Sunday, April 28, 2019

This could defeat Trump

During last year's election, MoveOn unleashed a secret weapon that helped push Democrats up and down the ballot over the top.

Dear MoveOn member,

During last year's elections, MoveOn unleashed a secret weapon that helped push Democrats up and down the ballot to victory.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used it. And it was used to help elect other progressive champs, including Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Katie Porter, and Lauren Underwood.

This groundbreaking technology is called Spoke, and it's an open-source tool invented by MoveOn that allows grassroots organizers to send thousands of text messages to get out the vote, generate phone calls, and recruit people to attend rallies. There are other tools like it, but they have huge fees and are too expensive for insurgent campaigns and first-time candidates. That makes Spoke critical for the progressive movement.

And, in addition to using Spoke to win elections, we use it internally to mobilize MoveOn members. Our dedicated corps of volunteers that we call the Text Team sends millions of texts every month—to flood Congress with calls, drive turnout to events like our Families Belong Together and Nobody Is Above the Law rallies, and help breaking news spread quickly.

Now, we need your help to make Spoke an even more powerful tool and make a major investment in our Text Team, so we can beat Donald Trump in 2020. Will you chip in $5 a month to help double the impact of the secret weapon that helped power the 2018 wave election?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly to help power MoveOn's open-source texting tool, Spoke, so we can beat Trump and help elect more progressive champs in 2020.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Spoke is a game-changer because it allows texts to reach people directly, in a way that email hasn't since the early 2000s. And it's especially useful in mobilizing young people and communities of color.

An email might sit in an inbox waiting to be read for hours or even days. A lot of emails never get read at all (thank you for reading this one!). But research shows that 90% of text messages are read within five minutes. That's a crucial difference when you're trying to mobilize rapid-response grassroots action.

Spoke isn't about just blasting out millions of bulk text messages. Spoke is about one-on-one conversations between real people.

MoveOn members have used this incredible tool not only to win elections but to help turn out huge crowds and flood Capitol Hill with phone calls to stop Trumpcare and end Trump's brutal family separation policy.

For some of our key campaign moments, texting through Spoke generated more actions by MoveOn members than email, Facebook, and Twitter combined.

But that's not all. MoveOn has built Spoke to be an open-source tool so that other progressive organizations and campaigns may use it, too. It's been used for everything from union recruitment of service employees, to winning marriage equality in Australia, to congressional elections and school board races.

In 2020, we aim to double the impact of our texting program compared to 2018. Your monthly donation will allow us to help even more campaigns, grassroots organizations, and MoveOn members use our open-source tool, Spoke. Will you chip in $5 a month to help make sure we have the resources to fund the programmers, organizers, and technology we'll need to pull it all off?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Maybe you're thinking that Trump is so unpopular and such a bad president that he'll be easy to beat in 2020. If so, think again.

Trump has proven time and time again to be an expert at exploiting people's fears and resentments to get votes. He's a master media manipulator and still has a big advantage in the Electoral College.

Then there's the impact of Republican Super PACs, voter suppression, Fox News, the Koch brothers, and the vicious smears that the eventual Democratic nominee will undoubtedly face. And the Trump team is already funneling a huge amount of money into social media and other cutting-edge tools—the kind of innovations that helped them win key states in 2016.

We need to be ready for a hard-fought election that goes down to the wire. Spoke made the difference in past elections and might again in 2020.

Large-scale tests by top election experts have found that you can increase turnout by .65% with get-out-the-vote text messages—which could mean a million votes nationwide, easily enough to decide a close presidential election.1

That's why we're putting such a big priority on scaling up this powerful weapon for 2020. It literally could be the difference between four more years of Trump or a Democratic president fueled by a progressive, people-powered movement. Will you chip in $5 a month to help make it happen?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Thanks for all you do.

–Mark, Erica, Erik, Shaka, and the rest of the MoveOn Mobile Innovation Team

Source:

1. "Why Texting Beats Email for GOTV," Campaigns & Elections, October 27, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/54902?t=8&akid=232950%2E10220574%2ErY9fYH

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?

Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.


PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on April 29th, 2019. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

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