Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

So many bastards, so little time.

Not all heroes wear capes.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

We’re not going back!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickle?”

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

The revolution will be supervised.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Leverage: Let’s Go Buy a Field Organizer

Leverage: Let’s Go Buy a Field Organizer

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: 

I was thinking of the new Leverage: Redemption, and how at some point in every show they say “Let’s Go Steal a Country” or whatever it is that they are doing in that episode.

That’s a bit how I feel about our efforts to make a difference by early funding of something these political boots on the ground organizations need.  Let’s go buy an organization something that they really need.

When I spoke with Voces de la Frontera and asked what we could do for them that they couldn’t do otherwise, they thought about it for a bit and then came back to us with the need for a dedicated field organizer.  We talked about how much that would cost, and they came in with a number that seemed too low to me for an experienced field organizer.

Voces did some more research and came back with a figure of 45,000 for an experienced field organizer in Wisconsin.  They could fund the benefits, so all we would need to do it cover the salary.  (All!)  $45,000 is a big leap for us, but I figured that we could only try!

So we had our Ask Them Anything, and we started our fundraising effort.  It was a bit slow at first, and I went back to them and said that it looked like 45k was too big of a reach, and I asked them to see if they could find someone to match us, thinking that $22,500 would be more do-able.

In the meantime, our BJ thermometer was rising.  Slow and steady wins the race.  Then a few days ago MomSense announced that she would match 10 donations of $10, and 2,000 was raised that night! Then, inspired by MomSense, Mousebumples wrote to say that she had crunched the numbers and she had $2,000 to match donations with.

Mousebumples turned that $2,000 into $5,000 dollars of donations that day (including her 2k).

And we had an anonymous Balloon Juice angel donate $5,000 by check!

Not to mention that Quiltingfool did a drawing with anyone who wanted to buy a quilt and have the purchase price donated in their name!  Anne Laurie won the drawing and Quiltingfood donated the purchase price of the quilt through the Voces thermometer.

So we went into our zoom call with Voces last night with a thermometer that said 20,750 and another 5k on top of that because of the check, so we raised 25,750!

And they were able to announce at the zoom that they had found a donor to match everything we raised, so that makes $51,500!  $45,000 will pay the salary of the new field organizer – job description to go out early next week!

We did it!  That guy who liked to say Yes We Can was right.  Balloon Juice is the (not so) little engine that could.

In case math is not your thing, Mousebumple’s $2,000 of match money turned into $10,000 for the field organizer!  ($2k Mousebumple’s match money + $3k raised that day = $5k, which was matched outside of BJ = $10,000.)

Voces de la Frontera hopes to leverage the new field organizer position and the remaining $6,500 raised to create opportunities with other funding organizations, in the hopes that could possibly allow them to hire a regional organizer.  So that $6,500 will be reserved for helping them grow.

I am so proud of what we did here, and I hope we kick butt in Wisconsin in 2022 and beyond.

Thank you so much to every single person who donated!  Whether it was 5 dollars or 5,000 – it all adds up, and we got to buy a field organizer.

 

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  1. 1.

    Hildebrand

    That is awesome news – and exactly what we can and should be doing as a counter to the right-wing freakshow and a reminder to the ‘dems are clueless naïfs’ crowd that we can move the process in constructive ways.

  3. 3.

    mrmoshpotato

    No no – let’s go steal an organization something that they really need! ?

  4. 4.

    jnfr

    I’m very happy to hear this. I tossed my own small drop into the puddle, and I’m glad to be part of the crowd.

  6. 6.

    Fair Economist

    Special congratulations to you and the other frontpagers for organizing this!

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Even though I have been a cheerleader for Voces on this blog for a while, I must admit that I am predisappointed in this new field organizer.  I mean wtf have they accomplished.  I expect more for our money.  Dagnabit!

  8. 8.

    CaseyL

    Wonderful news!  I’m glad I could add my mite to the amount raised – and am very grateful to the Angels, anonymous and otherwise, who matched funds.

