#1: Focus on one issue. Or create one org per issue. You can't assume allies will support your entire platform, so remove deal breakers.
#2: Pace yourself for a marathon. For example, a friend of mine worked EIGHTEEN years to get the first statewide family leave act law passed. Had to build the coalition one vote at a time.
#3: What are you for? Where's your model legislation? Be specific. Offense beats defense, have an affirmative agenda, etc.
#4: Start locally. It's easier to move the needle, one jurisdiction at a time.
#5: Why not partner with existing orgs, create a local chapter? Is there something wrong with the current public financing advocates? The people fighting for RCV?
Bonus #6: Pick a strategy for privacy. Like extend property rights to personal data. Like new accounting rules to make data aggregation a financial liability. Something, anything that people can wrap their heads around.
This is super valid, and something I spend a lot of time thinking about. The task ahead is monumental, but these are sub-goals. This spawned from an observation that our representative democracy isn't representative. We worked backwards from what caused that. The mission is cultivated from identifying and attempting to disrupt the viscous cycle of power imbalance. The strongest branch of the U.S. government is supposed to be the voters, not the few but the many, we aim to make that happen. I don't think any of these three points can succeed without the other two.
Mass surveillance, if you click through, isn't about mass surveillance. It's about a government not being held accountable to it's own laws, which are meant to be governed by civilian oversight. Our government must follow it's own laws, it must pass laws that are foremost in line with our founding documents and then inline with their constituent's desires. The mechanism for civilian oversight is broken.
While reading the ACLU FOIA requests and court documents, it was clear to me that the government wasn't playing by the rules. When you read the reasons the government kept these programs secret on write-ups from leaked documents, it was for fear of being subject to civilian oversight. This isn't how our government was designed to operate.
I think you should at least talk to people who have a broader range of views about the causes of mass surveillance. I've worked on fighting it for a while and I've come across a lot of different theories about why it exists and persists. A few of them include
* international anarchy theory: the world is really dangerous (much more dangerous than the public has any idea of) and so security agencies need to be more powerful than people, including the security agencies themselves, would really prefer in order to combat that danger or keep it at bay; surveillance is one part of the security agencies' toolkit for managing it
* international hegemony theory: the U.S. got its current position in the world partly via unsavory means and means that are very poorly understood or poorly remembered by the public (at least in America) (cf. Huntington's "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion [...] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.") and there is some reason for the U.S.'s sake, U.S. allies' sake, or the world's sake that the U.S. should continue to maintain this position, including by continuing to use the tools that allow it to do so
* realpolitik theory: the U.S. in some sense can't afford to be that much more ethical than other actors because they will somehow take advantage of this
* military-industrial complex theory: surveillance is super-profitable for surveillance vendors and contractors, so they want to keep it going
* self-perpetuating elites theories: civil servants are accustomed to seeing surveillance activities that they participate in, or whose intelligence products they consume, as part of the way the world works, and they normalize it among themselves while just not caring very much what anyone else thinks about it
* non-political theory: currently the ideological anti-surveillance constituency is so tiny that most legislators find it rational to ignore it, as contrasted with other issues that generate multiples or orders of magnitude more passion, contributions, or votes
* public support theory: public opinion actually favors current surveillance programs, at least in broad outlines
* class conflict theory: someone, or some coalition, is relying on surveillance in order to keep suppressing the lower classes
* racial conflict theory: someone, or some coalition, is relying on surveillance in order to keep suppressing racial minorities
* other conflict theory: some other kind of powerful coalition finds surveillance important in order to maintain its power
* surveillance is actually good theory: sophisticated legislators and other officials have taken a look at the laws and institutions that carry out surveillance in the U.S. today and concluded that they are basically OK under the constitution, are basically subject to half-decent oversight, and represent a broadly politically acceptable trade-off in terms of what they accomplish and the risks they create
I think approximately two to five of these are well-aligned with your view that campaign finance reform would be relevant to achieving surveillance reform, but the others aren't so well-aligned. Although I have my own opinions, I don't feel like I know for sure which of these theories are most correct.
Been chewing on this reply. This is terrific. I very much support doing this kind of analysis. I wish I had this kind of analytical framework back when I was active.
