You’ve probably received our emails about Pledge: On Camera – our video advocacy initiative in partnership with Witness and the first phase of the Pledge2Protect campaign – or heard about it from your Outreach Coordinator. Even so, I wanted to take this opportunity to make another plug.
Students make up the core activist base of the anti-genocide movement, but we know that our senators know that are demographic doesn’t always turn out to vote or donate money. Many of us (myself included) have left lobby meetings feeling like we weren’t taken entirely seriously, even if we had all our facts down cold and did everything right. That’s not going to happen on November 9 when STAND students from all over the country storm the Hill to lobby their senators for genocide prevention.
With Pledge: On Camera, we’re bringing the people we know our senators listen to with us to lobby – whether its their biggest donors, their local party chairs, their faith leaders, or their middle school science teachers – or at least doing the next best thing by getting these “influentials” on camera. One of the coolest things about Pledge: On Camera is that it allows us to overcome one of the major disadvantages of being students while leveraging some of our comparative advantages – namely our creativity, energy, and tech literacy.
And our senators and representatives are already reading about it. Pledge: On Camera was recently featured in the cover story in the National Journal, which is one of the first places people on the Hill get their news. In fact, two weeks ago, I walked into my representative’s office in DC and saw a stack of that issue sitting on the desk in the waiting area.
Why the buzz? The fact is that this type of video advocacy has never been done on this scale. Period. As National Journal reporter Paul Starobin put it, “the Hill has seen nothing yet.”
So if you haven’t already, check out Pledge: On Camera on the STAND site and sign up to participate today!