Meet a petitioner? Observe right wing signature gathering activity? Tell us!
A reminder to all progressive activists: this is initiative season and several right wingers have filed initiatives they hope to qualify for the November 2007 ballot.
Paid signature gatherers are, or soon will be, out on the streets soliciting signatures for Tim Eyman's Initiative 960, which wreaks havoc on the legislative process by allowing a minority to defeat any bills that increase revenue (a supermajority vote would be required).
Two other initiatives that petitioners may end up hawking are Bob Baker's anti-immigrant initiative (which does not yet have a number or ballot title) and Ken Hutcherson's initiative to legalize discrimination (I-963).
If you see petitioners collecting signatures for any right wing initiative, please use Permanent Defense's reporting tool to tell us about it so we can more efficiently organize and mobilize.
We also have buttons available that you can add to your own blog or website pointing to the reporting tool. The smaller version of the button is on the Official Blog's sidebar (to your right) while Permanent Defense's main page has been using the larger version.
Feel free to download either or both:
(Smaller version - 14 KB)
(Larger version - 16 KB)
The more people that know about the reporting tool, the better. If progressives keep their eyes and ears open and report signature gathering activity when they observe it, that will help us to track how the right wing signature drives are going and allow us to mobilize volunteers that we can send out to exercise our free speech rights.
Telling voters who might sign these petitions the other side of the story is extremely important if we want to stop Eyman and his right wing cohorts from deceiving the public. And before local right wing bloggers start screaming, let me remind them that this is not a campaign to harass petitioners. It is not an effort to encourage any kind of malicious activity. It is a project to help voters understand the truth about right wing initiatives. It's First Amendment protected free speech no matter what they claim.
Our thanks to everyone who adds a button to their site for their help.
A postscript: Attempts to spam the reporting tool with bogus submissions are easily defeated, and we warn political opponents with such intentions not to bother. It's a total waste of your time to make stuff up. A commenter on FreeRepublic last year urged his fellow posters to "freep" our system:
Paid signature gatherers are, or soon will be, out on the streets soliciting signatures for Tim Eyman's Initiative 960, which wreaks havoc on the legislative process by allowing a minority to defeat any bills that increase revenue (a supermajority vote would be required).
Two other initiatives that petitioners may end up hawking are Bob Baker's anti-immigrant initiative (which does not yet have a number or ballot title) and Ken Hutcherson's initiative to legalize discrimination (I-963).
If you see petitioners collecting signatures for any right wing initiative, please use Permanent Defense's reporting tool to tell us about it so we can more efficiently organize and mobilize.
We also have buttons available that you can add to your own blog or website pointing to the reporting tool. The smaller version of the button is on the Official Blog's sidebar (to your right) while Permanent Defense's main page has been using the larger version.
Feel free to download either or both:
(Smaller version - 14 KB)
(Larger version - 16 KB)
The more people that know about the reporting tool, the better. If progressives keep their eyes and ears open and report signature gathering activity when they observe it, that will help us to track how the right wing signature drives are going and allow us to mobilize volunteers that we can send out to exercise our free speech rights.
Telling voters who might sign these petitions the other side of the story is extremely important if we want to stop Eyman and his right wing cohorts from deceiving the public. And before local right wing bloggers start screaming, let me remind them that this is not a campaign to harass petitioners. It is not an effort to encourage any kind of malicious activity. It is a project to help voters understand the truth about right wing initiatives. It's First Amendment protected free speech no matter what they claim.
Our thanks to everyone who adds a button to their site for their help.
A postscript: Attempts to spam the reporting tool with bogus submissions are easily defeated, and we warn political opponents with such intentions not to bother. It's a total waste of your time to make stuff up. A commenter on FreeRepublic last year urged his fellow posters to "freep" our system:
Now this sounds like an excellent opportunity for a web FReep! Everyone should submit fake reports about activity all over the state to keep the morons busy.We can easily identify and delete non-genuine reports, so anyone who thinks they're going to "keep us busy" sorting out spam is sorely mistaken.
