Get FISA Right

Join us for our latest Patriot Act and FISA meeting this Thursday at 3 pm PST / 6 pm EST. Here is the meeting page, and feel free to make use of the chat room or the comments section of this blog post for pre-meeting preparation or to let us know your thoughts!

Dialin: 1-219-509-8111  Access code: 705723

Check the key takeaways from our last meeting for context or a reminder of where we are currently at, and we hope to see you in the chat on the meeting page and/or on the call!

By: Harry Waisbren

We had another fantastic call this week, again filled with new blood and plenty of fresh ideas! Thanks to Sally, Connie, Mark, James, Soren, Korkie, Lisa, Bob, Dave, Talat, Jim, and Jon for joining, and you can find the transcript here and the key takeaways below:

• Nobody has any authoritative information regarding the current status of the Patriot Act reauthorization legislation, but indications are that the bill will be attached as a rider to a larger piece of legislation before it would sunset. Assumption is there will be a one year extension.
• Short term, we are focusing on distributing our Idea for Change in any way we can. The login to Change.org can be difficult, so if possible, make sure to follow up with people who commit to signing to make sure they have done so successfully.
• Discussed the need for education in regards to this issue, especially to fortify our longer term efforts of aligning ourselves with libertarians willing to fight for civil liberties.
• Talat described how racial profiling has been getting worse for Arab Americans, “more and more about targeting muslim americans than ever before”. The racial components of these policies could be a dividing line between the factions of the Tea Baggers…
• BORDC is circulating “best practices” model legislation and talking points to local civil right groups, in order to “let grassroots people do their thing”.
• We will be working on our mission statement and will be discussing on the wiki

Again, thanks to everyone for joining the call and taking part in a particularly active online chat!

By: Harry Waisbren

Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Right Defense Committee (BORDC) has written a post that the whole Get FISA Right community should read and consider. 1984 in 2010: Hijacking Democracy to Spy on Americans chronicles an “administration asleep at the switch” in regards to civil liberties. Even worse, the Obama administration is “actively undermining its own stated agenda and public promises to restore rights & liberties.”

This is a risky position for the country at large to be in, and Buttar navigates between the political opportunity for those willing to amplify the voice of the people amidst the fear if such political courage can not be made manifest:

Yet assertively championing constitutionalism would be shrewd, as well as principled. Hundreds of cities and towns across the country (and a compelling handful of unholy bedfellows among the states) have already rejected the beltway consensus favoring domestic spying. Restoring constitutional rights is thus a political imperative: whichever of the major parties more assertively defends the populist principles at stake stands to siphon the support of significant portions of the other’s base.

If neither party engages on that front, what began as the Bush administration’s assault on long-established constitutional principles could become — by virtue of its ratification and entrenchment by a Democratic administration — a seemingly permanent fixture of American politics.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, as it is the fundamental nature of our democracy that is at stake! It is why we must all continue to fight for the rule of law, as Buttar is entirely correct that this effort encompasses saving the “very fabric of our society”.

By: Harry Waisbren

Our next organizing call will be this Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 5 pm PST / 8 pm EST. Here is our meeting page, and we couldn’t encourage you enough to use the chat room to comment on our agenda and goals and for general discussion!

Dialin: 1-270-696-2525  Access Code: 705723

We’ll be following up on our key takeaways from last week, including our focus on our Change.org Idea for Change, as well as continuing to solidify our short and longer term initiatives.

Hope to see you there!

By: Harry Waisbren

We had another quality call this week, discussing next steps to our long and short term plans. You can read the full transcript here, and please let us know when you can make our  next call.

Thanks to Mark, Shahid, Denzil, and Jon for joining the call, and you can find the key takeaways below:

• Shahid from BORDC relayed a particularly disturbing report that there will be a straight one year reauthorization bill rammed through the congress by embedding it within a jobs bill. We will send out information as we get it, as this would clearly impact both our plans’ short and long term trajectories alike.

• We are promoting our Change.org  idea for Ideas for Change, and you can check the link for details about how you can help based on our successful model from last year.
• Mark and Jim had a long conversation about establishing our “case statement”, and are focusing their energy on finishing it.
• We are focusing on more directly connecting ourselves with the grassroots civil libertarians, whether they be from the right or left, with a particular emphasis on veterans through Iraq Veterans Against the War.
• Our coalition is made up of people who privilege grassroots activism, which is why we are such fans of BORDC’s local ordinances initiatives. The key is coming up with local events that can be used as a vehicle to draw energy together, which we could presumably tie into our extensive outreach efforts as well.

The latest legislative news may be somber, but we will certainly be keeping up the fight! This debate must not be stifled, especially since it is one of the very few in which people all across the aisle agree, and is indicative of so much more relating to the core transpartisan identities we share as Americans.

Ideas for Change in America is a crowd-sourcing competition that empowers citizens to identify and build momentum around the most innovative ideas for addressing challenges our country faces.

The 10 most popular ideas will be presented at an event in Washington, DC to relevant members of the Obama Administration, and Change.org will subsequently mobilize its full community to support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn each idea into reality.

— Ideas for Change in America page

Thomas Nephew’s We’re Number 5! We’re Number 5! and Time to celebrate! recount Get FISA Right’s excellent performance in last year’s competition. Yay us! We also wound up with some great new allies, including Democrats.com and the Dream Activists.

This year, there are a couple of ideas already submitted:

• Sally Gellart’s Take back our rights: repeal the Patriot Act, currently at 53 votes in the Criminal Justice category
• BORDC’s Enact Local Ordinances to Restore the Rule of Law and Protect Civil Liberties, currently at 16 votes in the Government Reform and Transparency category

Last year we got 2171 votes in the first round, and change.org has grown since then so we should probably be shooting for at least 2500.  How to get there from here?  Co-promoting with BORDC is a no-brainer first step.  What else?

