podesta_email_01375.txt

podesta-emails 2,963 words email

P17 V11 P19 P22 V16

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months and months ago, ProgressNow and its state affiliate started building grassroots networks, laying the groundwork for a Democratic campaign. Republicans don't have any counterpart to this, so far that is." -- Peter Overby, NPR News, 10/30/2008 Dear Board, Investors and Progressive Partners, The Obama campaign showed the world how to combine online activism with old-style community organizing. Now it's up to progressives to put these tactics--and the millions of people who implemented them--to work at the local level, where activism has its most powerful and sustained impact. We need to show what Obama's tactics can accomplish if they're deployed not to promote a candidate but on behalf of progressive values and issues. As the only national organization with a focus on applying online organizing to local progressive campaigns, ProgressNow is in a unique position to capture and re-direct the passion of Obama's supporters and to show the world what progressives can get done using a mix of online and offline organizing. Below are updates from each of our states and their initial plans for the year ahead. Or click the following link for a multi-media overview of our success across the country, and support our efforts: http://progressnow.org/network We must act now. If we do not engage Obama supporters immediately, many will lose interest. The lesson from 2004 is that you must keep people vested. That we don't have a candidate horse-race or a looming election day makes issue-based advocacy all-the-more important. We know the success of ProgressNow and netroots activism spawned by our members has caught the attention of the right-wing who have fallen behind in its use. And we know the right-wing is looking to modernize their tactics so they can attain similar success as our state partner organizations. But in ProgressNow states we also know that we have built a network of year-round activists who grow, engage and set a progressive table for candidates in future years through new technologies. When would be good time to follow up with you to discuss? Until then all the best for a safe holiday and a happy, healthy New Year. Michael 303-931-4547 cell Here are updates and success stories in each of our states: In the immediate aftermath of the passage of Prop 8 in California, the Courage Campaign launched a robust campaign to repeal Prop 8, joined by MoveOn.org, CREDO Mobile and Join the Impact. To date, over 300,000 people have signed our "Repeal Prop 8" pledge, increasing our total list size to nearly 400,000. In the last two weeks, we have hired three organizers to empower the marriage equality movement that has emerged in California since November 4. Right now, we are developing a training program to deploy these activists in a field campaign to restore marriage equality to California. In 2009, the Courage Campaign will build a campaign to gather 1 million signatures to the "Repeal Prop 8" pledge, laying the foundation for an unpaid signature gathering campaign to place a new initiative on the ballot to restore marriage equality to California. The Courage Campaign is also working on implementing various planks of what we call "CPR for California" - a comprehensive group of reforms designed to fix California's dysfunctional government. At the top of the CPR agenda is the campaign to repeal the "2/3rds requirement" to pass a budget in the California state legislature - a rule that allows right-wing extremist Republicans to hold the state budget hostage year after year. Time magazine reported in its post election coverage described how Senator-elect Mark Udall beat Bob Schaffer by exposing his record as "Big Oil Bob". Ironically, Udall never went after Schaffer as "Big Oil Bob". But we did. We started this narrative, through online videos, www.bigoilbob.com, and internet organizing throughout Colorado over a year before the elections. By exposing Schaffer's record and personalizing it to voters in each community we were able to develop a narrative that he never escaped. Just as exciting is our online and earned media efforts, working our progressive partners at Defenders of Wildlife, in holding Rep. Marilyn Musgrave accountable which ultimately help lead to her defeat and the victory of Congresswoman-elect Betsy Markey. Finally, out online ballot guide was a huge success as it was downloaded by over 35,000 thousand people. In addition we provided the ballot guide via text messaging for cellphone users, many of whom were young voters ages 18-24. Our priorities for the year ahead are to help our progressive partners organizations online and with earned media to advocate for progressive legislation at the state and federal level. We are building off of Obamas's momentum by developing a model "Progress Team" program to keep Obama's "neighborhood teams" engaged, community by community, so we don't lose the energy of volunteers statewide. We are especially focused on getting members more engaged as our testing how shown that the more we can focus on populist pocket book issues and the less political our action appear the more new members engage. For a copy of our draft plan for the year ahead please email [email protected] We would love to discuss and get your feeback. Progress Florida helped win Florida for President Elect Obama with an earned media and internet organizing strategy targeting independent voters. A highlight of the earned media strategy was the successful placement of a series of op-eds published in four of the state's largest papers. The series of op-eds included one by a war veteran taking McCain's voting record on veteran's issue to task, one by a nuclear security expert exposing McCain's flawed policies on nuclear power and for the Pièce de résistance - an op-ed authored by McCain's Florida cousin published in the Sunday St. Petersburg Times (Florida largest circulation paper.) McCain's cousin's op-ed told a compelling story about how even members of