To better understand the opposition, and rebut their rhetoric, sure.
But also to better advocate one's own policy, to message craft an affirmative agenda.
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Say what you're for, not what you're against. Whatever the issue, there's a positive message. Say "Walk please" instead of "Don't run". For privacy it might be "I have the right to control my public persona" vs "Stop the panopticon!"
I did election integrity activism for about 10 years. Utterly exhausting. Any effort rebutting your opponent's talking points is wasted resources. And they'll always come at you with ever more inane irrelevant points, seeking to discredit you, overwhelm you, muddy the waters.
For law makers, anything ambiguous is radioactive. Make it easy for them to choose your policy. A great analog is Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think".
FWIW, lawmakers and their staff can only seriously consider 10s of the 1000s of bills up for discussion. It's an attention economy, they're doing triage, just like everyone else.
I'm trying, and failing, to make the point that policy work is real work, and that if you want to make a dent, I encourage you to learn how the professionals get it done.
But you don't need all that to get started.
Just call your rep, at any level, and get on their calendar. You'll have 5 minutes to make a pitch. You'll probably meet with a legislative aide. Bring some position papers. Weigh in on current (or recent legislation). If there's an upcoming vote, specifically request they vote Yay or Nay (per your position).
I appreciate that it is real work, and I hope I don't come across as making light of that. I've spent a lot of time the past few weeks grappling with imposter syndrome while trying to set this up and constantly questioning whether I would be a net positive in this space. I hope I will. Part of shipping was to try to cultivate the relationships to do that learning and bring in resources to fund folks to do that learning, and work, full time. If you have resources that could help me ramp up, I would really appreciate them, and could use mentorship if you know of anyone. On nights and weekends, I've been sitting through days of senate hearing recordings and reading hundreds of pages of court documents over the past few weeks. I do feel that is helping, but there are definitely "meta" parts of this field I'm missing (like legal research).
I also feel policy work is different than influencing elections. Part of what we benefit from, as voters, is having representatives handle some of this policy work. When you listen to the first Senate Intelligence Committee hearing after the 2013 leaks, it's clear they are out of touch with who they are representing. When it comes to the Presidential Surveillance Program, that committee knew about it and oversaw it. They were actively involved in keeping evidence out of the courts, preventing citizens doing the policy work necessary to hold them accountable. I don't fully understand how professionals do this, but I do get the feeling these senators had a non-negligible impact on making that surveillance program a reality. Only one senator put truth to power during that hearing, everyone else defended the program and focused on "restricting access" to the database and improving reporting. Many of those senators are still sitting in their seats. An underlying goal of this project is to rally the voting population against the current representatives. I want to understand and be involved in the policy to apply that pressure correctly, but at the end of the day I want our representatives to be driving that policy change. We apply pressure to them, through a downward pressure during their election cycle, to guide them towards doing right by their citizens.
Everyone's faking it. Believe me. Except maybe the judges.
Strongly agree that policy work has been separate from campaigning. I've been out of the game, so don't know the current landscape. What's always true is the game continues to change. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Law makers, by necessity, lean on their staff and lobbyists (both the good and bad kind) to navigate policy choices. Any given law maker has a handful of issues that they really care about, for which they are willing to spend political capital. Everything else is in response to public debate.
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I collect books about policy and law making. So much free advice!
A really good starting point is Rep. Henry Waxman's The Waxman Report. It'll give you a taste of one person's experience.
Are you considering any options to allow donations to choose certain pools? For example, I think I'd be really interested in donating towards maintaining a thorough breakdown of politicians' records on mass surveillance or their stance on options like ranked-choice voting, but not as stoked about directly having my donation used for boots-on-the-ground campaigning in a district across the country. An option to ask for a donation to support different initiatives might be attractive, even if there were only three or four options.
We hadn't considered this, but certainly will. At this stage (we just launched today) I don't think we have the resources to effectively manage donations that way. As we grow, I'll fit this into the roadmap.
Also, if you feel passionately about a specific area and want to provide help/feedback, donations of time are always welcome and we are always here to listen.
This is an area I know enough to be dangerous in, so would love to learn more if anyone has resources.
