It started off simply. Courage Campaign's Adam Bink suggested he'd donate a buck to the
Protect ALL NC Families coalition to defeat Amendment One for every new Twitter follower.
A handful of us said that sounds fun, I'll do it too. Think of it as a Twitter driven mini-fundraiser/awareness campaign to help GOTV. You may recognize many of initial people we looped in like Pam Spaulding, Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs, MoveOn’s Julia Rosen, AmericaBlog’s Joe Sudbay and our own Scottie Thomaston.
I said I'd do it:
And we looped in some Twitter opinion leaders, like the the hilarious Lizz Winstead:
And so it was. Before you knew it we'd looped in a ton of people, like all of these people:
@adamjbink, @davidbadash, @dmcrawford, @joesudbay, @pamspaulding, @indiemcemopants, @tedeytan, @LizzWinstead, @clarknt67, @tlanehudson, @AndySzekeres, @kathyplate, @robynochs, @richferraro, @andekelley, @bilerico, @cooper888, @toddbeeton, @goodasyou, @KTravisBallie, @nathanhjb, @juliarosen, @denisdison, @notfakeandrew, @CourageCampaign, @davidhalldc, khj, @laurelramseyer, @pullenparkqueer, @allisonpalmer, @camerontolle, @alb68, @HRC, @TNEquality, @quietis, @rickjacobs, GetEQUAL, @waymonhudson, @chrismassicotte, @xavierla, @raylab, @blabbeando, @pghlesbian24, @madingbaum, @sandibehrns, @matt-thorn, @benjyraymunson @joshco
Courage Campaign's Rick Jacobs made a funny with his challenge:
And soon people were tweeting matching offers at us:
And shout outs from big national orgs.
Great shout out from the fierce allies standing with us at Courage Campaign, the link leads to Scottie Thomaston's awesome post.
And we'd drawn the interest of national organization to North Carolina's fight:
We saw some Red State solidarity. Hopefully we'll hear from Empire State Pride Agenda, Equality California, Equality Illinois and others.
And soon andresdavid stepped up to log the story at Storify, which is a Social Networking site that allows you to quickly and easily aggregate a bunch of Tweets into a single post. You can follow it here.
Just 3 more hours left
There are still some wannabe donors who haven't maxed out new followers. This is like leaving money on the table. All you have to do is follow them. We are offering to donate to Protect All NC Families until midnight for each new follower. The reporting deadline is at midnight, and we want Protect ALL NC Families to finish strong. (They are already outraising the proponents significantly, but with National Organization for Marriage sitting on millions of anti-gay dollars, that can change in a heartbeat.) From WRAL's analysis:
...it looks like amendment opponents got more money from individuals, while backers got the bulk of their money from nonprofits.
"Non-profits" being
national religious-affiliated hate groups, like Family Research Council and NOM. PANCF has almost—or maybe now over—10,000 individuals, most from in-state. It is definitely a "people vs. powerful interest groups" fight.
My counter started at 2,369, and I've still got a ways to go. And I have two people matching me (thanks Coop, Drew), so each new follower is worth $3.
This guy's generous and Vice Chairman of VoteVets, an awesome progressive org.
He's also taunting us!
So follow away. You can find people looking for new followers by searching on Twitter for the #hashtag #Tweet2BeatA1.
Feel free to join us and issue your own challenge or match if you can.
What else you can do to help defeat Amendment One:
- Contribute to the campaign on ActBlue so they have the resources they need to get our message out.
- Sign up for a Courageous Conversation about Amendment One with someone you know in North Carolina.
- Follow the campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
- Download social media tools and yard signs to show your opposition to Amendment 1.
- Volunteer to Call for Equality—a national, virtual GOTV phone banking effort against Amendment 1.
- Sign up to help get out the vote in NC yourself! Courage Campaign is arranging out-of-state caravans and travel assistance is available.
Breaking News
The campaign reports a new big dollar donor has stepped up and offered to MATCH! So these donations will be doubled. (How about that? I have two personal matchers, as many other participants have collected matchers. And now I have one from the campaign! This is what
momentum looks like!