McCain's own family could not recognize the McCain of old, and was reportedly one of the most e-mailed articles in St. Petersburg Times opinion page history. Progress Florida then worked with John McCain's Florida cousin to distribute a similar piece via the internet to tens of thousands of Floridians, in particular "fence sitters" the week before the election. Progress Florida has identified three programmatic priorities for the first half of 2009 and beyond. First, work closely with our progressive allies to pass good laws and defeat bad ones during the upcoming Florida Legislative session. Expected hot issues include class size and education funding, election protection, and tax reform. Second, we plan to work closely with the HCAN coalition to pass meaningful health care reform this session of Congress. And finally, the work begins now on the 2010 elections. From the open U.S. Senate seat up for grabs to the effort pass a Constitutional amendment for redistricting reform (Fair Districts Florida,) success in 2010 will largely depend on laying the groundwork in 2009. Progress Michigan had three major successes at the close of 2008. First we ran a robust anti-McCain effort that resulted in major national stories surrounding the GOP efforts to use foreclosure lists to suppress voter participation. Second, we played a major role in passing a Stem Cell ballot proposal by elevating its earned and new media efforts. Third Progress Michigan coordinated press work for major collaborative Health Care and Energy campaigns in the state involving over 50 organizations. With redistricting looming in 2010, the next two years are critical. Progress Michigan is positioning itself as the progressive communication hub around populist issues that will help us control the issue environment in 2009 - 2010. Without control of the issue environment, progressives risk loosing all they gained this past year through redistricting. Progress Michigan will also expand its role in collaborative communications around Energy, Health Care and Election Reform. Alliance for a Better Minnesota was in dozens of news stories and blog postings in November after it filed letters with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Minneapolis office of the FBI asking both entities to investigate claims made in lawsuits filed that Senator Norm Coleman (R) was the recipient of money funneled by a rich businessman and friend through fake contracts. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) was national co-chair of John McCain's presidential team and viewed by many as the future of the Republican party. Most observers expect him to run in 2010 for a third term before moving into the national spotlight again as a presidential candidate. Alliance for a Better Minnesota and its partners at the America Votes table are already planning for the best way to stop his rise into power, and keep Minnesota progressive for the future. Sometimes what your enemies say about you speaks the most truth. In the days after the election in November, conservative Republicans were reeling as progressives in New Hampshire won all major Federal races including President, US Senate and both congressional; maintained majorities in all state offices - including becoming the first legislative body in the country with a female majority! - and beat back municipal tax caps in all towns save one, undermining the conservative get-out-the-vote tool in critical electoral areas. As conservatives in the state tried to understand the shift, the state's leading conservative blog highlighted the new progressive model that made victory possible: a model that focuses on state-based infrastructure, invests in capacity, builds outside the Democratic Party to empower issue-based advocacy, and cares more about results than credit. "We see parts of this here in NH," the blog wrote, " - one only has to look at Granite State Progress headed by Zandra Rice-Hawkins ...". This was not the only reference to GSP in the days following November 4th. In less than 5 months, Granite State Progress launched and played its role so well that it is being discussed as a model by NH conservatives. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this ranks as Granite State Progress' crowning achievement of the year - oh, that and all of those progressive election results! The successes in November only increase the urgency to set progressive policy that works for real people. Health care reform, clean energy policy and protecting the right of workers to form unions will be among Granite State Progress' strongest federal priorities in 2009. At the state level, Granite State Progress is helping cull a progressive communications strategy to tackle the upcoming State House session that will need to address solving the state's multi-million dollar deficit without endangering community priorities, improving the state retirement system, and adequately funding education in the state. And locally, we're already hard at work again, helping lead opposition to disastrous tax cap gimmicks that would reduce police and fire emergency response, and do real damage to our public schools. Granite State Progress will also be launching two ongoing, aggressive campaigns to help improve public support for progressive policies. One, we'll be leading an effort to challenge conservative propaganda in our local media, thru research, persistence and - at times - campaign actions. Two, we'll start laying the groundwork now to expose the real record of Sen. Judd Gregg, with an aggressive media campaign that will run for nearly two years and involve multiple issue-based campaign partners. New Mexico's biggest success was featuring real people, talking about real issues, on clearlynewmexico.com. We interviewed teachers, housing advocates, young people on the street and others on issues like the economy and health care. We then provided these names to other blogs and mainstream reporters and will continue to do so, building a bank of trustworthy surrogates to put out into the media. ClearlyNewMexico.com has 3 big