If you thought the fight to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was finally over, think again.
We all thought it was a done deal when President Obama signed the repeal into law. But House Republicans pulled a stunt that could delay or even stop the repeal from taking effect by passing an outrageous series of amendments to the bill that funds our military.
We can’t stay silent in the face of this new GOP push to turn back the clock on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t tell.
Help the DCCC surpass their goal of getting 100,000 signatures to their petition supporting the repeal. We need to hold the House Republicans accountable for putting their radical social agenda ahead of keeping our military strong and our families safe.
When I served in Congress, it was an honor to sponsor and fight for legislation to finally end this discriminatory policy. As an Army officer, I saw firsthand how the policy forces patriots to lie about who they are just so they can defend the freedoms that make America great.
We could not have passed legislation to repeal this policy without your grassroots support. Now, we must keep the pressure on, by exposing the despicable tactics that the Republicans are using to stop the repeal from taking effect.
I went to El Paso, Texas, to lay out a plan to do something big: fix America’s broken immigration system.
It’s an issue that affects you, whether you live in a border town like El Paso or not. Our immigration system reflects how we define ourselves as Americans — who we are, who we will be — and continued inaction poses serious costs for everyone.
Those costs are human, felt by millions of people here and abroad who endure years of separation or deferred dreams — and millions more hardworking families whose wages are depressed when employers wrongly exploit a cheap source of labor. That’s why immigration reform is also an economic imperative — an essential step needed to strengthen our middle class, create new industries and new jobs, and make sure America remains competitive in the global economy.
Because this is such a tough problem — one that politicians in Washington have been either exploiting or dodging, depending on the politics — this change has to be driven by people like you.
Washington won’t act unless you lead.
So if you’re willing to do something about this critical issue, join our call for immigration reform now. Those who do will be part of our campaign to educate people on this issue and build the critical mass needed to make Washington act:
Take a moment now to watch my El Paso speech and join this campaign for change:
In recent years, concerns about whether border security and enforcement were tough enough were among the greatest impediments to comprehensive reform. They are legitimate issues that needed to be addressed — and over the past two years, we have made great strides in enhancing security and enforcement.
We have more boots on the ground working to secure our southwest border than at any time in our history. We’re going after employers who knowingly break the law. And we are deporting those who are here illegally. I know the increase in deportations has been a source of controversy, but I want to emphasize that we are focusing our limited resources on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes — not families or people looking to scrape together an income.
So we’ve addressed the concerns raised by those who have stood in the way of progress in the past. And now that we have, it’s time to build an immigration system that meets our 21st-century economic needs and reflects our values both as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.
Today, we provide students from around the world with visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities. But then our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or a new industry here in the United States. That just doesn’t make sense.
We also need to stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents — and pass the DREAM Act so they can pursue higher education or become military service members in the country they know as home. We already know enormous economic benefits from the steady stream of talented and hardworking people coming to America. More than a century and a half ago, U.S. Steel‘s Andrew Carnegie was a 13-year-old brought here from Scotland by his family in search of a better life. And in 1979, a Russian family seeking freedom from Communism brought a young Sergey Brin to America — where he would become a co-founder of Google.
Through immigration, we’ve become an engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope, ingenuity and entrepreneurship. We should make it easier for the best and brightest not only to study here, but also to start businesses and create jobs here. That’s how we’ll win the future.
Immigration is a complex issue that raises strong feelings. And as we push for long-overdue action, we’re going to hear the same sort of ugly rhetoric that has delayed reform for years — despite long and widespread recognition that our current system fails us all and hurts our economy.
So you and I need to be the ones talking about this issue in the language of hope, not fear — in terms of how we are made stronger by our differences, and can be made stronger still.
You’ve been hearing from Messina about our overall strategy and what’s at stake in this election. My job as the Battleground States Director is to report back to you on the nuts and bolts of what we’re building in communities across the country.
I want to take you through it in detail, so you can understand how to get involved and shape our organization where you live.
We’re going to build it from the ground up. And we’re going to use this summer to roll out our team model and organizing structure through grassrootsplanning sessions in homes and by videoconference.
Here’s the full briefing — watch it here, and if you’re willing to get involved now and be part of the organization in your community, let me know:
Some of these planning sessions are already under way, and we’re starting to get some feedback. I got one email from a supporter named Steven, who hadn’t been involved at all since 2008, and only went to his grassroots planning session on a whim.
As a result, he’s all-in — he wants want to get involved fast, and also has all sorts of new ideas for how he can apply his skills better this time and which friends and colleagues he can reach out to about joining the campaign.
The subject line of his email about the meeting was “Inspiring night.”
This kind of organization-building isn’t just an electoral strategy — it’s a reflection of what we believe in as voters and citizens. It’s a commitment to the kind of politics that begins in backyards and living rooms and empowers every single American to get involved and organize for the changes they want to see.
At a moment when it feels like the only thing that separates our opponents is how quickly they want to end Medicare as we know it, winning this way — driven locally, powered by the grassroots — will be a rebuke to those in Washington who still think that people across the country don’t have a seat at the table where decisions are made.
