Yesterday I was in the grocery store, not the coop, the grocery store, in line to buy batteries for my camera, when I noticed the woman in front of me reading the covers of the magazines. And I started to do the same thing.

And I wished there was something better for us to look at. When I’m at the coop, there is. There’s Cook’s magazine, there’s Communities magazine about intentional living communities, there’s Bitch magazine, there’s even an unschooling zine.

But in the supermarkets that most of us visit, every magazine in the checkout line has idealized images of celebrities, unless it’s a really trashy magazine, then it has pictures of celebrities made to look worse off than they are, because trashy magazines understand schadenfreude.

Remember: If you want to control the population,
you first seek to entertain them.

How many people do you know seeking entertainment every day just because it’s there? Whether videogames, movies, or novels, what does it add?

Why are we “entertaining” ourselves when 1 in 3 people in America are in poverty or dangerously close to it?

What I want to know is, Who is Asking for this type of entertainment?

Let me ask you. What would it be like to live in a world where what made the covers of magazines was what really mattered?

I mean, YOU know and I know that what’s on the covers of these magazines is the most boring fluff paid for (and written by) advertisers who know that the only way you’ll spend money is if you have been made insecure about your appearance via an airbrushed cover combined with airbrushed shampoo ads and airbrushed lipstick ads and airbrushed clothing ads. Everyone in the world has a perfect life except you.

It’s SO FAKE!

Have you ever gotten caught up in that whole mindset though?

Just thinking, if this is what rich and happy looks like, then

Yeah, if I dump this nonprofit job and go with that corporate job, I’ll really be happy, because then my life will be so beautiful. I can buy all of that stuff I’ve wanted for years, like a new car and a smartphone and a whole new wardrobe and I will get those dresses in those magazines that use native people like background scenery.

Vogue: Using native people like props for fashion shoots

Then I’ll get engaged and married and have a wedding and it will be exactly like all of those engagement and wedding pictures I see with people all laughing and dressed up all crazy with all of the people they met from burning man and we won’t talk about race or racism or classism or structures of oppression or the cultural appropriation happening with the feather headdresses or headdresses from tribal people of northern thailand and we won’t ask “Why are our lives so empty of meaning that we have to appropriate other people’s cultures and pretend it’s halloween all the time?”

Copyright pixie vision productions

We can turn this around right now

Every time we are confronted with “aspirational images” or advertising or magazines or photographs of weddings or idealized home images

We can ask, “Would this really make me happy?”

We can ask, “What makes me happy right now? Does that have anything to do with anything I bought?”

We can ask, “What is propaganda? Am I looking at propaganda right now?”

And maybe even ask,

“When I’m alone, and quiet, and sitting by myself in a quiet room, and I ask myself what really matters, Is it money? Is it fame? Is it power? Is it having stuff? Is it vacations? Is it a wedding day photo album where for one day we pretended we had all of these things? Or is that even emptier?”

What if we checked out of all of that ideology?

What if we stopped celebrating all of these consumerist holidays?

What if we valued something more precious?

What if we valued our time, and creating our own legacy every day in each interaction, in our writing, our music, our art, our lives and our labor? What if we worked to get a political system that reflected us, a department of peace instead of a department of homeland security? What if we articulated our values and LIVED THEM like we MEANT IT?

I’m not telling you it’s wrong to want all of these things. I want a lot of things. I want a new car. I want a house so I can stop paying rent. I want a garden. I want a new sweater. And I probably want them all because I was influenced by propaganda too. But I don’t for one minute believe that those things will make me any happier than I am right now.

And right now I’m working to leave a body of work so that people will know that I was here, and what I stood for, and that I cared. What will YOU leave behind?

What do you want?

What do you think of supermarket tabloids and magazines? What would YOU like to see instead?

Here’s a thought. Why don’t you start a blog too, and start becoming the media instead of passively looking at their crap?

If you liked this post, you might also like:
My Critique of Vacation Packages via Guy de Bord
Are you a nonprofiteer AND a good consumer?
VIDEO: How Can You Recognize Propaganda?
How do you create a media empire for your nonprofit?

You might also like Pam Slim, Author of Escape from Cubicle Nation’s post on “Blow Up Traditional Careers in favor of bodies of work.”

How To Check Out: Reading the magazine covers in the grocery line originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 20, 2011.

Ever wonder what would happen if philanthropists were actually honest about how they got their money?

What if you could say anything about your charity job? What would you say?

