Did you donate to Barack Obama? Did you volunteer to support his campaign? Do you get his emails? (Heck, maybe like me, you got one today.)
Have you noticed that they all come from info@barackobama.com?
Did you know that you can write Barack Obama using that email address? Further, did you know that when you write to Barack Obama at info@barackobama.com, that Barack Obama's staff at barackobama.com will be able to see right away from your email address that you were a donor or a volunteer to his campaign?
Well, it's true. And it's powerful. Trust me. Politicians notice when their donors and volunteers write them an email. There's 13 million of us on Barack Obama's email list. Do you think he'd notice if we all wrote him this weekend about the need for healthcare reform?
This weekend I've got a simple, straightforward action we all can take to help pass comprehensive healthcare reform with a robust public insurance option open to all Americans.
It's called Letters to Obama...
Letters to Obama
This Labor day weekend, I would like to invite you join me in a very simple, direct project in support of comprehensive healthcare reform.
I'd like to invite you to write personal letters to the President about health care reform at his info@barackobama.com email address.
If Barack Obama inspired you should reply to him today. In particular, like msblucow, we need to root our principled requests for Obama to pass comprehensive health care reform in stories from our activism and our day to day lives, especially stories that tell the president about the urgent need for reform. The more principled, specific and rooted those stories are, the more they will break through the clutter of the health care debate.
Here's mine, I look forward to reading yours below.
(The simplest way to write Obama is hit reply to the last email you received from BarackObama.com, that way you will be sure to use the email address they have on record for you.)
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my letter to Obama
Dear President Obama,
My name is Paul Delehanty and I am writing to you today as a volunteer and a donor to express my firm support for the passage of comprehensive healthcare reform including a robust public insurance option open to all Americans.
I had the privilege of volunteering for your campaign in Oakland, California, where I walked a precinct in West Oakland during the California primary and built a MyBO community group in my neighborhood. I also wrote a series of well-read blog posts online explaining your policy views...including your support for healthcare reform that provided a public insurance option available to all Americans that would rein in costs and force insurance companies to be honest. I spent the general election in Omaha Nebraska where we worked side-by side-with your campaign to help you win an electoral vote in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.
Mr. President, I am 40 years old, in good health, and I pay over $400 a month merely to have a generic health insurance policy. For that $4,800 a year I am still subject to numerous rules and deductibles that limit my care and my security. But I'm not writing you today simply about myself.
I know firsthand the idealism and principled conviction that led millions to support you. In 2008, we were a nation hungry for change. We still are today. Millions of voters, young and old, from all walks of life and political points of view, cast a vote for you because you embodied hope. Hope for a real change in business as usual in Washington. But we all know that business as usual is powerful.
Mr. President, big, for-profit companies have dominated healthcare for too long in the United States. They've made money while excluding some of us, bankrupting others, and causing millions of Americans to live in fear of losing their jobs or getting ill.
It doesn't have to be that way. Big insurance corporations have had their chance to rein in costs and they've failed. We need a change. But for change to happen we need your principled leadership today. Mr. President, please use your speech to the nation this Wednesday to lead Congress to deliver comprehensive healthcare reform that includes a robust public insurance option available to all Americans.
Sincerely
Paul Delehanty
Oakland, California
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Okay, now it's YOUR TURN...
Please write Obama a letter and then share it below....btw, I changed my subject line from "re:Power" to "re:Change we Can Believe In."...and do read this powerful record of letters that citizen activists have sent to Obama below.
Btw, you can follow this project on TWITTER or post your own using the tags: #dearobama and #hcr.