Action Suggestions For Reclaiming the Message!
Independence Day is a great opportunity to take action. We must reclaim the spirit of our founding principles and stand up for the freedoms that we've lost in recent years. Let's bring awareness to our communities about the erosion of constitutional protections and insist that our representatives help us fight to restore the Bill of Rights.
We have compiled some suggestions from a recent conference call with community activists. BORDC will post all of your events on our website, so others in your town or around the nation can see what’s happening in your area. Please send us your Independence Day event information.
1. Meet with your congressional representatives during their Independence Day recess.
- Congress's annual Independence Day recess is a good time to set up local meetings or attend town hall meetings. Take lots of allies!
- Find contact information for your members of Congress.
- In preparation for the meeting, review BORDC's workshop, "Reclaiming the Message: Building Relationships with Your Congressional Representatives," from June 29, 2006.
2. Connect with Independence Day events already occurring in your area.
- Pass out flyers at parades and community gatherings. See our warrantless wiretapping and "Your Legal Rights Have Changed" flyers for examples.
- Carry placards in your local parade.
- Distribute Bill of Rights bookmarks. Print your own (English and Spanish) or purchase them from our secure online store.
- Pass out BORDC buttons and bumper stickers.
3. Ask your local officials to hold public hearing/fact-finding sessions
- Public utility commissions and attorney generals can hold such sessions to determine local reaction to domestic surveillance, and whether local and state laws have been abridged. In many states, the ACLU has already begun this process.
4. It’s not too late to pass a civil liberties resolution.
- If your community has not yet passed a resolution affirming civil liberties, draft a petition to demonstrate support for a local resolution and circulate it at local July 4th events.
- Convert your community resolution into an ordinance, which has the force of law. Take a look at the ordinances passed by eight communities.
- Start work on a statewide resolution.
5. Join the movement to pass local resolutions against warrantless wiretapping.
- Check out the BORDC resolutions toolkit.
- Get petition signatures at local events for a resolution based on this model resolution.
6. Call on your local public utilities to disclose whether or not they are releasing customer phone records to the government’s domestic spy program.
- Send a letter to the Federal Communications Commission demanding the FCC investigate AT&T and BellSouth's role in domestic spying for the NSA at a time when these two companies are seeking approval for a merger.
- Send a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission.
7. Start a Circle of Scribes for a Letter to the Editor campaign.
- If you are part of a civil liberties or Bill of Rights defense group, plan a get together to write letters to the editor.
8. Organize a "FOIA Request Party."
- Since the government seems so interested in gathering data on political activists, let’s flood them for requests for information about what they’ve found! Gather a group to fill out forms for Freedom of Information Act requests to find out what information is in your government files, as the Pittsburgh Bill of Rights Defense Committee is doing in conjunction with the local ACLU. You may contact Dean Gerber of the Pittsburgh BORDC for more information.
- Oregon attorney Dan Stotter, who has a website to guide you through the process, will provide an initial consultation at no charge.
- Keep in mind, however, that the FOIA process is a marathon, seemingly designed to test your endurance. If you really want to get the documents from the government, you have to be willing to run the entire marathon, and work the paper trail. BORDC plans to engage volunteer organizers in a phone workshop on this subject in the near future. Let us know if this is something you’d be interested in participating in!
Another important part of any event is to have good media coverage. Please let us know if you would like some help drafting a news release.
Don’t forget to tell us what your community is doing on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence!