Our first action email went out today. It is the first email in a campaign to reform Senate rules and end the filibuster. Sign up for this campaign here.
A lot of you will ask, justifiably, “what possible difference can a petition make?” As progressive activists, you probably get 10-20 requests to sign a petition every week, and they don’t seem to have much impact. So, in the spirit of openness, let me explain to you our thinking behind this action.
- The first goal of the petition is to use it to get meetings with Senators, or their staff. If we get a lot of signatures, we can meet with returning Senators and candidates for Senate,when we deliver the petition to them. During those meetings, we will have a chance to ask them if they support changing Senate rules with only a simple majority vote on the first day Congress is in session next year.
- Through these meetings, if we get 51 returning and potential Senators in support of changing the Senate rules with 51 votes, then we will have proven that the Senate rules can be changed with 51 votes. Obtaining such proof is the first threshold in actually changing the Senate rules next year. From that point, other actions will follow.
- Finally, if you take the action, then we will know you are interested in taking part in other, later actions we will conduct on Senate rules reform. We need a list of which activists are, and are not, interested in order to conduct this campaign. That way, we will contact the right people for future actions on this topic.
That is theory of change behind the petition. If it sounds workable to you, and if you want to join the campaign to change the Senate rules, and even end the filibuster, then click here and sign up.
The thinking behind Senate rules reform as our first action came at Netroots Nation. There were few, if any, larger applause lines than calls to end the filibuster. Attendees asked Senators, and candidates, question after question on the filibuster. There seemed to be a huge groundswell of support behind it at the conference, making it an easy pick for our first action.
In the coming days and weeks, there will be chances to participate in other campaigns. And no, they will not all be petitions, calls for donations, or exhortations to contact your member of Congress. We will engage in a variety of campaigns and we will offer a variety of ways for people to get involved in those campaigns. So, even if you are not interested in the filibuster campaign, sign up to receive alerts on other topics here.
Also, we are aware that some technical issues have arisen from the pop-up page and the emails. Hopefully, a fix that was put in place on the pop-up should prevent you from seeing it multiple times on the same device in the same browser. But remember, if you have your cookies disabled, you are going to see it much more frequently.
Please, join up to help end the filibuster, and post your questions, critiques and suggestions in the comments.