items for 2009. First, we are going to launch the "Pundit Project" to train 10 new pundits each year to enter New Mexico's thin pundit world. These 10 recruits will become the next generation of mainstream opinion columnists, talk show hosts and radio guests. Second, we are launching "ClearlyTV," which will be based loosely on the Veracifier on Talking Points Memo. We will air short, 2-4 minute news briefs several times a week through ClearlyTV. And third, we are ramping up our investigative research and journalism program to research and produce our own hard-hitting stories in New Mexico. In two short years, Ohio has moved from red to purple to blue. As Ohio's premier communications Hub, ProgressOhio partnered with US Action in over 700,000 mail contacts with blue collar Ohio men; knocked on over 13,000 young voter doors with the League of Young Voters; provided public relations and online support to over 260 progressive groups; sent over 500,000 GOTV emails to registered Ohio voters; ranked in the top 2 among all Ohio political blogs (including newspapers); and reached over 7.8 million pages of progressive material read online. ProgressOhio is focused for 2009 on continued list growth; increasing membership involvement offline; renewing the Progressive Legislative agenda with a new progressive Ohio House majority; and pushing for Health Care reform and economic assistance at the national level. Keystone Progress opened its doors in August of 2008 and hit the ground running. KP was the driving force in the national stories around the racism and vitriol at McCain and Palin rallies. Our videos of McCain/Palin supporters were used by major network and cable news organizations around the country and around the world, exposing the racism at the core of much of the base of support for the GOP. Our videos also got incredible online exposure, being seen by over 2.5 million viewers. KP also organized rallies at more than a dozen McCain/Palin events in Pennsylvania. Over 5,000 people came to those events, which generated dozens of local news stories in Pennsylvania. Keystone Progress plans to expand its organizing in 2009 so that it is a known and respected organization across Pennsylvania. We currently have around 35,000 people on our email base. We hope to expand that to 100,000 in the coming year by organizing local committees in 40 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. These local committees will be ad hoc grassroots organizations made up of our local activists and leaders in other local progressive organizations such as labor unions locals, and local chapters of our statewide partners. We will also build our statewide issue advisory committee into a functioning body to guide our issue-based organizing. Fuse Washington executed an extensive earned media campaign that broke and continued the story of the Republican candidate for governor's involvement in a fundraising scandal. Our campaign generated more than 550 stories, including over 300 TV news clips; 5 front page, above the fold stories; more than 175 articles and extensive radio and blog coverage. Fuse also produced the Progressive Voters Guide, compiling the endorsements of and distributed by 18 of Washington's leading progressive political organizations. The Guide covered 190 races, providing one-stop shopping for a highly informed recommendation about the entire ballot. The Guide was distributed to more than 200,000 voters. In 2009, Fuse will continue to strengthen its organizing and communications capacity while focusing on strategic advocacy campaigns targeting critical progressive issues before the legislature and the voters. Our top priority issues for the Legislative session will be managing the budget crisis, adopting global warming reforms, and campaign finance reforms aimed at preventing business trade associations from skimming workers compensation funds to finance political campaigns. In the fall we will be active in important local races, and expect several high profile ballot measures (including a vote on new revenue sources aimed at helping mitigate the budget crisis). Our organizing priorities include working to help keep the new activists created by the Obama campaign engaged in politics, and to develop stronger offline performance and volunteer leadership in our activist base. Our communications priorities - in addition to executing effective communications plans for our priority campaigns -- include developing a clearer and more defined brand for Fuse, expanding our use of new media tools, and developing a broader and richer range of services for the people on our list. One Wisconsin Now helped lead a collective research and innovative earned media strategy which included staving off efforts by the Republican Attorney General and John McCain campaign cochair to disenfranchise as many as 1 million legal voters. In WI, Obama won by 422,000 votes, a vulnerable congressiona freshman won reelection a conservative district and Democrats took control of the full control of the state legislature and hold that and the governor's office for the first time in a generation. OWN is focusing on judicial ethics, the state budget and growing communication capacity in progressive non-profits. In addition to proving coalition partners with news, information and talking points during the state budget process, OWN's c3 partner will be spearheading a comprensive Communciations Capacity Building Project, including extensive communication and on-line analysis and personalized training to ensure progressive groups can effectively communicate with membersm donors, the media and the public. While this. Will be an expensive project, the CCBP will be provided to groups for free. In just one year, OWN grew its online member list by 1,000 percent and is launching the Wisconsin Research Project - a first of its kind instate, continuous progressive research program for use with issue polling and earned and paid issue advocacy. _____ This email was sent to [email protected]. To unsubscribe, go to: http://www.progressnowaction.org/unsubscribe