a page?

[myschkin]

2. We are

concentrating on the information - as well as on the advertising - effort...

[4democracy]

3. Does that mean you are doing this as part of the V.O.T.E. group?

[myschkin]

4. We are

not concentrated on the election reform issue... :-) We want to inform about the manipulation which probably occured on Nov. 2...

[marions ghost]

6. myschkin can u explain

--so the machine problems or the suppression problems are the main focus, or both?

[Farah]

7. The MAIN focus is ensuring that people know about voting irregularities...

which means that we inform the media, celebrity, and political contacts about what has been going on before the election, during the election and progress since election day. So our focus would include both machine problems and suppression problems.

This means we need support, firstly from DU members, then from our contacts.

[clovis29]

13. "Irregularities" seems so soft compared to what has happened...

...it makes it sound like a glitch in the system, not the across-the-board violations we saw.

[myschkin]

9. I would say...

the machine manipulation (problems?). I´m sure that Bush didn´t have won. And now he´s heading with a wrong mandate into the Iran-war... We have to stop him, since he´s - probabely - not the legitimate elected president of the U.S.

Did you have forgot Baiman, Freeman, BBV, TIA - there´s too much curios...?

Kerry can´t act on this soft evidence - but the press can and should... The knowledge about this should arrive into the people´s mind.

This election was so easy to manipulate (with the new electronic voting machines and software) - so why this unscrupulous and machiavellistic regime shouldn´t have done it?

You are our speaker to other progressive groups (;-)) - so you should know our line.

[Farah]

5. kick

[Jo March]

8. myschkin, glad to see you getting some stuff rolling!

VOTE is focused on election reform and eventually, if all goes well, we will be working on other things as well, such as environmental issues - but that is way down the line.

Anyway, we would love to work with you and help your group out.

VOTE is wanting to work with groups to promote election reform, which we will have to show the nasty underbelly of the election fraud. :)

I think that we can work together and get some good things done.

Please PM me if you have any questions.

[Farah]

10. PLEASE NOTE: we need people who can help us with specific roles

Please post here if you want to volunteer

[Peace Patriot]

11. I'm very interested in this, but I've never done person to person...

...contact at DU. Don't know how to do it.

I think you should see our LETTER OF THE WEEK #2: re Condoleeza Rice nomination, especially the last paragraph (re: Bush's "mandate" in so many words)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x296466.

We have a new project here to provide a sample letter per week on hot topic mostly to Congress, but also to media. We started with a MEDIA BLAST today on the protests. Coming up, Gonzales nomination, then Election fraud, investigation and reform.

Project forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=293412&mesg_id=293412

Personally, I don't think the Dems have the power, the votes or the will to get us back our right to vote, and feel it must be done through the states. I even fear worse tightening of BushCon grip of our election system. They could overrule and overrun the Dems on this, and past Dem history on it it is not encouraging.

Anyway getting back our right to vote is the top priority of my life until it's accomplished. The least we can do for our children...

I want to see Michael Moore and assorted "Red Indians" dump Diebold machines into Boston Harbor.

[borg5575]

12. What good will it do?

What good will it do? We did all that last time and look where it got us. Shrub is still in there for four more years.

Do you have any reason to think that it will be any different next time? Do you believe that they won't steal the next election too if they have to? I don't.

[Laurab]

14. Thanks for the encouragement

and the optimism. If everyone felt that way, it wouldn't do any good, however everyone does not, and it IS doing good. They WOULD have to steal the next election, and I believe it's just not gonna happen, and I intend to do whatever I can to assure that it doesn't happen. I'm not sayin' anything about your post count or anything, but gosh, when I was new(er) I came here to learn, not to bash.

[borg5575]

16. It will happen again

Just because I happen to have few posts here doesn't mean that I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about. Bush stole the 2000 election and then everyone said, "wait until 2004." Well, I waited and guess what, he stole the election in 2004 too.

Based upon that history what makes you think it won't happen again in 2008? If they were able to pull it off for two straight elections, what makes you think they can't keep on doing it? Why wouldn't they keep on doing it? They have the full power of all three branches of the federal government behind them. The fix is already in. These people are evil.

[myschkin]

20. dictatorship = information stop

"Well, I waited and guess what, he stole the election in 2004 too.

Based upon that history what makes you think it won't happen again in 2008?"


Both times because the people of United States were not informed about.

[myschkin]

15. I guess

if fraud is proven this president is out of his job and people won´t accept manipulation anymore.

There should be a people´s protest (which forces the politics to investigate) - and this leads over the media resp. the (alternative) information effort.

It´s sad that American People have not the will of the Ukrainian ones... Too much donuts and TV?

[marions ghost]

17. OK What I observe...

is that we have 3 "info" groups forming here in this forum, and looks like maybe they can be complimentary. I'm trying to get a handle on the 3 directions...correct me if I'm wrong:
--------------

1. peace patriot--Letter of the Week, excellent idea. Main focus is to media blast on immediate issues.

2. arnheim--VOTE group. Main focus is election reform.

3. myschkin--Media Task Force. Main focus is addressing the voting "irregularities" and making sense out of all that info.
---------------
Of course I realize that anybody can work in any group or all of them at once. This is, I realize, a loose network, and not a tightly controlled thing. But it would help me to contribute if I could clearly understand the focus of each group as defined by the leaders. For example, my thing is print media/written communication, so I could see myself being able to swing around, doing a media blitz task one day and a research task another day. Other folks may want to concentrate in a narrow area, and not ricochet around.