Some of the ideas that worked well last year:

• email and Facebook message blasts to our Facebook groups (need to be careful not to do too much of this on Facebook)
• a guest post on change.org’s Criminal Justice blog.  we might be able to arrange this again — and possibly also a guest post on the change.org Immigration blog specifically on how the Patriot Act and FISA target immigrants
• a mailing from Democrats.com
• a mention on DreamActivist.org
• blog posts by whoever has blogs, preferrably embedding the change.org widget
• detailed instructions on how to sign up to change.org.  this was a really challenging task for a lot of people last year, so good instructions probably make a 10% difference.

Yeah, we should try to do all of that.   Is there anybody who can take the lead on various topics — e.g., outreach to Bob Fertik at Democrats.com,or approaching the change.org Criminal Justics blog?  If so, please let us know in today’s call or in the comments.

And what else should we be doing?

By: Harry Waisbren

We had quite the exciting conference call and online chat today, and are already building momentum for another one next week, so please let us know when you can make it. The addition of new participants and their fresh outlooks led to a litany of fantastic ideas both for our short and long term trajectory.

Thanks to Talat, Mary, Sally, Troy (sorry for the tech problems), Mark, Jim, Jon, and Chip for pre-meeting discussions for joining us!

Below you will find the key takeaways from the call amidst the action items we have to complete such audacious goals:

• Harry and Jon to reach out to BORDC, then others, on coordinating a 9/11 event
• All to vote for Sally’s Take back our rights: repeal the Patriot Actidea on change.org
• All on Feb 3 (BORDC lobby day) change FB status, email friends, share BORDC sign-on letter
• For change.org promotion, Mark to send out on OFA, Harry and/or jon to do a “how to promote” post
• Sally and Jim to start researching various interests for “network map” (as comments in blog posts)
• Chip and/or Shahid: update GFR on lobby day and next steps

Thanks again to everyone who made this possible—-it’s truly exhilarating to revel in the sense of shared passion and purpose made manifest within an organizing meeting like this one. The best part is that it is only the beginning and will continue to reverberate as we act upon these notions and witness the fruits of our collective efforts!

We’re holding an organizing call this Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 5 pm PST / 8 pm EST to reactive our network, sync with BORDC on their latest initiatives, and more.

Join us for this conference call and online chat in our new and improved meetings format.

On that front, it’d also be great if you could let us know in the chat room on the meeting page what you think of the new set up and whether you are having any issues with it.

Dialin: 1-518-825-1400, Access code: 705723

Hope to see you there!

By: Harry Waisbren

BORDC has three exciting initiatives in progress, and discussing them will certainly be big part of our upcoming organizing call Tuesday, Feb. 2 (let us know when you can make it if you haven’t already).

• The most timely of these initiatives is their grassroots lobby day to oppose domestic spying on 2/3, an event we are very proud to say we are cosponsoring. There is a conference call I’ll be attending this Friday, and I’ll relay more details/information as I receive it.

• They also have a sign-on letter buttressing the arguments the grassroots supporters will be making in person on 2/3 during the lobby day.
• Lastly, they have constructed model legislation to limit local law enforcement’s domestic spying (among other) activities. It offers an offline opportunity to any engaged groups in the same jurisdiction, and is designed to enable broad coalitions among civil rights, immigrant rights, and civil libertarian groups to connect within their cities or towns.

More to come on all of this. In the meantime, if you’re in the DC area, do your best to join the lobby day next Wednesday!

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest call went well as we plotted out our strategy following the holidays and on into the new year. Our last call coalesced a series of aggressive initiatives which we are still responding to, and our ambitious docket of current and upcoming campaigns continues to increase as leaders step forward and as we achieve more and more partners. For our most current update, here is a link to the call transcript, and below you will find some of the key takeaways:

Legislative situation

• Mark relayed that there is nothing on either the House or Senate calendar scheduled. This is a good thing, as every day that passes towards the Dec. 31st sunset date increases the chances that we will get an extension as opposed to a civil liberties crippling bill.
• Mark also explained that the last extension, passed in similar circumstances, ran one only about a month, so even if there is an extension we should be prepared for it to be short.

Video outreach

• Mark has also been following up with Alexandra Pelosi’s staff, and the next step in the process is for word of his initial outreach to be passed along via her speaking agent.
• It is difficult to say for certain how our video projects will progress, but one thing is for certain, is that our networks of online activists present quite a system to promote any sort of video—whether it be a 30 second commercial, 5 minute explanation, or a full documentary. Spreading convincing arguments is activism in and of itself (well, more like citizenship than activism, yet citizenship is something you do), and as we gain traction in these realms we will be moving more and more aggressively to take advantage of the evolution of video.

Transpartisan framing

• This past Friday, Dec. 11, Julian Sanchez appeared on NRANews.com and was interviewed by Cam Edwards, the host of “Cam and Company”. We tweeted out responses and notes to the interview, but couldn’t encourage all of you to check it out for yourselves.
• The interview went extremely positively, and Cam clearly understood and supported the rationale for NRA supporters to become involved in this fight. Bridges can hopefully be built here, as this truly is an issue that affects us all!

As Korkie emphasized on the call, the holidays are upcoming, and during such times of reflection it’s increasingly important for us to express our abiding appreciation for the help and time from all of our supporters as we collectively strive for true change and work to make our country a better place.

Thanks to Korkie, Mark, and Jon for joining the call, and to all of you, without whom, none of this would be possible!