You Can Change Congress

From Larry Lessig, founder of change-congress.org:

Dear Friend,

I'm writing (and it's really me! No more ghostwritten emails -- more on that below) to let you know about some more progress at Change-Congress.org, and to ask for your help in launching the second stage of our project.

As you'll recall, on March 20, we launched the beta site for Change-Congress.org. That gave candidates and citizens the ability to pledge support for up to four planks of reform. We've been talking to literally scores of candidates and members over the past weeks to get them to sign on. So far we've got just about 24, including our first Member, Jim Cooper from Tennessee. (The list of candidates adopting the pledge is at the bottom of this email.)

Today we're launching the second stage of our project. We're asking wiki-worker-types (and that includes you) to help us tag all candidates and Members of Congress, by tracking for each whether they support the planks of reform in the Change Congress movement or not. We've built a set of tools that you can use to document -- for each plank of reform -- whether a candidate supports that plank or not. After that information is verified by a volunteer administrator, we'll add it to a map of reform that we're building. After we're done, we'll have a picture of the level of support for fundamental reform of Congress. And with that map, we'll launch stage 3 of our project -- raising money to support candidates who support reform.

I'm asking you today to go to the site and first tag the candidates in your own district. When that's done, then please work on as many other districts as you can. You'll get points as you do this (we're not sure what those points will get you beyond whuffie among reformers). And please spread this please of mine around to as many others as you can. Blog it, spam with it, talk about it at parties: We need to complete this map as quickly as possible and it will only get done with your help. Here's the link to get started:

http://change-congress.org/tag/

Thank you for your help.

IN OTHER NEWS:

1. We've launched a blog and the beginnings of a podcast. You can read the blog here and subscribe to it via RSS/Atom here. The podcast is filled just now with lessig propaganda, but we're keen to start publishing everything we can (preferably much shorter than my stuff) as soon as we can. If you have ideas or can help with this, please email volunteer@change-congress.org.

2. We need CHANGE ORGANIZERS -- meaning volunteer administrators who can help us verify the tagging information, and help us build out the volunteer force. If you've got some time, please email CO_volunteers@change-congress.org.

3. CLOUT, on Air America, has announced that it will soon begin to give a weekly report on the progress of Change Congress. We'll send an announcement when we get details.

4. We've got a new political director at Change Congress. You've actually heard from him before. His name is Japhet Els, and he ghost wrote a couple emails from me. That was my bad idea; I'm not going down that path. Everything you see with my name attached was actually typed by me (and I've got the typos to prove it). But from now on, Japhet will be writing here periodically to let you know of our progress, and to ask for your help. Japhet comes to us from the Dean world. More recently, he was working with my co-founder, Joe Trippi, on the Edwards campaign. Please join me in welcoming Japhet, and in thanking him for his work for us.

5. As I announced in the original launch of Change Congress, the purpose of Change Congress is not to become its own reform organization. It is instead to leverage, and amplify, the reform work of others. Each of the pledges (except the first) has a reform organization behind it. (The first was inspired by John Edwards.) We'll be adding functionality to the site to make this easier, but please be sure to sign up with the organizations that match your own vision of reform. The one's we've been following are below. If you've got other ideas, please send an email to partners@change-congress.org.

http://change-congress.org/about/

6. We need tech volunteers! If you're a Django developer, we need your help especially. If you can help, please send a note to tech_volunteers@change-congress.org



Lawrence Lessig
Founder
Change Congress

Unemployment up: Tell Congress to extend benefits

With 372,000 unemployed Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week (up 17,000 from the week before) and few jobs on offer, Congress needs to take action to extend the eligibility period for people to receive benefits.

Rep. McDermott (D-WA) has introduced legislation to address this issue, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, HR 4934. As soon as the number of unemployed workers nationwide increases by over one million compared to the same month in 2007, unemployment benefits would be made available to workers for an additional 26 weeks and temporarily increased by $50 per week. This extension would put roughly $18 billion into the hands of struggling families and immediately boost the economy.


Contact your Representative at the Capitol switchboard(202) 224-3121 or look them up online. Urge him or her to cosponsor, support and vote for the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, HR 4934.

It is time to take it up again

A must read editorial in the Washington Post.....

Forty years ago, American liberalism suffered a blow from which it has still not recovered. On April 4, 1968, a relatively brief but extraordinary moment of progressive reform ended, and a long period of conservative ascendancy began.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run for much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform. Read the rest here.

Murat Kurnaz

My question is this: why does it take mainstream media like "60 Minutes" this long to cover these sorts of stories?

The man's story began in 2001. It's 2008.