At this point, have I at least assessed the general nature of these 3 workgroups? Have I got the "main focus" (at least for now)correctly defined?

PS--I admire all of you for your initiative and think you have all got great ideas, from what I can see. And I also see that you're all action-oriented and have a lot of energy for the job. I'm just trying to facilitate the congealing process--into groups that can be complimentary and easily identified by DU members old and new. Am I on the right track here?

[Amaryllis]

18. Thanks for this. I was wondering the same thing.

[myschkin]

19. No

<But it would help me to contribute if I could clearly understand the focus of each group as defined by the leaders.>

Didn´t you read my posts above? :-/

To 1) (peace patriot): I fear a media blast is probabely without effect because I suppose their system has a blocker against mass-emails...

[myschkin]

21. Sorry

I don´t see complimentarities between these groups at all - except that peace patriot should be integrated in our effort ;-)

For our main focus please read the lines under "Media Task Force FORUM" (title) here:

http://www.1-2-free-forums.com/mf/index.php?mforum=mtf

[marions ghost]

22. Ok now I'm really confused...

I took these points directly from this thread:

myschkin and media task force-- is dealing with educating about all the voting problems that have been documented to date. This is critical now--to media, progressive groups, etc.

arnheim and VOTE is emphasizing reform--ie. what can be done to fix election system? Of course that includes why we need to do it, as well as how, but more of an emphasis on immediate measures to achieve reform.

peace patriot-- as I understand it, is emphasizing immediate response to current issues, a kind of "quick response" team. Maybe media blast is not the best way, but still the focus is the same.
----------------
Huh?
So why are these groups not complimentary and overlapping? OK, if I'm way off base, then I'll leave it to you guys to sort this out. Understand that I'm trying to offer some feedback--how I as a relative newcomer to DU feel confused about how to proceed beyond my regular stabs--going it alone from the various "action" posts, as I have been doing.
If you want to encourage loosely cohesive workgroups, it would be nice to have enough coordination of efforts so that DU members can easily plug in and put their energy where they think it's best needed. Especially in this case of election issues, the amount of info to get out is staggering, a herculean task. I've worked with several non-profit volunteer groups and it always seems to work best if short-term goals are clear and tasks are broken down into manageable chunks. Peace patriot has been doing that well and I have been acting on those posts. VOTE seems to be working behind the scenes which is fine, but I have no clear idea of what is happening there. I can see that Media Task Force has some efforts underway but I think if you want to get many volunteers you need to break down the tasks more and make goals clear.
Already I am seeing that DU leaders in this thread have different ideas of what needs to be stressed. And that's helpful to me as a contributor. Any further comments or clarifications would be welcome.
Just trying to help, mg

[Farah]

23. Hi mg, I'll try outline it here;

MTF was originally set up to undertake an immediate media blitz to inform the voters that the election was stolen.

Initially our short-term aims were set out to:
- Inform the media with serious facts, news and analysis.
- Contact celebrities and fundraisers.
- Contact other progressive groups for financing our advertising (grassroots-effect).
- Gain information about advertising in big and small newspapers (from NYT and WP to University papers).
- Write a regular newsletter to contacts (political leaders, friends etc) informing them of progress that has been made, and information that would otheriwse be impossible to hear were you not checking DU every day.
- write to student newspapers to ensure our information is passed on to students.

What myschkin meant is that although we have similar long-term aims as VOTE and the media blaster, our methods of reaching that goal (ie, our short-term aims) are actually quite different. However, the media blaster is, perhaps, more closely related to our cause.

At the moment, if anyone is looking for a more specific role to play in MTF, we are looking for people who can help us with the following:

- Writers for an editing team, and to help us write the newsletters

- People who can take the lead of ensuring celebrities / important people are contacted

- People who can help organize the advertising campaign effort (creative people, etc).

- People who can help organize the students information effort.

- People who can take the lead of contacting other progressive groups informing of our progress/efforts.

- Organizers of fund raising efforts and allocation of funds (finance advisers/accountants).

Hope this helped!

-Farah,

[myschkin]

24. exactly

Well spoken, Farah :D

[myschkin]

25. addition

Another problem is that we are both from Europe, so we can´t organize it in this way like ´peace patriot´and others...

It´s sad that laurapackyourbags don´t support us anymore since she had all these ideas.

By the way, I just saw that the letter of peace patriot is going primarily to the senators... (which is a good thing)

There is such a gap what we can do (advertising, celeb information + contacting, students informing...) and it´s sad that nobody want to do it.

Please note, that Bush (sorry) is inaugurated but that we think that still more people should know about fraud and also the media should report about it.

If something was so badly wrong (or is questionable) we can´t go further...

We can´t accept it, especially in the face that this (not elected) president wants now proceed aggressively against Iran...

[kster]

26. How about

getting a famous dem and repub to to tell Americans the importance of a paper ballot , during the commercials .

[myschkin]

27. please

post it and discuss it with bigbearjohn ;-) (> Advertisement Campaign 2005)

[Farah]

28. kick

[Farah]

29. kick