Imagine if you could actually OUT a bad boss or flagrant abuse of nonprofit resources?

Welcome to my post about imaginary nonprofit blogs! This space is strictly tongue in cheek, no names have been named, in the interest of maximum amusement and minimal litigation. Feel free to write your own imaginary blogs in the comments!

1. Philanthropodium: A place for Philanthropists to feel good about themselves and never worry that their money comes from Goldman Sachs or a hedge fund with dubious investments and they are part of the 1% that is toppling the future of America.

2. Software-Swords: Shitty, Saggy, Sucky, Sad Sack software complaints that will make you cry in sympathy because You, Too, have a terrible donor database or enewsletter software.

3. HeadDesk-Nonprofit Management Stories: When your boss had to have sex not just with your volunteer coordinator, but also with your board chair, this is where you go.

4. Ri-donk-ulus Policy Wonks: Your advocacy day attracted one lone volunteer? Your petition got THREE signatures? Your state congress voted to do WHAT? Here’s where you can read nonprofit horror stories from the field.

5. I seem to write only about terrible nonprofits. I confess it is beginning to weigh on my spirit. Ah well. Announcing The Nonprofit Fundraising Marathon where for 21 straight days and nights you run until you have your event, and then you collapse of a heart attack at the finish line! GO GO GO!

6. Nonprofit Cardboard Signs Blog: This blog is all about standing by the onramp, watching the cars roll by, waiting for someone to hire you. Each person contributing to this blog has made their own cardboard sign and everyone shall share their trials of getting hired, fired and RUN OVER on the nonprofit superhighway.

7. Ridiculous and Insulting Fundraising ideas Blog: Solo Teabagging. Here’s how it works! You send a cheap teabag to a donor. You say, “Hey, you don’t have to come to some event and get all dressed up! You can stay at home, with this teabag, and have a tea party by yourself, because you have no friends, and then send us money!” Eh eh? (I wish I was making this one up, not going to link to the nonprofit that did it.)

8. Law of Attraction Nonprofit Social Media Success Blog: You don’t need any experience! You don’t need to know anything!  Infants and pets have had success! All you have to do is THINK YOUR WAY TO MONEY, THEN send $9,999 to this blog to get your special social media frauduct, plus dvd, plus book, that will have you making millions off the internet, even if you have just started your nonprofit! PS. It won’t work if you think even one negative thought, even unconsciously, so you must remain EVER VIGILANT! Otherwise your failure is ALL YOUR FAULT.

9. BP CSR Blog: What’s that under the carpet? An oil spill? Oh, THAT oil spill! Oh, haha, That’s SO 2010, yeah, the tourism in the gulf is never going to recover, and thousands of people have lost their livelihoods, not to mention the loss of life to aquatic creatures, birds, and other life forms around the region, well, anyway look, want to buy this cool “I survived the BP Puddle 2010″ baseball cap? Can we give you $500 for your gala to save the downy seabirds? What do you mean that’s too little? How about $1,000? That should clean up a seabird, right? Why are you glaring at me like that?

10. Confessions of a Charity Mugger: Anonymous blog posts by people working for street fundraising agencies. This person had no idea when they were answering that Craigslist ad to “Take it to the streets” that they would be accosting innocent people just trying to get their Double Soy Latte Grande To-Go and trying to distract them from their caffeine headache with a commission driven sales pitch for a charity. Here’s where you can shout at that person who tries to way-lay you every day on the way to work, for the environment or the children or something, and here’s where they can shout back EXACTLY HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT YOU. Schadenfreude delight!

What about you?

Got your own imaginary nonprofit or charity blog that you’d like to see? Please leave a comment!

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Presenting 10 Imaginary Nonprofit Blogs originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 1, 2011.

“But look at Testicular Cancer, people don’t care about that!” and I said, “Lance Armstrong cares” and he said,

“But nobody else does.” And I said, “He has one of the most successful charities in Texas, with millions of dollars” and he said, “But he doesn’t have a month! He doesn’t have a color!” and I said mildly, “He does have a color. It’s yellow.”

And he said, “Okay, but the only people who care about that are the people who have been personally touched by testicular cancer” and I said, “That’s true of any charity. That doesn’t mean people don’t care. We just have a limited capacity to feel strongly about things unless they’ve happened right in front of us.”

If you’re doing your year end appeal, you might want to remember this as you write. It reminded me of this passage in a Robert Collier book which I would like to share with you now.

