From the Roots project organizers, who will now deliver a copy of CTG to every Democratic member of Congress:
We did it. Netroots activists have donated 250 books to The Roots Project's "Crashing the Gate" action in less than two days. Thank you to everyone who donated a book and to everyone who has volunteered to help deliver them to Congress. Thanks to Pachacutec, Christy, Jane for continuing to give our action top billing at FDL and special thanks to Jerome and SusanG for posting about the action on MyDD and DailyKos today.
Before we deliver the books to our Democratic representatives in Congress we'll be taking a few steps to ensure that this action has a lasting impact in the halls of Congress.
First, we will be inserting personalized book plates into each copy of "Crashing the Gate" with a brief explanation of why the book was donated and who donated it. Every time a senator, congressperson, or their aides open the book they will know that it was donated by The Roots Project, citizens who want their representatives to wake up to the importance of the netroots and join our movement.
We will also be reaching out to senators and representatives to schedule face-time during the course of our deliveries. The good folks of PoliticsTV will be filming our day of action and hopefully we're hoping some elected officials will be able to receive our gifts in person and on camera. Whenever possible we will have our volunteers delivery copies of "Crashing the Gate" to their representatives.
We will also be reaching out to DC's traditional media. We want to give them the opportunity to cover a real grassroots action that originated on the blogosphere. Unfortunately we do not currently have access to a DC area media blast fax list - if you have access to this information and would like to share it with The Roots Project, please email "jay AT ackroyd.org".
We're going to have about twenty volunteers delivering books on our day of action. There are 245 offices that we need to go and we'll be breaking down into smaller teams to cover the most ground. We're hoping to do the delivery next week - if you would like to help, email "jay AT ackroyd.org".
The volunteers will be split in five groups of four and directed to the different House and Senate office buildings. They'll have the personalized books and a specific set of offices that they'll be visiting. With 245 gifts to deliver, we expect the action to take a full day. Right now we're looking for volunteers who can commit to working - and walking - for eight hours. Once we have our volunteer staff lined up we'll do our best to incorporate individuals who are only able to visit their representative's office.
Thank you all for your support thus far and for everything the netroots will be doing to support this action moving forward.
We're very much indebted to Philo & Jay Ackroyd for leading up this effort. Yet I'm not just excited because we're talking about CTG here. There is talk to buy copies of Glenn Greenwald's book for every Republican in Congress (to which I will happily contribute if it happens). And really, all the Roots Project activity to date has been pretty freakin' cool. I can't wait to see what else those guys have in store for us.