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Update (Adam): An amazing thank you to those who have chipped in so far. I am always heartened by everyone's support to keep us going.
If folks are on Twitter, Raven Brooks, Executive Director of Netroots Nation, pledged to donate $2 for each retweet of this tweet (up to $100) over the next 24 hours. Let's empty Raven's wallet by retweeting, and thanks Raven! :)
RT @ravenb Support Open Left! http://bit.ly/3TbUXw Pledging $40 and an additional $2 every time this gets RT'ed next 24 hrs up to $100 #p2
Six months ago, Open Left held a fundraiser to keep us from shutting down operations. Because of your incredible support at that time, we were not only able to keep going, but to expand our capabilities and make a real impact on the legislative process.
In particular, with the assistance of over 35,000 members of the Open Left community, we played a major role in pulling together enough votes to pass a public option through the Senate. Proving there were over 50 votes for the public option in the Senate, and helping to educate the grassroots on both Senate process and the progress of the campaign, were essential to Harry Reid including a public option in the Senate bill.
Now, against the predictions of virtually all pundits, a health care bill with a public option will reach the Senate floor next week. This is a monumental achievement, and through your financial support of Open Left, as well as your activist participation in whipping Senators, you helped make it happen.
In order for Open Left to keep operating and make an even bigger impact over the next six months, we once again need your support. If you value the information we provide, the activist campaigns in which we engage, and the strategic analysis that we offer, then please, join our fight for a progressive governing majority, and contribute today.
Open Left currently has total a monthly operating cost of $7,500 per month. This covers payments to David Sirota, Mike Lux, Adam Bink, Paul Rosenberg, and myself. It also provides health insurance for me and my partner Natasha Chart--without which we would have really been up a creek when she broke her foot in July. Additionally, we need to pay for website hosting, accounting, and our Internet action tools.
We operate on a shoestring budget compared to other progressive activist organizations and DC-focused media. Still, as inexpensively as we are able to operate, the crash in online advertising has reduced our monthly income from ads to only $4,500 per month. We need your support to make up the gap, and 450 donors giving $40 each will accomplish exactly that.
With your help, we are going to keep working to bring the public option over the finish line, to engage the fight for marriage equality wherever it is being waged, and to prevent conservative Democrats from instituting new, sweeping restrictions on reproductive rights. Down the road, we are going to keep pushing the progressive envelope with efforts to end the filibuster in the Senate, to institute a new millionaire's tax in next year's budget, and to turn remaining bailout funds into a second stimulus for the rest of America.
Next year is an election year, too. We are going to use new election analysis tools, more accurate than those developed on any other website, to keep putting more progressives in Congress. In 2010, we are going to replicate our previous victories in electing Donna Edwards to Congress through a primary challenge against a corporate Democrat, and to elect Alan Grayson to Congress over a corporate Republican.
Through it all, we are going to keep up our rigorous analysis, and keeping finding innovative, creative leverage points. Whether through my vote counting and data-driven analysis, Mike Lux's expansive and insider knowledge of progressive institutions and power structures, Adam Bink's on the ground reporting, David Sirota's hard-nosed economic populism, or Paul Rosenberg's wide-ranging cultural critique, Open Left will continue to provide the sort of thoroughgoing, left-wing, yet still realpolitik, progressivism found in few other media outlets or political organizations in America.
We are continuing to show results in our effort to build a progressive governing majority, and we need your help to keep doing so. Join our fight for a progressive governing majority, and contribute today.
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