I got a phone call from a staffer in Sen. Russ Feingold's office, who gave me some bad news. It seems that because of Russ' strong zero-gifts policy, which also extends to the Progressive Patriots Fund, we are unable to do the Sunflowers for Russ campaign.
I have already contacted Art at Coast to Coast Flowers to cancel the campaign, and those that sent me PayPal donations will receive full refunds as soon as I'm done typing this out. If you ordered through Coast to Coast, they only took your information as a pledge for when the order went through, so your credit card was not charged.
BUT........ There's sort of a Plan B........
If nothing else, this series of diaries lit a fire under peoples' butts and got them to donate money, even if they disagreed with sending flowers.
So now I'm asking you good people, who give a shit about our country and her citizens, to donate the same amount instead to the Progressive Patriots Fund.
Even above Dean's DNC Democracy Bonds, I see this as a true grassroots push to help get real progressives elected. We even get to decide where the money goes by voting! It doesn't get more democratic, or Democratic, than that.
So to keep this short, thanks everyone for the great show of support. Please spread the word that the sunflowers thing isn't happening, but that donations to the PPF are alive and well. I'm very sorry that we won't be seeing some great photos out of this, or get the public show of support for Russ in the press as we wanted, but the silver lining is that his PPF will get more donations than ever as a result.
Thanks everyone, you're the best.