Help get the word out on Facebook! (UPDATED: 48 hours to go)

January 12, 2009

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Update, January 14: please see Act now: 30 hours left in Ideas for Change in America for ways you can help in email, blogs, digg, and Twitter.

Voting in change.org’s Ideas for Change in America competition closes Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific time.  When I first posted this, Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties has just fallen to #8 (with Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence now a few votes ahead of us), and a couple of the ideas just out of the top 10 have been climbing rapidly.  Now would be a very good time to start increasing our momentum.

So let’s supplement our blogosphere outreach with attention to Facebook.*  I’m pretty sure at least half the Get FISA Right members have Facebook accounts, and while there are a lot of challenges to doing Facebook activism, it’s a great platform for person-to-person contact.   As you get a few moments of time over the next few days, here’s how you can help.   If you’re new to Facebook, more detailed descriptions are available on the Advocating on Facebook page on our wiki.

  1. Post the idea to your Facebook profile and Share it with your friends.   The URL is http://www.change.org/ideas/view/get_fisa_right_repeal_the_patriot_act_and_restore_our_civil_liberties
  2. Change your status, Thomas’ is currently Thomas hopes you’ll vote for “Get FISA Right” at change.org. Mine is Jon is fighting for civil liberties! http://tinyurl.com/8ovtnt
  3. sign up for the Facebook event Get FISA Right in Round 2 of “Ideas for Change” and invite your friends! We’ll be using this as a communication channel over the last 72 hours, with one or two messages a day to let people know what the priorities are.
  4. reach out to groups, causes, and pages by writing on Walls and contacting admins.  Advocating on Facebook has some sample messages and lists of likely allies.  (Don’t try to do more than two or three groups in a day!  And if you start getting warned as a spammer, please see How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech.)
  5. change your profile picture.  There are a lot of different images to choose from in our photo gallery.

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