Dear MoveOn member,
In the last few weeks, we've seen an amazing response to this idea. A huge army of volunteers from unions, community
organizations, and environmental groups, alongside local MoveOn volunteers, are preparing to host trainings in hundreds of
cities and planning massive protests nationwide. Students are organizing for spring mobilizations on campuses everywhere.
When Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat and launched the Montgomery bus boycott, it wasn't
just a spontaneous decision. She'd been trained in nonviolent direct action
at a place called the Highlander Center. And the brave folks who organized the freedom rides and the lunch-counter sit-ins
had similar training.
Now, from the Wisconsin workers who took over their state capitol to
Occupy Wall Street, there's a movement stirring in America
focused on the massive inequality that's destroying our country. And
it's once again using direct action to change the conversation.
To help the 99% movement succeed, we want to kick off the spring by training 100,000 people
in nonviolent direct action, in the spirit of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks—and pave the way
for a wave of progressive, nonviolent direct action like the country hasn't seen in 50 years.
Our goal this spring is to provide the same kind of nonviolence training that transformed the civil rights movement—but
at a scale no one's ever dreamed of.
If we can train enough people, the 99% Spring could be filled with the kind of bold, highly visible, compelling acts of peaceful
direct action and civil disobedience that made the civil rights movement impossible to ignore.
We launched the 99% Spring a couple weeks ago, and there are already hundreds of folks working frantically to make it happen.
We've already committed to chip in $100,000 to help groups nationwide get all this off
the ground and we're asking every MoveOn member to dig deep and help cover the cost. Can you donate $5?
We've got a plan to help make sure all of this happens on a scale that's impossible to
ignore. We're working with movement leaders and cultural figures to spread the word online and in the media. We're
recruiting everyday people, who have never done anything like this before, to join trainings in union halls, churches, living
rooms, and community centers all over the country. We're mobilizing nationwide to bring big new crowds to campaigns everywhere
using nonviolence to confront corporate greed, fight back against the foreclosure crisis, and more. And then, on Tax Day,
we're ramping up fast for a huge day of direct action all across the country to send an unmistakable message to Washington.
From Occupy Wall Street to the most important moments of the civil rights movement—the freedom rides, the Montgomery
bus boycott, the lunch-counter sit-ins—peaceful direct action has turned the tables on the powerful and changed the
course of history. This spring, millions of us could do it again. But we need your
help to lay the crucial groundwork over the next few months.
Can you chip in $5 to help create a 99% Spring?
Thanks for all you do.
–Lenore, Robin, Marika, Joan,
and the rest of the team
Launch your own MoveOn-style campaign - and sign up other members to get involved. Start a petition on SignOn.org
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