Yesterday, kid oakland posted a terrific action diary on Daily Kos asking all of us who donated, volunteered or worked on the Obama campaign, to e-mail President Obama at this key moment in the campaign for real healthcare reform, in a very specific way. What exactly do I mean by "a very specific way?" Please follow me below the fold and I'll explain...
If you donated to Barack Obama or volunteered to work on his campaign, you are assuredly getting frequent e-mails from the President, his advisors and surrogates on a regular basis. You will recognize these e-mails because they come from info@barackobama.com. Each and every one of them. Check your inbox and you will see.
As kid oakland asked yesterday, "Did you know that you can write to 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 for his campaign?"
Well, it's true. And it's powerful. We all know that politicians notice when their donors and volunteers contact them -- especially en masse. It works in much the same way as we have seen with constituent pressure during the the beginning stages of the campaign for real healthcare reform. And we know for certain that they take the emails that they receive at info@barackobama.com very seriously. You can trust that your emails are being read and noted -- even more so in greater numbers.
There are 13,000,000 of us -- yes, that's thirteen million -- on Barack Obama's email list. It would be hard for him not to notice even a fraction of that many millions of voices calling for change at the same time this weekend.
Yesterday, we began a simple, straightforward action that you can easily take to help secure real healthcare reform this year. You can do it from the comfort of your living room, and I hope that you will do it tonight.
The action is called Letters to Obama and here's how it works:
All you have to do is to write a personal letter to the President about health care reform at his info@barackobama.com email address.
As kid oakland said yesterday, "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 the letter that I wrote yesterday.
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My Letter to President Obama
Dear Mr. President --
I first heard you speak in person at Yearly Kos (now Netroots Nation) in Chicago in August 2007. I was in the breakout session that feted you on your birthday, and after hearing you speak that day, I never looked back. Honestly, you pretty much had me at "hello."
I live in New York City and in September 2007, I helped to organize the rally in Washington Square Park that challenged then-Senator Clinton on her home turf. It was a watershed event for your campaign and I was proud to be part of it.
From January 2008 - November 2008, I worked as a volunteer on your campaign in Texas (for the primary) and New Mexico (for the general). I spent months organizing remotely in rural South Texas and then worked in-state for GOTV, where I helped to lead a caucus in a mixed Anglo-Hispanic precinct that we won 66% to 33%. Later, I left my business, family and home (I am not a youngster but a middle-aged woman) for almost five months overall to volunteer full-time for the Campaign for Change in New Mexico. I brought decades of field experience to the coordinated campaign, where I canvassed and phonebanked, organized, trained hundreds of volunteers, and helped to deliver many of the most challenging and critical precincts in the most crucial county in the state. I am proud to say that I was part of an extraordinary effort that not only got you elected by a margin of approximately 15%, but also added another Democratic senator to the rolls and turned the entire House delegation Democratic for the first time in history, in order to provide the legislative support that you would need to implement your agenda. I donated my time to you and other Democratic candidates at great personal, professional and out-of-pocket cost, and I was ecstatic to do so.
As a strong supporter, I implore you to do everything in your power to bring us comprehensive health care reform this year -- including a robust, immediately-available public option.
As as self-employed, small-businessperson, the cost of my health insurance is oppressive and it's value to me -- after sky-high deductibles, co-pays, exclusions, limitations, etc., -- limited at best. For example, I have lived for years with excruciating and intractable back and neck pain that can only be treated with extensive physical therapy and other pain management techniques. My very expensive insurance provides for approximately 6 - 10 thirty-minute sessions of physical therapy per diagnosis, per lifetime, which is essentially useless in terms of both corrective measures and pain mitigation. So, in addition to my outrageous insurance premiums, when I am financially able -- which is only intermittently -- I pay thousands of dollars a year out of my own pocket for complementary medicine, physical therapy and more.
I know that I am blessed in that my condition is not life-threatening, but it is life-altering and affects both my overall health (did you know that intractable pain only gets worse over time as the nervous system becomes more and more stressed, and that the immune system becomes more and more compromised over time as a result of ongoing pain?) as well as my personal productivity and ability to be a contributing member of society.
You promised some very specific tenets of health care reform during your campaign and I implore you to deliver on that promise. I understand well the vagaries of partisan and intra-party politics, and how legislation is crafted and passed. I ask that as the leader of our party and the skilled executive and politican that you are, you find a means to make comprehensive health care reform -- including a robust, immediately-available public option -- a reality for the millions upon millions of Americans (at least 75% of the population, as recently as last week) who are counting on you.
Still fired up --
My real name
P.S. If you want to see how fired up I really am, here is a link to my latest photoblog on Daily Kos: Action is Manna for the Soul. I am still organizing for you, Mr. President. I am doing my part. Please, please come through for us and do yours.
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Please take a look at some of the other wonderful letters in the comments of kid oakland's diary letters to Obama yesterday. And then, please write your own and share it below. Those of us who worked on the campaign, and many who didn't, know that a critical component of our success was sharing the personal stories that motivated us to support then-Senator Obama. The President told his story to the voters over and over, and those involved in the campaign told ours as well. Everyone had a personal reason -- a compelling personal reason, because all authentic reasons are compelling -- to be part of the campaign. I am certain that the stories that you will tell below will be just as compelling and just as effective.
(By the way, the simplest way to write to President Obama, is to simply hit reply to the last email you received from BarackObama.com. That way, you will be sure to use the email address that they have on record for you. You should also probably change the subject line to something of your own choosing -- that reflects your compelling reason for writing.)
On a final note, you can follow this project on TWITTER or post your own using the tags: #dearobama and #hcr.
Important activist info: For alerts on action diaries and other important healthcare news, please sign up for Netroots for Healthcare or follow along on Twitter: @Netroots4HC.
If you read, comment in or tip this diary, please make sure to recommend it, too. And don't forget to spread the word via Facebook and Twitter. Any increased visibility will mean hundreds, if not thousands more letters reaching President Obama at this key moment in the drive for real healthcare reform.