    Let’s kick butt in Wisconsin!

  14. 14.

    H.E.Wolf

    That is spectacular news! Congratulations to WaterGirl, MomSense, and mousebumples for being prime movers in making this happen!

    Funding a field organizer is *huge*. In our state, I saw (from my metaphorical lair as a database volunteer) the newly-hired Latina field organizer bring in hundreds of new campaign volunteers, in all age groups including teens, from legislative districts that had been considered out of reach.

    There were weeks when her numbers outstripped all the other field organizers’ totals… and the others were no slouches at recruitment, themselves. :)

    The Voces folks who attended the Zoom event last night were very impressive, as are the organization’s accomplishments thus far. It will be exciting to see what they do in the current election cycle, now through Nov. 2022.

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    @H.E.Wolf: The two young women, Katherine and Cassandra, were so impressive.  And not just for their age!   Though one of them is still in high school, which makes it even more amazing.

    Holy cow-ski, I was impressed last night, too.

  17. 17.

    hueyplong

    Anyone know if someone is live tweeting the supposedly ongoing Barrack hearing?

  19. 19.

    Al Nichols

    Just stopping by briefly to say, on behalf of the Voces team, how grateful we are for your support and how humbled we are by your faith in us.  They both mean a lot.  Muchisimas gracias from all of us, and si se puede!

  22. 22.

    Old School

    This is wonderful!  I saw the news in the thermometer this morning and was hoping there would be an update posted for those of unable to attend the Zoom last night.

    Good job, everybody!

  25. 25.

    Almost Retired

    This is fabulous! Looking forward to viewing the Ask Them Anything zoom recording when I return to civilization.

  29. 29.

    WereBear

    Daaaaaaamn, that felt good. I got in on the Mousebumples match thread and feel a sense of accomplishment going into the weekend now :)

    Doesn’t take much, I’m easy to please. John, thank you for being such a force for good… and taking all of us along for the ride.

  31. 31.

    RaflW

    This is such great news! And also good to know that we hit the goal, even if the ActBlue thermometer isn’t ‘up to date’.

    So … who should my next $25 or $50 go to?? I’d love to be contributing around the same time as other BJers to set off a little ‘love bomb’ of surprise cash for some org that is getting the work done.

  32. 32.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    Awesome! Way to go team Balloon Juice y Voces de la Frontera!

  38. 38.

    Lapassionara

    @WaterGirl: thanks for organizing us to raise funds and also to get to meet the wonderful people at Voces. Even if you are not the best at pushing the “record” button. ?

  39. 39.

    VeniceRiley

    JACKAL PARTY!!!!!!!

    Amazing news. What a wonderful update. I was thinking in my head if we could get it to 22,500 and commit to monthly amounts on ActBlue to fund the 2nd year, that would be doable. But you think bigger. Yessssss we can! Si, se puede!

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    @VeniceRiley: I did talk to them early on about a second year, and they said that if we could do the second year, they would commit to finding other funding after that.

    The second year funding can’t come a year from now, because whoever this is will need to know they have that job for another year, otherwise they would be leaving shortly before Nov 2022, which sounds like a bad plan.  :-)

    So maybe 6 months from now we can focus on that.  PLUS, all recurring donations that are set up from clicking the thermometer go directly into the BJ thermometer.  So the proceeds from all recurring donations can be earmarked for that second year, if we want.  Either way, they will definitely be tracked.

  44. 44.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    This is so exciting! Glad I could drop a little coin in.

    @WaterGirl: We can do recurring donations to the thermometer through ActBlue? I can’t give a lot at once but I could give a little every month.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @Bluegirlfromwyo: Yes, you can.  Click on the thermometer, and it takes you to the Act Blue page.  Make your donation, and click to make it monthly.

    Then a month from the original donation, it will take out your donation again, and the thermometer goes up.

    It only goes to the BJ thermometer if that’s where you start the original donation.

