We Did It!
Brian Boyko, Deputy CTO — 2014-07-04
Our blog is migrating. This blog post will now live here: http://blog.mayday.us/post/98259987795/
First off, thank you!
I mean this. This… I mean, wow.
Do you realize how much we have accomplished? Nobody has ever done anything like this in American history!
We’ve proved to naysayers and doubters that, yes, Americans care about this issue and they are willing and able to act on it.
That’s something that nobody inside the Beltway understood before now. (And if they still don’t understand it, they’re in for a very rude awakening indeed.) More than that, we’ve proven it to ourselves.
Back in April, when I told friends that we were going to raise money to solve the problem of big-money politics, the answer was a universal: “S-yeah, good luck with that, (moron.)” That was the politics of resignation - people didn’t believe that something could be done - so they didn’t dare to hope.
But more often I’m seeing people start to believe that we really can get substantive reform - enough to get Congress working again. And if we’ve awakened America to the fact that, yes, this is a solvable problem, then there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be solved.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is: Oh my god, you guys are awesome.
But we can’t sit down and congratulate ourselves for too long. Ahead is a road filled with hard choices, hard battles, and most of all, hard work. And while we will celebrate our victory we still have some things we need to do.
Now we need to think beyond simple fundraising, and start thinking about how to get the most out of not only the money we’ve collected but more importantly the great community we’ve built. It’s never been reaching your money. It’s been about you. (I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.)
We need you to help build social networks - in both the techie and non-techie version of the term “social network.” We need you to start getting active and supporting candidates who have committed to reform (and pestering candidates who haven’t yet.) And we need something else: your genius.
If we win, it’s not going to be because we had more money than other Super PACs, or even because we’ve got more people on our side (though we can’t win without more people on our side, certainly.) It’ll be because when you have ideas, we’ll help empower each other to see those ideas to fruition. We’re not just going to re-invent campaign finance, we also intend to reinvent campaigning itself. We’ll need to be disruptive, in all the good ways.
If you have an idea, and you think it’s good - you don’t need our permission, just get out there and go for it. We’ll try to help as much as we can but ultimately, what will make this movement work is what we can do on the ground, across the United States. And even if you’re not in one of the districts where the money we’ve raised together will be in play, we are still fighting a national campaign for reform. So we want to get politicians thinking about reform now for when we launch our even bigger campaign in 2016.
So, yeah, we’ve all got a lot of hard work to do if we want to fix this country’s ailments, but I think these past two months have proved that all of us together are up to the task.
The team here at Mayday PAC has learned a great deal in the past two months, and we’ve raised a good portion of what we need to succeed. We’ll be selecting initial races that we plan to target very soon, and we’re going to engage our community on our core mission of winning elections – starting now.
I’m going to close with one of my favorite quotes: “We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.”
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Other posts:
- 2014-09-16 — Donor Data Release No. 4
- 2014-09-13 — Optimism
- 2014-09-10 — GUEST POST - A history lesson
- 2014-09-09 — GUEST POST - Stark360 is not a 180°
- 2014-09-05 — PRESS RELEASE - Mayday.US Releases Senator Gordon Humphrey Endorsement Ad
- 2014-08-29 — Labor Day
- 2014-08-27 — Gallego Victory
- 2014-08-26 — Launch of Mayday Labs
- 2014-08-18 — Data Release No. 2
- 2014-08-13 — The most important anti-corruption candidate in America
- 2014-08-11 — Mayday PAC Expands Targets, Announces New Candidates and Places Radio Ads
- 2014-08-05 — Our Fundraising So Far
- 2014-07-04 — Escape the 1990s
- 2014-07-30 — Email Fundraising
- 2014-07-29 — It's on.
- 2014-07-29 — Mayday PAC Announces First Targets in Campaign to End Influence of Money in Politics
- 2014-07-29 — FAQ on our first two picks.
- 2014-07-24 — Transparency
- 2014-07-20 — Update on timing for announcement
- 2014-07-16 — Our 2014 Targeting Criteria
- 2014-07-15 — PRESS RELEASE - Crowd-Funded Super PAC Files FEC Report Detailing $3.3 Million in Contributions
- 2014-07-14 — AUDIO - On the Media (NPR)
- 2014-07-11 — VIDEO - Call Time, July 10th, with Lawrence Lessig and Ben Wikler
- 2014-07-08 — VIDEO - Thank you!
- 2014-07-06 — What's Next
- 2014-07-04 — We Did It!
- 2014-07-04 — Lessig's Letter to Everyone