Robert Collier yells across the years from 1937,

“It is difficult to get much worked up over statistics. You read with comparative indifference that 36,000 people are killed and 1,000,000 injured each year in auto accidents. But just let you witness a little child being run down, if you hear the anguished cry of its mother, let you look at the pitiful mangled remains, and you will never feel indifferent again. Every time you read of an accident, you will see again that mangled child, you will think of the bereft mother, and you will resolve to DO something to see that this wholesale slaughter is stopped.

The same is true of any great catastrophe-of earthquakes, or floods, or famine or war. We cannot visualize them in the mass. The only way to make us feel them is to tie them into the story of one victim. The English have tried this, and in the Great war, they brought it down to a science.

First they tried us on broken treaties and the like. But these left us cold, for every European nation has broken treaties pretty much at will, when it happened to be advantageous to them to do so. They tried a dozen other angles, and then they hit upon the theme of young girls being attacked by Hun soldiers. At last, they had something. From then on, their propaganda was resistless. They dramatized the case of Edith Cavell, and of a dozen other individuals, until they had this country ready to go to war two years before we actually got into it. In short, they appealed to our emotions by visualizing what was happening to one poor victim of war, and then followed with argument that sounded reasonable in indicating what might happen to us if we did not do something about it.

And that is what the most successful Fund appeals do. They appeal first to the emotion, and follow that with a swift shift to the intellect. They work up your feelings of pity, and follow it with a logical reason why you should give, lest similar catastrophe come close to you.

Here is the way it was done by one Tuberculosis Association. In childish scrawl across the top of a letter, there was reproduced the following-

Dear T.B. People:
Thank you for helping to save my daddy’s life and bring him home safe again and not being sick and coughing all the time like he used-

Then underneath it came the appeal–

Dear Friend:

The above is an exact copy of a part of a letter received by the Association. We are passing the thanks along to where it belongs-To the people who bought Christmas Seals last year. For without their help we could not have arranged for “Daddy’s” cure.

Will you help us to bring other back home, safe and well, by next Christmas?

We have already sent you your Christmas Seals, so you could help. In the rush of things, you have overlooked sending in your remittance in the addressed envelope we sent.

Your dollar can never do more good, nor be spent in a better way, than to help those who are sick and unable to help themselves. Won’t you help us to finish the job sending yours NOW? Please don’t wait.”

——————————————————-

There are many other methods of getting people to give-the principal among them being an appeal to vanity. Many a man will give freely if it means seeing his name blazoned across a newspaper page, when he will give for no other reason. Even small contributors can be given this same satisfaction. but that is subject for a chapter in itself. (And Orchestras have known this for years.)

What do you think?

Robert Collier raised millions in both for-profit and nonprofit campaigns and this is just one of the many letters that exist in his book, The Robert Collier Letter book. Highly recommended. Especially now.

Do you use these strategies to write YOUR annual appeal? What has worked best for you? Please leave a comment.

NEW: How to get people to open your end-of-year appeal and GIVE originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 28, 2011.

From Eric Overman’s NTEN 2010 presentation

I really liked the stats showing how online giving is up, boomer giving is up and the silent generation giving is down. We’ve got a lot to learn from this!

And if you want to learn the next steps with integrated social media fundraising strategy, may I suggest this November 30th webinar?

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

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SLIDESHOW: These tips will help you raise more money online originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 25, 2011.

Let me tell you a story.

My great aunt lives in a retirement community and remembers everyones’ birthdays, and always has a kind word to say to everyone, even though life has dealt her some pretty harsh blows. She has a debilitating disease which has made it impossible for her to ever learn to drive. She retired from her job ten years ago, now has to walk with two canes, and has to depend on others for everything.  She doesn’t complain. She lives happily in her little condo in an assisted living community. She loves movies, and always has something to say about great actors and actresses.

The first half of my life I laughed at my great aunt. She always remembers all of us nieces and nephews at birthdays and christmas and sends us ten dollar checks. She sends thank you notes for everything. My mom had to say, ‘No, seriously, write her a thank you note’ and I could never figure out why. I’m Gen Y! I mean, come on. Thank you notes are so last century mom!

But after I got into fundraising I realized the power of thank you notes. I saw that when you thank someone for something, it makes them feel happy, and it makes them want to give again.

