While I'd seen AnotherMassachusettsLiberal on Daily Kos for a while in the years after I joined the Great Orange Satan, I truly met him online in 2009 when he offered to transfer his Netroots Nation registration over to me for the conference in Pittsburgh, PA that year. A number of Kossacks, at least 20, were working hard to get me to the conference and make it so we could afford for me to go, which took a lot of people contributing in one form or another. TheFatLadySings offered to share her hotel room with me and my dialysis equipment, for example, and exmearden covered most of my food for the time I was there. AML was one of those people; he gave me his registration as a gift.
Back then, he was working as a software engineer, a job that paid him well. Sometime after he transferred his registration for NN09 to me, he lost his job. Since then, he's been working as a solar power installer when he can get it.
It's winter. Almost spring, but where he lives, there have been some pretty bad winter storms. People don't get solar equipment installed in the wintertime, and he's been trying valiantly to make ends meet.
Now he needs help from us. This time, though, there's a twist; he has something for us, too.
Here's the message he sent me a couple of days ago:
I lost my good paying job as a software engineer in 2009, and since then I've been selling solar power systems. It's been a dismal winter for sales, and we're still in its grip, we had a winter storm overnight. I expect things will turn around next month, but this month I'm short about $600 for my obligations, and $1,000 would really do the trick.
I don't want charity, per se - I have an online voter organizing software system online that I wrote, so anyone who helps me out can get their own copy of it and use it to organize voters in their local community. I'd be willing to set up a copy for anyone who gives me $25 or more, along with a Wordpress blog and web-based email.
Please let me know if you can help me out, ok? I wouldn't be asking if the need wasn't very real. I promise I'll give back to the community in equal measure once I'm back on my feet. [emphasis mine -River]
If you don't have access to
VoteBuilder, and a lot of smaller campaigns, primary campaigns, issue campaigns (especially local ones) and campaigns just starting out don't, AML's
ORGANIZE! software looks like it would be a terrific help. It's been proven in the field, beta tested and refined during a live campaign (see
here), and is a LOT cheaper than paying your local or state Democratic Party organization for VoteBuilder access. If you're mounting a campaign to primary an incumbent Democrat from the left as a more liberal Democrat, you may not be able to access the Democrats' software if you haven't been formally endorsed. It depends on the rules in your state. Issue campaigns like the one ORGANIZE! was tested in may not be able to afford access. Here's a chance to help out your favorite issue campaign or candidate in exchange for a contribution to help someone who has long been a member of our community.
Think of the good you can do in your community with this! I can think of a couple of ways to use this when it's not election season, too; imagine being able to organize, sort, and contact voters who are on your side when it comes to calling your legislators to get bills passed during session. Think of being able to create walk lists or phone lists when you need to get voters to pressure their city councilman or county commissioner about a company with whom the municipality or county has contracted for services that is taking the voters' money and giving far too little in return.
This software also has some capabilities that I'm sure are planned for the national Democrats' software's future, but that aren't there quite yet, at least not in Washington State, the only version of VoteBuilder with which I am familiar. For example, you can use your smartphone to microtarget individual voters just before you knock on their door with the issues they care most about. This is really good stuff.
Here's a video he put together about ORGANIZE! to give you some more information about it.
He also adds this:
Folks can give me some more info about how they'd like the software set up by using the order form at my web site:
http://www.orgmytown.com
One more thing - I recently had a chance to use my software here in Milford to defeat Foxwoods, the big casino in Connecticut that wanted to expand into our suburban community. It performed admirably - I wrote up my story in a post at BlueMassGroup.com. [This is the story I linked to above about ORGANIZE! -River]
When I asked him how people get donations to him, he responded with this:
For people who don't want a copy of the software, PayPal is
john [at] tehans [dot] com
Snail mail is
John Tehan
7 Senate Rd Apt 12
Milford MA 01757
For people who DO want a copy of his software, please
go to www.orgmytown.com and use the order form. he'll send a PayPal request from his corporate account, along with instructions for snail mail.
Let's aim for $1000 to make sure he really has everything covered until spring brings him new business and new money. And I'm sure he'd appreciate it if you shared the information about his software with your colleagues after a successful campaign, so they can get it from him directly.
AnotherMassachusettsLiberal isn't just willing to pay it forward, he's also willing to pay it now with something he's created that will help just about everybody who's interested in seeing something get passed or someone get elected. You don't have to be a candidate to make use of this. You just have to care about your community. If I want to reach voters in Port Orchard who want a homeless shelter in town and persuade them to call the mayor and city council to tell them they want it, here's a perfect way to ORGANIZE! my efforts and determine which voters I want to reach with what messages.
AML will hopefully be here to answer any questions you might have about his software and I should be around for at least a while to mind this diary. Thank you for any help you can give to AML. I hope you'll take advantage of his offer. Smaller electoral or issue victories build up to bigger ones. A little-known candidate can take off and win with enough legwork. In this community, we stand together and help each other out. So often it works both ways. This is one very good example of how.
Thank you.
