The Summer 2008 prototype 50 State Strategy for the immunity amendments. Please see the overall Strategy and priorities page for additional context.


Goal:
to encourage people to contact their individual senatorsin addition to calling Sen. Obama -- and track how many get involved.


Why:

Although he is the presidential candidate, Obama only has one vote in the Senate. 50 more are needed to pass an amendment; in February, it went down 31-67. We need to make it clear how many people stand with Sens. Obama, Dodd, Leahy, Feingold, and Bingaman against telecom immunity. The best way to do that is for people to contact their individual senators. We can also publicize however many thousands of people get involved, which will highlight the breadth of opposition.

How To Create a Senator Specific Facebook Group

See this page to find out which groups exist and which need to be created. (Also please sign up so we're not duplicating efforts.)
Top priority Senators .... in this order : Lautenberg (NJ),Webb (VA), Whitehouse (RI), Kohl (WI), Sununu(NH), Collins (ME)

An easy template to use to start the group is available here. The template outlines all the information needed to make the call:

• senate office numbers in DC and district offices back home*
• suggestions for what to say (mirror Blue America as well as and our own excellent call suggestions page)

*available on each senator's contact page; see senate.gov

All folks need to do is cut, copy and paste, and then add in the senator's name, state name, and phone numbers.

Once you've created a group, please add the link to the page listing the groups, and announce the group on the discussion thread at the original facebook group. Facebook will block you as a spammer if you issue too many invitations to groups, so consider emailing the links to me or Jon Pincus instead.

Contacting Senators

People can contact their Senators in multiple ways -- and we should encourage people to use all of them. In priority order:

• in-person, in DC or senate district offices (or campaign offices) back home.
• record using photos uploaded to Flickr/FB?
  
• Phone calls using the Blue America tool This tool will let us track how many phone calls can be made, and record the senators responses. We can help by raising awareness of the tool, and making sure people have contact information including senate district office numbers* back home (in case the DC office voicemail fills up or people prefer to make local calls)
• risk: will the brand-new Blue America tool hold up under the load?
  
• Via an online petition likeDemocrats for America.
• On Facebook, if they have a page, by writing on their wall or sending a message.
• Via email.
• how to record this -- ask people to send copies to a listserv?
  

Getting the word out

This will require a coordinated effort using the myBO group, social networks, the blogosphere, coordinating with other campaigns, coverage in the mainstream media, and an in-person "tell your friends and family" effort.

myBO group

how to use the email list effectively to help?

senator specific Facebook groups: Senator X, Say NO to Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right!

Folks should be calling their own senators; Michiganders call Michigan senators, Californians call California senators.

We are setting up senator-specific groups on Facebook, asking folks who live in that senator's state to join. We will then use the group(s) to

1. encourage people to call their senators
2. record the number of folks calling - we'll ask those who called to post
3. record conversations with senators' staffers - again, we'll ask those who called to post

If the senator is doing the right thing, we can change the group's name to reflect that. Senator X, Thank You for Saying NO to Telecom Immunity and Getting FISA Right.

We can set up one or two of these (for a large state such as CA) to get the ball rolling.

We need to get this ready by Sunday afternoon so that we can ramp up Sunday evening and have things in high gear by the time Monday starts up and everybody gets back to work.

events on Facebook and myBO

We're going to use eventsmyBO and Facebook. Each state will have an,its own unique event on each social network site. So that's 50 or 100 events that need to be created on myBO and 50 or 100 events on Facebook. (What about MySpace?)

Each event should include all the information needed to make the call:

• senate office numbers in DC and district offices back home*
• suggestions for what to say (mirror Blue America as well as and our own excellent call suggestions page)

*available on each senator's contact page; see senate.gov

Folks should be calling their own senators; Michiganders call Michigan senators, Californians call California senators.

We can set up one or two of these (for a large state such as CA) to get the ball rolling.

We need to get this ready by Sunday afternoon so that we can ramp up Sunday evening and have things in high gear by the time Monday starts up and everybody gets back to work.

blogosphere outreach

The best approach would be simultaneous posts on as many as possible of the blogs who are supporting this Sunday evening (or perhaps Monday morning). This'll increase the chances of getting critical mass -- and coverage.

social network outreach

Different for different networks. At a minimum we should consider myBO, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter. For now, see the Facebook page for an example of the kinds of things we might do ...

You can use this code as a "badge" for your webpage or blog:

<a href="http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/page/Today%27s+priorities"> <img src="http://image.wetpaint.com/image/1/_fBFoOD5aOb5HPL8gAT3_w44619"/></a> <br/> Help Obama <a href="http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/page/Today%27s+priorities">Get FISA Right </a>