From my understanding a 501(c)(4) is a social welfare organization that can engage in political activity as long as it isn't its primary purpose. I didn't want to risk us breaking that restriction.
This is really good feedback. I tried to sum it up with "vote them out" but I don't think that really captures what this PAC positions us to do.
We are a 527, which allows us to attempt to directly influence elections. 501(c)(3)s can't do this.
My goal is to use the donations we gather to fund analysis of the voting records, legislation, comments on the floor, etc. of our representatives, and then actively campaign against them when they are up for re-election.
We will prioritize based on election cycles (who is coming up for re-election), how much they've undermined these three measurements, and how close they are to the committees that are supposed to oversee these domains.
As a 527, we aren't stuck lobbying and paying lawyers to try to go through the court system. The key is that, as a 527, we can actively campaign against these representatives in their districts. We can directly fund political ads that put their record on mass surveillance _directly in front of their voters_.
By collecting email addresses, we can send out our analysis ahead of election day. By collecting donations, we can run ads in their district.
I don't know much about this area, but I understand that some single-issue PACs have had to actively think about how to convince campaigns that they are genuinely single-issue and non-partisan (for example because the PAC's staff or donors might primarily support or be perceived as supporting one party—and because many PACs do exclusively support one party even they don't advertise themselves that way!). It might be helpful to talk to other single-issue PACs, consultants, or lobbyists to about how they manage this issue.
This is important because single-issue PACs don't want campaigns or legislative offices to dismiss them as someone who would never want to support them or work with them, or prospective donors who otherwise identify with a party to fear that their donations will only harm that party.
> We will prioritize based on election cycles (who is coming up for re-election), how much they've undermined these three measurements, and how close they are to the committees that are supposed to oversee these domains.
In this polarized and super-partisan world, people will instinctively find it hard to believe that you really did that whenever you end up on "the other side" from them in a race they care about. So again, I think you'll end up having to consider what you'll tell those people about why your strategy is the best strategy for your issue and how they can be confident that you really followed it.
This is super insightful. I wish I could give you more of a response, but your feedback really cuts to the core of something I need to reflect on and I don't have much to add beyond that.
I am jaded when it comes to promises of change. If you want to reach others like myself, that explanation of what you're doing needs to be up front. What are you doing that's new? Will you show your work, share those analyses?
Rattling off "501(c)(3)" and "527" is technical detail. Keep it somewhere, but not the first thing on the "friendly" pages. I need to know that you'll spend my money on campaigning, not the laws that allow it.
I agree, it's technical jargon.. Do you have a better way of wording it?
The core is that a 501(c)(3) legally _can not_ spend money on campaigning without losing their non-profit status. They are stuck in courts, lobbying, and talking about their causes.
A 527 is allowed to actively campaign. If you donate to a 501(c)(3) you're money can't be used to campaign. If we want to vote them out, we need to do it on the same ground they do, a 527 puts us on equal footing.
Just state that there is a difference, and leave the details to be dug up later. "The laws governing non-profits mean that many popular organizations cannot campaign. However, we can, and we intend to call out yada yada yada."
> We will prioritize based on election cycles (who is coming up for re-election), how much they've undermined these three measurements, and how close they are to the committees that are supposed to oversee these domains.
If I may offer a suggestion, optimize also on how close an election is expected to be. It may take a lot of ads to swing some elections, but only few to swing others, and you want the most bang for your buck.
Agreed. We are open source from day one: https://github.com/every-two-years. The only piece that isn't open source at the moment is our donations page and I'm working to fix that.
We don't have any formal analysis yet, being a bit more transparent about why everyone has an X right now (it's the default) might help too?
> being a bit more transparent about why everyone has an X right now (it's the default) might help too?
I think that would be helpful.
Also maybe add a sort functionality for the data. Just a simple asc/desc. Scrolling the entire House to see if there was anything but a red X was tiring :)
Edit: adding a link to Github on the site would be a good idea too IMO.
I've dropped the Senate and House pages from our website for now until we have concrete data. Once we start building out our analysis, it will be transparent and open.
I've added a link to our GitHub organization in the footer of the website under "Open By Design".
