Gina said...
Hi Everyone,
This is going to be a very long email, post, PM or whatever else that I do with it. Everyone that is getting this has expressed a desire to join with me in this movement ( I want to deem it a movement) and at this time I would like to thank you and assure you that it wont be in vain. I have already worked too hard in that direction and that is why I am confident that with a couple people such as you and I we can will make an impact. If there is an area that you can specialize in then don’t worry about stepping on toes this is something we all need to be able to get in where we fit in at and run with it. We will all have our places and it wont take too long to know where they are. Maybe somebody can organize better than I, or somebody has a great printer, a better writer, has unlimited minutes, free long distance, etc etc. you get my drift. As well of course any and all ideas are welcome. I am going to set up an email address that will be specifically for you all and our common interest. You may wish to do the same as I have plans that this is going to be big enough to deserve its own place. We may be utilizing yahoo messenger and since yahoo has free email that would probably be the best choice since I bet everyone is already familiar with it. Go ahead and include that on your to do list ASAP. Yahoo mail and Yahoo messenger. We will then be prepared to all chat together. Pick a night and time to hold meetings. I am flexible myself for the most part. PTO has a chat room but, I hear that is is hard to use and I don’t know if they would appreciate us there. I have already been told that PTO is not an activist site by a fellow member. I don’t need these people mad at us. That has happened before and let me tell you if you ever say something the wrong way no matter how innocent it may be the fight is on. Next thing you know you are wasting all your time trying to apologize and losing focus of your original intentions. So we are going to use Yahoo. We need a name for our group.
Lately I have been sending letters in to prisoners (just anyone) asking that they mail things to their families. I supply them with prewritten letters and phone numbers to call. This gets a lot attention but it is costly. However, it does seem to be working and right now Ill take it. If you choose to do this remember that some of these guys do not have the money to make copies so I send them 6 in each letter. With one stamp you can enclose 6 pages. If you want to you can divide the pages into sections so that they can pass them around to their co inmates then the co inmates can send them home.
Another thing is writing to my Congressman, Representatives, Legislators, Senators, The White House and Obama. I have sample letters if you want them.
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml You may find your lawmakers here. You may send them emails, however when I do this I will also send them a hard copy as well.
You know when you get those forwarded emails and they have all of those addresses at the top? I copy/paste them into a new email (the Bcc Section just to be respectful) and in the subject line I title it "Letter to a Stranger from a Stranger". In the body is my plea and it goes like this.
Hi Stranger,
I need a bit of help from as many folks as I can find that is willing to make a phone call or write a letter for me in behalf of my brother. Just visit the link below and do what you can or will do. Whatever you would be able to do will be very much appreciated. I just want my brother to come home, At this point he is age 42 and we wont see him again until he is 54 unless we are able to get some new laws passed and the only way that this will happen is with the help from folks such as yourself. This isn't some bogus pass to 10 people in 10 minutes and you will experience some fantastic thing. Its just a plea that is real and very much needed and appreciated. Thanks for your time. Id love to hear from anyone who has the time to respond with their opinion on what I'm doing and just to let me know if you were able to help out.
Sincerely,
Gina
Please, will you just visit the link below.
http://gfarris61.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
The above letter needs serious revision. If someone wants to help me with that I would appreciate it. You should practice using this tactic because it is easy and effective. What you do is save a "plea" letter in your drafts folder since it makes it easy to pull up when you get those long lists of addresses. Then copy the addresses into the Bcc section. And press send. You may wish to erase your own signature. You may either use your own or you may use what I have, until we come up with something better. I know that it is working because my site counter indicates that people are coming and I don’t have that many friends. At this point the site that I am directing them all to is also very weak. You see, I haven't been back on line very long and I have never set up a web site before so this is all very new in the making. But it will do for now.
Also with those emails you get those that are too cool not to forward and you know its going to go a very long way so when I pass those forward I take that link of mine and I strategically place it into that mail before I forward it. I also highlight it and make it really really big. Sometimes I will put a note under it begging for help. And sometimes I just leave it there with no reference to it at all. I have just given you 3 very easy ways to generate our traffic by using other peoples contacts and emails!!
Obama has a site up that his team is using to hear the voice of America. We need to find the right question to post and then flood that question with responses. The questions that get the most attention of course in return get the most attention from his team, ultimately Obama will respond provided that we generate the needed traffic. If we did this right, had all our people ready to simultaneously prepared to respond and use those email addresses to flood our question with then the magnitude of this would be huge. I just seen it used by "The Pen". You should go check it out. This is part of the email that I got from them today.....This is an example of what we will do.........
_______________________________________________________________________________
We scored an amazing mass media victory this week, which we must
immediately build on and expand, when first Keith Olbermann took note
of the fact that the number one question on the Obama "change" site
was asking about a special prosecutor for the torture and wiretap
crimes of the Bush administration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTHvMJYKLY
_______________________________________________________________________________
Now here is another thing that has taken me 3 days to come up with and I got it from the same place as what above. I believe that these are the guys that will be on the committee that will be reviewing the bill whenever Davis presents it in may. These guys definitely need called so that we can express our opinions, requests and needs.
You can reach any Senator toll free by calling either 800-828-0498 or 800-473-6711 and asking to be connected to them by name.
1) Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)
2) Senator Dick Durbin (IL) This Senator called me back on our issue about 3 years ago, during the same time that Obama wrote me.
3) Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)
4) Senator Russ Feingold (WI)
Please call each of the four above if you can, and do some other Democrats if you have time. Other possible good advocates are Senator
Ted Kennedy (MA), and even maybe Senator Chuck Schumer (NY).OK, so here's the plan. Because the members of the Judiciary
Committee represent the whole country you have every right to ask them to represent your concerns, even if you are not from their own
state (but all the better if you are) As to Senator Kennedy, if you have time to call him as well, and the other Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee, Herb Kohl (WI), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Benjamin Cardin (MD), and for the next week only Joe Biden (DE), you can just make the general arguments the talking points are found in this link below. You don’t have to use them, you may use your own but it would be a good idea to prepare yourself so that you may be clear and effective during your call:
Talking points: http://www.fedcure.org/documents/07032005-FedCURE-TalkingPoints-ReviveSystemOfParoleForFederalPrisoners-FINAL-30-FC-sig.pdf
Finally the last thing that I have for today is reading the "Bottoms Up" manual. It is a grass roots approach to activism. I have not done this yet but I have started. Maybe we could do this as an assignment within our group once we get a group established. According to this manual, we only need 2 people to consider it a group. So go ahead and check it out if you have time to today. This is a number one priority. Like a prerequisite of some sort. Definitely something that we will need to do if nothing else as a assignment type deal and to do maybe a section per day. Does that sound like something that would be a reachable goal? Yes we can.....
http://www.november.org/BottomsUp/index.html
That’s all that I have for now. Make some calls today, write at least one letter, send something to the inside and read your introduction of the grass roots manual. I will also be working on the Change.gov site question. I am going to wait to see if one of you may be able to put a better web site together before I waste any more time on that. Lets decide to work on our goals daily, say at least a hour a day and meet weekly on the messenger. So if you don’t have yahoo messenger already please go ahead and get that downloaded.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/download
Ok. I hope that this sounds good to you and please do not feel overwhelmed or pressured. I will take whatever you want to give. Nothing will be too little or too much.
Sincerely,
Gina
http://gfarris61.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Kenneth Stepp said...
O.K. You can count me into your Yahoo group. Also, I am Publishing Gina's comment as a blog on my blog spot, because not many people dig into the comments. Kenneth Stepp.
Monday, January 19, 2009
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