Thanks to the
Roots Project founded at Firedoglake, our Democratic representatives won't be able to say they didn't see us coming.
The innovative "open source lobbying" project, conceived as the citizen's answer to K Street, has announced a plan to buy 250 copies of Crashing the Gate at discount and personally deliver the book to every Dem in Congress - and filming the "people's personal touch" hand-off of our citizen-based blueprint to empowerment.
Politics and Prose, an indy DC bookstore, has set up a page to accept the discounted purchases of copies of the book for the project here. The CTG Project website explains how the ordering will work:
Politics & Prose will be offering all participants in the FDL-Crashing the Gate action 37% off the retail price of the book. All participants should select the "Instore Pick-Up" option and then enter their credit card information. All sales are processed by our bookstore staff -- so the discount will be given when they ring up the sale, and will therefore not be reflected on the online total but will be reflected on your charged total when you receive your bill. Your cost will be about 16 dollars, not the 25 dollars that shows up on the ordering page.
Aside from the creative - and fun - aspect of the project, there's some serious infrastructure building and networking going on here, something progressives desperately need. Think about it: You have three liberal blogs (MyDD, Daily Kos, Firedoglake), two authors who've coordinated with a progressive publisher (Chelsea Green), the spin-off Roots Project and the cooperation of an independent bookstore. This is how an activist progressive noise machine is built, one cross-connection at a time.
And you can be in on the ground floor of this building process. To volunteer to deliver the books to Capitol Hill, you can get instructions here. And again, to donate a purchase to the project, visit here.
A single copy of Crashing the Gate purchased through this effort ... approximately $16. Getting a look at Joe Lieberman's expression when he receives it ... priceless.
Update: The books is sold out, according to PhiloTGB. Great job, folks! Thank you all so much!