    Soon, the Voces thermometer will disappear from the upper right on every page, but you can still see all our 2021 thermometers by clicking in the blue box that says “All 2021 Donations”.  That is right by the balloon man in the banner.

    On a phone, you have that option in the mobile hamburger menu.

  47. 47.

    Wolvesvalley

    I did not expect to get teary-eyed reading this post and thread, but I did.

    The jackals are amazing! And so were the Voces folks at the Zoom last evening, especially the two young women from the youth group. One of whom was from a “separated” family — her mother had been deported. I wanted to ask if there was any hope of reuniting the family, but it seemed like too much of a downer and a distraction from the topic of discussion.

  49. 49.

    MomSense

    Hey WG, maybe you can add the Quilt that Quilting Fool donated to Voces.  Her quilts are works of art and it was an incredibly generous donation.

    Thanks everyone for chipping in.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Oh my gosh, thank you for the reminder!  I planned to include that, but it fell right out of my head.

    It was a totally generous thing for Quiltingfool to do, and she even said she might do it again for another organization at some point. And then I left her out!

    Fixing that oversight right now.

    edit: I can’t include the quilt right now because when I asked her for a photo, she had already taken it down from her website because it was sold.  Anne Laurie was the lucky winner of the drawing, and just today I added an address for Anne Laurie and an address for Quiltingfool to the sealed thank you notes that Voces sent to me to forward to them.

    But when Anne Laurie gets her quilt, maybe she will take a photo and share it with us

    Quiltingfool’s website

  51. 51.

    marcopolo

    Good work everyone.

    Now go out and celebrate this weekend!

    I’m happy to see the 2022 Senate races starting to shake out. Already have folks to give to in WI, OH and KY. Waiting to see if former gov Jay Nixon jumps into the MO race, and since I like both candidates in PA D primary I’ll have to wait to see how that turns out.

  52. 52.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: And speaking of Artists in Our Midst, on Sunday evening at 6pm blog time we are featuring another one of our artists – Ajabu, and his Music.

    And as long as we are talking about music, the album put out by the band your sons are in will headline the music post that is going up tonight at 8pm blog time.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    Wonderful news, WaterGirl.  3 cheers to you. And to MomSense.  And to Mousebumples.  And to everyone who helped fund the Voces position.

  58. 58.

    J R in WV

    @hueyplong: ​
     

    Only $5 million cash, and $22 million in securities, and his West Coast McMansion. And he’s wearing a GPS bracelet now, and they took his passport (wonder if they got his Lebanese passport?) too.

    But the IPO was cancelled, and that probably cost him more than $250,000,000 in reality.

    So sad!

  59. 59.

    Yutsano

    MAZEL TOV US CRAZY KIDS!

    I have this weird feeling of hope now. That maybe, just maybe, small seeds like these will get Wisconsin back to its progressive roots. At least when the toxic stew of racist propaganda dispel from the dairyland.

  60. 60.

    Mousebumples

    Yay! Awesome news, and so proud to be a part of this. ?

    Thanks for being so awesome, Juicers!

  62. 62.

    randal m sexton

    I did not see this in time, but I managed to kick in some $$.  Maybe this should be a regular thing, or a new effort.  I am trying to determine some big leverage way to , well , you know, save our fucking democracy. Consent of the goverened hanging by a thread

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @randal m sexton:  Thanks for the donation.  I share your sentiments!

    Yeah, we did Four Directions as our first boots-on-the-ground organization, and then Voces de la Frontera is our second.  We plan to focus on organizations like this for awhile, particularly ones that focus on underrepresented populations, and folks who are targeted by the GOP with voting restrictions.

    Stay tuned!

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    I’ll leave the thermometer up in the sidebar until this post moves off the front page.  After that, if so inclined, you can find it in “All 2021 Fundraising”.  In case you don’t know where to find that, Balloon Man is standing on top of it in the banner.  On phones it’s in the mobile menu.  Sorry, no Balloon Man there.

Comments are closed.