I’m asking you to pull up a chair. If you’re willing to get involved now, at this crucial point in the campaign, let me know here:
P.S. — If you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s a quick rundown on where we stand:
— Messina mentioned the one-on-one initiative last month. We’re going to talk with every person who volunteered or made a donation last time. So the staff and I started making calls and meeting with people one-on-one. And then those people started having their own one-on-ones with others. So far more than 75,000 individual conversations have happened across the country. The results are a massive army of newly energized volunteers, plus thousands of pages of ideas and feedback that will inform how we shape our organization nationally.
— Grassroots planning sessions are under way across the country — we’ve had dozens so far with more than a hundred still to come. Everyone has been or will be invited to one.
— You heard about our Summer Organizer Program when we asked you to help recruit them. Well, there are now hundreds across the country, and they start next week. We were pleasantly surprised that the number of applicants far exceeded what we saw when we launched this program in 2008, and you’ll be hearing more about them — and in many cases from them directly — in the coming months
It is now a fight against, in my opinion a change in how Americans live by enforcing Republican tea Party ideology or that “Family Values Platform”. If you believe in equality for all Americans, you must support those members of Congress who not only fight back but also realized early that the Republican agenda is to eliminate not only Government Jobs but also Government Services of all kinds. Republicans stated repeatedly their interest in JOBs, JOBs, JOBs and the Economy but the agenda and the mission of all Republican Governors is much more sinister. It has become more clear what side of the Political aisle is doing their job for Americans not those that back that top 2% they feel are job creators. The notion is great on the surface and yes there has been an increase in private sector jobs but we are still suffering and Speaker Boehner has yet to offer up any JOBs Bills at all. However, it is not lost on me that good legislation that could have moved us into the black sooner has been filibustered for the last 2.5 years. The Republican Tea Parties engagement in deception and lies will continue if we let them and all things being equal or in our case completely unequal, it will also include a big splash of Political double standards.
We must all speak up and out to save what Republicans call entitlements from privatization and or elimination, which btw affects Republican constituents as well, Fox faux viewers. While it is true that Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security may need to be updated in order to get rid of waste and fraud. These are Government run services that actually help Americans, which is what we as Americans supposedly support on a whole and are all about but given the opportunity, the Republican Tea Party will flip it and put that trickledown theory in full effect and we will all wonder what happened to our America, as we all once knew it.
Tim Pawlenty Rips Obama Administration, Congress for Creating a ‘Ponzi Scheme‘ Budget Is this guy for real ? I want to know if his party will pay back the money that the house of Bush spent waging 2Wars and 2huge tax cuts for the top 2% -unpaid for …clearly Profits before People
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In June 2010, Sharon Angle said, “We need to Phase Medicare& Social Security out in favor of something Privatized
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Sharon Angle on FOX June 2010
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Joe Heck catches heat from NV press outlets after referring to Social Security as a “pyramid scheme” at a townhall meeting in Boulder City last month.
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Santorum Calls For Privatizing Medicare For Current Seniors and he also wants to legislate possibly eliminate abortion rights,contraceptieve sex, women, children -HCR
Charlotte is a city marked by its southern charm, warm hospitality, and an “up by the bootstraps” mentality that has propelled the city forward as one of the fastest-growing in the South. Vibrant, diverse, and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds. And of course, great barbecue.
Barack and I spent a lot of time in North Carolina during the campaign — from the Atlantic Coast to the Research Triangle to the Smoky Mountains and everywhere in between. Barack enjoyed Asheville so much when he spent several days preparing for the second Presidential debate that our family vacationed there in 2009.
And my very first trip outside of Washington as First Lady was to Fort Bragg, where I started my effort to do all we can to help our heroic military families.
All the contending cities were places that Barack and I have grown to know and love, so it was a hard choice. But we are thrilled to be bringing the convention to Charlotte.
We hope many of you can join us in Charlotte the week of September 3rd, 2012. But if you can’t, we intend to bring the spirit of the convention — as well as actual, related events to your community and even your own backyard.
More than anything else, we want this to be a grassroots convention for the people. We will finance this convention differently than it’s been done in the past, and we will make sure everyone feels closely tied in to what is happening in Charlotte. This will be a different convention, for a different time.
To help us make sure this is a grassroots convention — The People’s Convention — we need to hear from you. We want to know what you’d like to see at next year’s convention, how and where you plan on watching it — and the very best way we can engage your friends and neighbors.
I can’t believe it has been more than two years since my brother Craig introduced me at the 2008 Convention in Denver. It truly feels like it was yesterday.
As I looked out at a sea of thousands of supporters that night, I spoke about my husband — the man whom this country would go on to elect as the 44th President of the United States. I spoke about his fundamental belief — a conviction at the very core of his life’s work — that each of us has something to contribute to the spirit of our nation.
That’s also the belief at the core of The People’s Convention. That the table we sit at together ought to be big enough for everyone. That the thread that binds us — a belief in the promise of this country — is strong enough to sustain us through good times and bad.
Barack talked at the State of the Union of his vision for how America can win the future. That must be the focus now, and I know so many of you will help talk about our plans with your neighbors — that through innovation, education, reform, and responsibility we can make sure America realizes this vision.
If you thought the fight to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was finally over, think again.
Be a Seed for Change 
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