Legal Commentary

Volunteer2Change-Congress

By Lawrence Lessig

Here's what I was instructed to spam my friends with by the ever-vigilant Change Congress staff. I'm spamming my blog readers instead:

Dear Friends,

My organization needs your help.

Change Congress is asking candidates for Congress and current members of Congress, their stance on key reform issues from earmark reform to taking money from lobbyists and PACs. The goal is to provide a user-friendly map of where our politicians are when it comes to these key reform issues.

We've setup two ways people like you can help with our new iPledge Project:

1. Pester Your member of Congress:
Simply by going to the website below you can actually find your member of Congress as well as candidates in your district/state and drop them an email, letter or a phone call asking them to tell us where they stand on our issues. We provide scripts and all you have to do is press SEND.

http://change-congress.org/ipledge/

2. TAG a politician
Stumble upon an article or press release where your member of Congress says they support earmark reform? We're asking folks to attach these articles to the individual webpages of each politician by "TAGGING" it. This will let the community see what each politician has stated publicly on each of these key issues.

http://change-congress.org/tag/

We'll be meeting at our offices every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening through October between 4PM - 7PM. Please join us for drinks, snacks, and laptops!

Change Congress
543 Howard Street (btween 1st and 2nd)
5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105

The future of democracy will not simply rely on grassroots but also on the "netroots" -- bands of internet users sharing and creating information with each other through websites.

I hope you can help!

Thanks so much,

Full post as published by Lessig Blog on October 16, 2008 (boomark / email).