Get FISA Right

I didn’t know what to expect before I went to Sen. Russ Feingold’s listening session in Fond du Lac this morning, but all early indications warrant immense confidence that progressive activists in general and Get Fisa Right in particular can leverage these for impressive results. My experience this morning has made me supremely confident that our goals for the “GFR Heart Sen. Feingold” campaign are entirely reachable, and I think it will be a boon not only for our work but for the progressive movement in general if we take advantage of these!

First things first—-a recap of what these listening sessions are like. Sen. Feingold pledged upon his first senatorial run to hold open meetings in all 72 counties in Wisconsin every single year. This must be quite the strain on him, yet this strain did not seem to mitigate the utility of these open meetings as he went beyond the call of duty (and over the time limit) to ensure that he answered EVERY SINGLE QUESTION posed to him.

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My post on Get FISA Right’s dailyish updates is up in the Political Tactics section of The Seminal.   Here’s the introduction:

Every activism campaign faces the challenge of keeping people informed without overloading them. It’s particularly acute for Get FISA Right because we’re explicitly trying to engage with people who prefer to get their information via social network sites (Twitter and Facebook so far) as well as the more traditional blogs and email.* Hopefully our experiences will be useful for other activism campaigns as well.

Our goal is for people who have even a little bit of time available to be able to quickly see what’s up — and where they might be able to help. For active Get FISA RIght members and allies in the civil liberties community, it’ll be a minimum-investment way of staying informed. For the 95%+ of members who only have time intermittently, it’ll be a quick way of coming up to speed when there’s an action alert. And for potential members, bloggers, and the media, it’ll be an easy way of tracking what’s going on and deciding whether it’s interesting.

Assuming we can make it work, that is. It’s worth a try.

Rich Jensen has an entertaning, albeit somewhat inaccurate, summary on digg.  Speaking of which: digg it! And it’s also on reddit, with a much better title: Keeping in touch with the online world.  Yeah, that’s what I meant to call it, really.

Thanks to Josh Nelson and The Seminal for the invitation to guest-blog!  For a new blog like ours, opportunities like this are extremely valuable.

Update, February 9: notes available here.  no download this time, sorry 😦

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The most recent phone/chat conference was in part about the direction the ad campaign should take. Broadly speaking, there are two issues:

• how aggressively to promote the ads
• where to run them

The first issue is related to the familiarity viewers have with the topic — is language used in the ads such as “Congratulations” or “Don’t Let Our Constitution Die” too esoteric, too “inside baseball”? (For example, “FISA” is not defined in the “Congratulations” ad.) If so, that may argue for a limited rollout of the current ads, and the development of a new,  more easily understood educational message.

The choice of which markets to place the ads in depends (it seems to me) on what goals are being pursued. For example, if Representatives or Senators can be identified who seem persuadable about reforming/restoring FISA, that might argue for buying ads in their congressional districts or states.   The list of cities where SaysMe.tv can run our ads is:

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Bangor (ME), Charlotte, Columbus, Dallas, Dayton, Denver, Detroit, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando-Daytona Beach, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Reno. St. Louis, San Francisco, Savannah, Seattle-Tacoma, Spokane, Toledo, Washington DC, West Palm Beach – Ft Pierce, Atlanta (2/1/09), Boston (2/1/09)

The recent TV appearances of former NSA worker Russell Tice makes me wonder if it’s possible that our ads might inspire others like him to blow the whistle on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.  If so, continued or perhaps specially rewritten ads in the DC area and other NSA locations might be worthwhile, wherever they are — e.g., Fort Gordon, GA (Augusta), Bridgeton, MO (ATT facility), etc. — if served by one of the media markets listed above.

Alternatively, perhaps outreach to certain audience demographics might be best — e.g., Comedy Central for younger, politically engaged viewers, Fox for conservative viewers.  Either way, ad rollouts in local markets will be even more successful if they’re accompanied by press releases like the ones Patrick Bruckart sent to local Virginia papers about the “Congratulations ad.”

What do you think?  (Links to ads and news stories to follow)

There’s a ton of FISA-related stuff going on … most dramatically whistleblower Russell Tice’s revelations on Olbermann about the extent of the warrantless wiretapping.  Nicole Belle has a transcript on Crooks and Liars, and I’m sure there are going to be discussions of this all over the web; if you see some interesting ones, please share them in the comments.

And if you get a second to add a comment in to some of the discussions elsewhere, make sure to mention Get FISA Right and point people to where they can leave a comment for President Obama at https://getfisaright.wordpress.com/?p=228#comments.

Speaking of whistleblowers, this is a good time to mention the Thomas Tamm legal defense fund.

What else?

Thoughts on any of these?

Please discuss!

jon