This is the story of how grassroots politics actually works. There are thousands of stories that have happened during the past 6-8 months regarding the Ron Paul campaign, and most of them may never be heard. But this one was heard, is being heard today, and will likely continue to be heard in the days to come in a very big way.
It all started with this video on YouTube.com. On the day that it was posted online, activist Trevor Lyman was trolling that site, looking for Ron Paul videos. When he stumbed across this one, he was inspired by the idea it posed: 100,000 donors each giving $100 on November 5th, in honor of the movie V for Vendetta. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he went over to godaddy.com and registered the domain name thisNovember5th.com. Within hours he had a simple website in place, proposing that it be used to promote the idea contained in the video. Then he went to some online meetup boards and posted the idea.
That's when the grassroots effect took hold. Almost immediately, someone sent him some graphics to use. Someone else sent him some banners to help promote the idea. Lyman set up a simple email-based system for counting how many people were agreeing to sign up for the big money bomb on November 5th. From there, it just took off.
Day by day, the number of people signing up came in at a steady pace. They averaged 1,000 per day, with only minor fluctuations day to day. By the big day, November 5th, over 18,400 had signed up.
One of the most amazing parts of the story is that people were getting the message without even knowing about the website. Former MTV video jockey and current broadcasting and Internet personality Adam Curry told his 500,000 visitors about the project even though he apparently didn't know about the website. Many of them found the site anyway, but many others decided they would make their donation on 11/5 regardless.
I interviewed Lyman by phone at around 5 PM on the afternoon of the 5th of November. At that point 21,869 had already donated more than $2.5 million, and there were still a lot of hours left in the day. He was very hopeful that $3 million or more would be achieved. I asked him how he felt about it. He said:
"Well, I feel good. It would have been great to meet the entire goal, but I'm really happy with how successful it has been today."
Lyman says that so far today he has received phone calls from CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and ABC News among others. So clearly the major media are indeed paying attention, which was one of the major goals for the project.
He is like most Paul supporters. He's not a politician. He's not even in politics. In fact, he's an Internet entrepreneur. His website, musicsubmit.com helps aspiring musicians get their demos and recordings played on Internet radio and other alternative venues. Says Trevor, "It hasn't made me rich, but I'm able to live on the income from it full-time." Not bad at all.
I asked Lyman what's next on his horizon. He said:
"Well, now I've got a list of 18,000+ email addresses of Paul supporters, so I've been thinking about some more ways to get the word out. One of the things I've thought about is a way to talk about the hazards of the Federal Reserve System, as a way of educating people about what it is, how it works, and the problems it causes."
He agrees that this might be a bit ambitious, but he'll put it out there and see if people respond to it. He's also considering something called "Ron Pauls of America" which would encourage Paul supporters to emulate their candidate by running for Congress in their home district. He said:
"If we could get hundreds of people running on the same platform as Ron Paul throughout the country, it would be much harder for the media to ignore the message."
At this point in the conversation, I kidded him, saying he must not be a member of the Libertarian Party, who have attempted this same strategy with minimal success. He laughed and admitted that his hopes might be a bit ambitious, "but you never know," he pointed out.
"The Internet has made a huge difference. We have this on demand informational network that we control, and it really is making changes. The Internet gives us the ability to put the message out in such a way that it is presented without the message being attacked at the same time it is being explained."
That's certainly the truth, and since Trevor Lyman's story is only one among thousands of similar stories (although this one is clearly going to be one of the most memorable from the 2008 campaign), I wouldn't want to bet against any of Trevor's visions coming true.
©2007 Walt Thiessen, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Monday, November 5, 2007
Last modified: Monday, November 5, 2007
The views expressed in this article are those of Walt Thiessen only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Walt Thiessen is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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