As you may or may not have seen or heard, there is a group on mybarackobama.com that has, in under one week become the biggest group in the entire community with almost 14,000 members as of this morning.
The group was set up last week to put some pressure on Senator Obama to vote against FISA and to take the lead in urging others to do the same. And this was met with mainly positive reaction - as evidence by the rapid growth of membership, the interest of a number of widely read progressive blogs and even got the attention of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Now, some don’t think that is a good thing, and some don’t think that there should be any pressure or criticism of Senator Obama or that the mybarackobama.com community should be used for voter outreach and registration only (or mainly). And while that is pretty much mainly subjective and also depends on the tone and the intent and actions.
Which brings me to my next point - while I would think and hope that most of the users of mybarackobama.com and supporters of Obama are against the FISA bill - either passively or actively and regardless of whether it is the immunity provisions or the other egregious provisions.
And to blunt the argument that we don’t want to piss off potential supporters or voters and we don’t want to criticize Obama or whatever other naysaying argument there is, we can take action without going down this road by (once again asking to) join the "Senator Obama-Please Vote Against FISA" group or the same group on Facebook, and if you already are a member, contact your Senators and reach out to your friends to have them contact their Senators and pressure them to vote against this bill in the hopes of stopping it from being passed in the Senate.
See? No "criticism" and no "providing talking points to the republicans". Using the community and network to try and accomplish something - to try and stop a horrific bill from being passed. By using the internets and intertubes that us progressives have been using for the past few years in order to try and bring real change. And it takes the heat off of Obama with thousands of potential users to contact their Senators.
So, everyone wins here. Even if we lose on the FISA bill - we have a framework and network in place for the next bill. And the one after that. As well as the one after that one. Luckily for me, both of my Senators (Menendez and Lautenberg) have already voted against cloture, but they are two of only 15 that voted against cloture before the recess.
So, what do you say? If you haven’t joined the mybarackobama.com or Facebook group, that is the first step. Then contact your Senators. And recruit more friends and have them contact their Senators. And if you click with those links, it is TOLL FREE!!!
We only have a few more days on the FISA bill. But from this will also be the foundation of a network to take action in the future - whether it be to pressure House members, Senators, or Obama himself (even after the election, as some people have said that they will wait until only then before pressuring Obama).
Either way, there really is no reason to not do this. That is, unless you think the FISA bill is just fine.