“Thank you” is one of the most powerful phrases in the English language.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in trying to survive that we forget how much thank you can mean to someone. Consider that a lot of people who give to your nonprofit are elderly women like my aunt. The little thank you note you send to them means so much to them. It may be one of the few personal pieces of mail they get that week.

This March my mom and I took my great aunt out to the movies. We saw The King’s Speech. Then we went out to eat. It was fun. She sent me a thank you note afterwards.

Because my aunt likes to talk, and because she can’t drive, people don’t often go out of their way to see her.

This was the first movie she’d seen in a theater in awhile.

In quite awhile.

No one had bothered to take her out to the movies in twenty years.

I imagined if I had her life, how I would feel about this fact.

I wrote her a thank you note.

———————————————–

Luckily this wasn’t my only opportunity to show her that I cared. I hope this holiday season, when I go back, that we can go to the movies again.

Each moment we have with people who love us is so precious. And we take so much for granted. Imagine if you had to wait for other people to have the idea to take you to the movies. Imagine you never learned to drive. Imagine your life getting smaller and smaller, but at least you reach out to the outside world through little cards at holidays and birthdays and giving a little to a nonprofit. Who writes you back? Who comes to see you? Who cares about your happiness?

Your call to your donor may be the nicest phonecall she’s gotten in months.

Pay attention.

Thank your donors now.

You will create a little more happiness in the world. Isn’t that worth it, in itself?

Thank You Notes Are So Last Century Mom! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 22, 2011.

Today’s post is by Michael Nyman, of Impact Dialing. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word phone-a-thon…well, I just sort of shrink inside, even though I’ve run successful phone-a-thons myself! Here’s Michael’s story of why Phone-a-thons are worth your time.

Michael Kaiser-Nyamn knows phone-a-thons

People talk to each other – it’s how we’ve interacted with each other for millions of years, and, no matter how popular Facebook gets, spoken word will always be the most personal way to communicate. While nothing beats a face-to-face conversation, in a society where we almost as often interact with people thousands of miles away as we do our neighbors, the phone and all of its online and mobile variations are still the most effective way to for non-profits to get their message out.

Unfortunately, telemarketing has become a dirty word, thanks to the unscrupulous practices of a few bad apples who have given a bad name to what should be our best way to communicate. Before telemarketing became heavily regulated in 2003, the rapidly plummeting cost of making phone calls meant that telemarketers had little reason *not* to make unsolicited calls, just as we see with spam email today. But as regulations have tightened on telemarketing, and as people increasingly switch to heavily-regulated cell phones, phone fundraising is a more attractive proposition than ever.

I started a phone fundraising program at Equality California, a non-profit organization that had, at the time, over 600,000 members. The previous summer, we had acquired 150,000 new donors through a street canvass program, but these donors weren’t making follow-up donations to our email or direct mail appeals. I talked to another non-profit that was running a large street canvass operation, and they told me that they had been having good success with telefundraising for years. They passed along the names of a few firms they used, and I called a couple up and arranged for a trial campaign.

The campaign went really well – close to a quarter of the people we called pledged to donate. However, many of the pledges said requested to be mailed an envelope with which to donate by check, and this is where we really botched the program. We did a terrible job of mailing out the envelopes in a timely manner, and a relatively low percentage of them were returned. We still raised quite a bit of money, but not as much as we had hoped. After a couple months of improving our internal processes, we were bringing in donations hand over fist. It was the most successful low-dollar program we had ever run outside of an election!

We also started a second program, to call people who had never donated before and try to turn them into donors. This campaign performed far beyond our expectations. We hadn’t expected much from it – these members had never given before, so why would they start giving now? But when we got them on the phone, almost 20% decided to donate. The success of this program really speaks to the power of the phone to form a connection with your supporters and engage them in new ways.

One of the big criticisms of phone fundraising is that it creates “donor fatigue” – that people may give the first couple times they’re called, because they feel pressured to do so, but that after a while, they resent the phone calls and stop giving. This criticism is especially leveled at outsourced firms that call on behalf of a non-profit – some people say they’re just trying to make money off of the current campaign, so they don’t take the long-term view of cultivating donors. From my conversations, it seems like there is a very wide quality of telefundraising firms, and that some focus more on quality and long-term relationships, and some focus more on bringing money in the door immediately.

