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Lawrence Lessig, who I met in early 2009, educated me about the need for campaign finance reform to keep government, and in turn, the law from favoring corporate interests over the interests of average citizens. Lessig is brilliant and sincere. Please take the time to check out his point of view. His organization Rootstrikers is doing great work!
At the beginning of April, TED posted the talk I gave at their annual conference. In the six weeks since, more than 800,000 people have viewed it across the TED platform and YouTube.
I’ve been doing this for a long time, but nothing I’ve ever done has spread like this.
So two weeks ago, I spoke at the TEDxYouth event in Chicago. I began that talk in a similar way, with the same argument about the corruption our government suffers. But then I ended that talk by giving the talk away — to them. Each of the 500 students in the audience got a thumb drive with the slides and the background information of the talk. Each thumb drive had a copy of the TED video, and the book I produced for that video. And I challenged those students to take that material, and remix it to tell this story in a way that would be compelling to them and their peers…
This is something I have wanted to do for a long time. This movement won’t have a single leader. There are no MLK Jr.’s, or Gandhi’s among us. So instead this needs to be a movement with hundreds of thousands taking the lead to spread this message, and push for change. In their own words, in whatever way they think this message spreads best.
Because this is the fundamental fact that almost no one in DC gets: That reform will not come from the top down. We must feed it and support it from the bottom up.
I need your help to do this. We’re not asking for money (have you noticed how infrequently we do that?). We’re just asking that you do as many of the following four things as you can:
- First, help us get to a million views, so we’ll have something to celebrate, and something the pundits might notice. Watch the talk and spread it as broadly as you can, either tweeting it, or posting it to Facebook, or simply emailing the link to friends.
- Second, if you’ve watched the video, head over to Rap Genius and help annotate and explain it.
- Third, help us connect to other youth groups that might also be willing to spread this message. I’m happy to pay personally for as many thumb drives as it will take to get this message out there (way beyond the budget of Rootstrikers!), but we need your help to identify those groups, and get them engaged.
- Finally, help us if you can by doing a remix yourself. You can sign up here, and get the resources you need. Your video can be 30 seconds long, or a minute, or an hour. Do something that you think will grab others. Do something that you know will help make corruption issue number one.
Someday the idea of a grassroots movement of citizens — not politician wanna-be’s, but citizens — changing government will seem obvious. But only if you help us make it real. Spreading this message is one step. There will be many more to come. I am grateful for your help to make this bit a success.
– Lessig
Rootstrikers is a new generation of activists taking a stand against corruption, founded by Lawrence Lessig and housed in the 501(c)(3) organization Fund for the Republic.
