Look up rational activism in the encyclopedia, and you should find Sean Tevis. If not, slip his bio in there.
Last week (on or about July 16), Sean created a web page with some stick-figure action figures resembling Frank Miller’s “300.” These stick figures were yelling something about how the Internet could change the face of political history. Well, it did, and it’s still going strong.
Arlen Siegfreid is a Kansas state representative, a right-wing conservative who is anti-abortion, pro-censorship, anti-same-sex marriage, pro-surveillance, and pro-creationism (in public schools). Although Representative Siegfreid seems a shoe-in for the next election, Sean, a non-politician “Information Architect,” wants to run against him.
With a common sense platform, mostly designed to oppose Siegfreid, Sean readied himself to play the political race game, until he stumbled upon a hurdle that would seem insurmountable for most would-be activists: he needed name recognition cash. According to Sean’s entertaining stick-figured explanation of the situation, 93.4% of the time it’s the candidate with the most advertising money who wins an election. It’s mid-July, and Sean asks, “How much do I need?” The verdict: $26,000. By July 28.
Game over, man! Game over!
No, not for Sean! See, Sean is an educated man. Sean knew that it would require 52 donors, donating $500 each, to meet his goal. However, having spent some time learning basic math in school, Sean figured that he could reduce the amount of individual donations required by increasing the number of donors. Brilliant! Reminds me of the idea I had as a child to send a letter to every resident of the U.S., asking for them to send me a dollar each. I’d have been a millionaire for sure! Except that I wasn’t so great at math, and I didn’t account for the fact that it would actually cost me money to send those letters, and I would have to offset any earnings made by the cost of those letters, and I wasn’t guaranteed to get any money. Even if half of the U.S. sent me a dollar, I’d still end up with a negative return. But, as Sean says, This is the Internet!
Instead of trying to find a handful of very generous donors, Sean would seek out great gobs of very slightly generous donors, via the Internet, which is practically free.
His goal was to acquire 3000 donors, donating $8.34 each.
He drew his stick-figure story, and posted his request website page, with a little button link to donate via PayPal. He even listed the basic campaign finance rules and a list of perks for higher than requested donations (campaign t-shirts, coffee mugs, and Kansas flags, among them).
And then he waited. (I’m sure the waiting involved a bit of “alerting the press”)
BoingBoing (one of my favorite must-visit-daily websites), and a few others got the word. I got the word from BB, and spread it to the Atheist Think Tank forum. I monitored Sean’s website, watching the donors increase slowly. I was getting worried. When I first started watching, he had only acquired a hundred or so. But, probably because of all the latency created by the flood of visitors to his website, I was likely not seeing what was really happening. My forum friends informed me that they had either donated or that the website was sluggish. We started passing out Sean’s direct email so that we could donate via PayPal without going through his website. We sat and watched and cheered and rallied. And, apparently, so did a hell of a lot of others.
And today, July 21, the number of donors is 5,298.
That’s five-thousand, two hundred and ninety-eight donors.
Screw 3000, make 6000!
Apparently no state representative in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors.
WIN!1
But you know what has gotten me really excited about all this? It’s not Sean Tevis specifically, although I think he’s established himself as a hero. It’s that this has given us an example of how we can use our resources to make progressive change, to rally against the incumbents who want to tell us that the way to live our lives must conform to their twisted ideologies. It shows us that there are people out there who give a shit, and although they might not all individually be able to stand up and fight, they sure can click a button and send a real representative a few bucks to help do something about this strangulation we’re enduring. And that representative can do what needs to be done without worrying about not being related to an oil tycoon. If you want to phrase that in popular terminology (that, in its spiritual sense, doesn’t necessarily correspond to my rational belief system, but is a close enough word), it gives us rationals some hope.
Sean Tevis needed 3000 of us to help him kick some ass.
What we need is 3000 Sean Tevises.
[Update: At the end of July, Sean had nearly $100,000 in donations. According to his Weblog, he's made more money than his opponent, and since his money hasn't come from lobbyists, he's not tied down by promises that would shaft the voters. Great job, Sean!]
First, go visit Sean Tevis by clicking these words, and see what he’s done, and maybe donate a little.
Second, do something about something. I can’t tell you exactly what to do. All I know is that if we even had ten, twenty more people like Sean Tevis, we could start reversing this trend of government-sponsored, taxpayer funded perniciousness. Donate to a Sean Tevis, run your own campaign, start a local paper or a blog, get active.
- or “PWN!” if that suits you [<]
Tags: Abortion, Activism, activists, architect, atheist, belief, bio, BoingBoing, campaign, censor, censorship, conservative, creationism, election, encyclopedia, Government, hero, history, Kansas, political, rational, rules, school, sex, spirit, tax, Tevis, theist, vote
Is it the money that makes them win? or is it that sure-thing candidates are more likely to attract money?
Yes, do something about something. That’s the motto. Vague as it is, it needs to be drilled painfully into our heads before we wake up each day, otherwise what’s the point of getting out of bed? More perfunctory pretences of productivity at work?
Ooohh… alliteration… hot.
Sean wins beautifully against perfunctory pretenses of anything. I’m glad to have come here today.
Great article! I made a small donation to “Sean Tevis for Kansas” via PayPal. We definitely need more people like Mr. Tevis in general and to run for office.
That’s fantastic news! I also saw that he wasn’t really that close to the 3000 mark and I felt a bit discouraged. It’s great that all that donating helped out! Please keep us updated on any further developments with the campaign! I’d love to see what happens!
I donated, and recently received an email invitation to volunteer for a party-type deal he was having regarding his running for office. It required my presence in a town three hours away, which I was unable to provide, but I was pleased to see that he seems to have a pretty good contact system set up. Even though I couldn’t help right then, I’m sure there were lots of others who could, and did. That is comforting. It’s awesome to know that this system he has come up with really seems to work. If he gets elected, it could change the way that candidates handle their campaigns.
can i donate? im european………
@ european,
Go take a look at Sean’s main website. I think he has the donation rules set up there. At any rate, you can donate your moral support.