Our call with Bernie Sanders: Help stop the Republican tax scam

By MoveOn Staff. Thursday, November 16 2017

Dear MoveOn member,

I just got off the phone with Senator Bernie Sanders and over 10,000 MoveOn members. (Click here to listen to a recording of the call and watch the slide presentation).

Together, Bernie Sanders, MoveOn, and coalition partners are gearing up to stop the Republican tax scam, which would hike taxes for millions of middle-class Americans. Even worse, Obamacare repeal is back: the Senate version would repeal the individual mandate—throwing the Affordable Care Act into a death spiral.

On tonight’s call, Bernie outlined our path to victory:

“This is a tremendously unpopular initiative, but the American people don’t yet know what it is … Get the word out, hold your elected officials accountable, put pressure on them, and when we do that we will win this fight as well.

Please read below for a list of what we’re doing in the coming days to defeat this moral travesty. Pay extra attention to your email inbox over the next few days. And also, please click here right now to make an emergency $3 contribution to save the Affordable Care Act and stop tax hikes for the middle class.

With health care for 13 million Americans, the Affordable Care Act, and the future of the American middle class on the line, we’re turbocharging our emergency campaign to defeat the GOP’s destructive, obscene, and immoral bill. Here’s what we’ll do, with your help:

• We’ll melt down phone lines in Washington, D.C., just like we did to defeat Trumpcare, by using our innovative tools and targeting to drive constituent calls to key members of Congress. We’ll mobilize a volunteer team to text hundreds of thousands of voters across the country and urge them to call Congress. Our phone program on Trumpcare helped progressive activists drive hundreds of thousands of calls, but it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Will you chip in $3 to help us do it again?

• We’ll organize calls—such as tonight’s national organizing call with Sen. Sanders that gave more than 10,000 participants a chance to plug into this fight—to beat back this horrible legislation by directing MoveOn members and allies to meaningful action. We need resources to pay for organizers, livestreaming, Facebook ads, and telecom costs for tens of thousands of participants. Will you chip in $3 to help us organize these calls?

• We’re launching a week of action—November 29-December 2—when MoveOn members will organize hundreds of events around the country—outside of congressional offices and in public spaces—to elevate the stories of people who will be hurt by this bill and build pressure on Congress to vote no. We need to organize to make sure that events happen in every key Republican district—and that our flagship events are packed with people. That means more Facebook ads, more texting (which, unlike email, costs us per message!), and more organizer resources. Will you chip in $3 to help us run our emergency week of action?

• We’ll gear up for mega-rallies. For example, on Trumpcare, we ran huge rallies with Bernie in key states where Republican senators and representatives were wavering to drive media coverage about grassroots outrage and spur on more calls and actions. We’re laying the groundwork for hight-profile events in the key days before Congress would seek to finalize this bill.
  Mega-rallies are an all-hands-on-deck push and require a major investment to promote events in the media and spread the word, so that they are filled to the brim with activists. Will you chip in $3 to help us prepare for more mega-rallies in the days and weeks ahead?

• We’ll create videos, petitions, and social media content that will drive home the costs of this tax scam and health care repeal by highlighting stories of those would lose health care, of middle-class families whose taxes would rise, and of veterans, teachers, grad students, and others who would pay more, just so the GOP can give corporations a giveaway. Will you chip in $3 to help us produce more of this content every day?

• And we’ll organize rapid-response actions in Washington, D.C., to make sure that every Republican knows that he or she will be held accountable if they vote to take away health care from 13 million Americans or to give 36 million middle-class families a tax increase to pay for giveaways to corporations and billionaires. Rapid-response rallies in Washington, D.C., require a major staff time investment, Facebook ads, and a big mobile push. Will you chip in $3 to help make sure that our voices are heard in Washington, D.C.?

This is a “red alert” moment. Since before Donald Trump was even sworn in, MoveOn members have risen to the challenge each and every time that we faced a dire threat like this one—and in Congress, we have won every time. We beat Trumpcare—again and again. But now, repeal is back, along with a disastrous corporate giveaway, and we need to go all-in in this fight.

Now, we need your help to resist—and win—once again.

Thanks for all you do.

–Sunjeev, Gabby, Manny, Corinne, and the rest of the team