But I never got a chance to find out at Equality California, because not too long after I left the organization, they brought their phone fundraising program in-house and hired their own staff to make the calls. The believed that their own callers would be more invested in their cause and so more likely to personally want to do well, and that they could more closely supervise the operation to make sure the calls were going how they wanted them to. The results were amazing: they doubled the amount of money they made per member contacted. The program came with its own set of headaches, including hiring and managing employees, running their dialing system, fielding calls from members who no longer wanted to be contacted, and so on. But the fundraising results made the extra work worth it.

Here are my Top Three Tips for running a Phone-a-Thon, based on our runaway success at Equality California:

Even if you’ve only got a few hundred people on your list, you should still be calling them. Have a development associate or similar staff member call through the list a couple times a year. Don’t give the job to interns or volunteers (unless you feel very confident in them); it takes a lot of practice to get good at calling for money.

You Should be Listening. Ask a lot of questions. Find out what’s on the person’s mind.

Asking for specific amounts. Last time you donated $100. It’s been 12 months since you’ve given, and we’ve got this important initiative going on right now, and could you give $120? And if they say no, ask for another specific amount after that, say, okay, can you do $100 instead? Give a reason to give that amount.  For example: “$100 can pay for lunch for 100 kids in ethiopia to eat at school. It can feed a whole school.”

If you’ve got a larger list and don’t have the capacity to run a program in-house, make sure that you find a firm you’re comfortable working with. Spend a lot of time asking other non-profits for their experience, and don’t be afraid to ask for a small, trial campaign. If you can, go on-site with at the firm’s call center while they’re calling.

If you have the capacity to do so, run an in-house program. You’ll need to find someone with experience, since running a call center is not easy to do. It will be a lot of work, but done right, you can run a very high-quality program and raise much more money than outsourcing.

Michael Kaiser-Nyman is the CEO and founder of Impact Dialing, an easy to use power dialer and hosted predictive dialer. Non-profits use Impact Dialing to help them raise money, contact voters, and communicate with their members.

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Come on Mary, Don’t Fear The Phone-A-Thon originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 1, 2011.

I’ve spent these last two weeks running barefoot through the woods, seeing my family and friends, taking the train and driving around New England and the pacific Northwest and the fall colors are coming up GORGEOUS up here. The flowers, the streets, the people, everything, it’s all so lush.  Wish I had some pictures to share with you, but sometimes you’re so IN the experience that the act of taking pictures would take you out of it too much. You chronicle it in journaling, but you don’t need to chronicle the visual elements. I know, I know, so so… retro!

In two days I’ll be going back to Texas and I’m excited about that too. As much as I love traveling, I love coming home again too.

Meanwhile I’m finishing my book and cooking up some new webinars which aren’t quite ready to share with you yet.

But what about you? What have YOU been up to? How have you been using the last few weeks? Working on your fall appeal? Writing grants?

If you are new here and are checking this blog out because you took one of my webinars, welcome! If you want to see other charityhowto webinars, I’d love to show them to you! There are some fab free ones

Like How to Use Twitter for your nonprofit, how to use WordPress for your nonprofit website, and more.

And my friend Pam Grow is teaching Winning Grants for your Nonprofit too next week!

As always, I look forward to reading your comments! Tell me how you are.

Sometimes you have to step away from your desk originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 21, 2011.

Since I published this post I have been getting voicemail spam from Constant Contact. And apparently whenever you sign up for one of their “workshops” on social media, that is what you get.

Proof?

Constant Contact is now harrassing me over the phone

Here’s a list of other people who are also getting telephone spammed by Constant Contact. Slimy!

One person writes,

This person is also sick of the Constant Contact voicemail spam

Here’s the post where I said that I didn’t like being sold to.

———————————————-

You know what I hate?

Sales pitches disguised as workshops. It’s sneaky. It’s slimy. You’ve paid good money to be at an event, and now you’re getting a sales pitch instead of information you can use.

Seriously. Giving people useful info is important. They are sitting there, waiting for your wisdom.

Constant Contact Sucks Workshops are Sales Pitches

And then you do a sales pitch.

Well, so far, ConstantContact is 0 for 2 with the whole “sales pitch disguised as a workshop” thing. I went to an internship fair and the rep was allowed to PITCH to us for a whole hour beforehand. It really sucked. I was SO BORED.

And she talked down to us like we were stupid, like we had no idea about social media, and we should just give it to the interns, which is wrong.

You should not hand your social media policy to an intern. They gave us WRONG information on TOP of the sales pitch!

And then I went to a conference in Philly and AGAIN Constant Contact was there with a purported workshop about social media, but ACTUALLY it was about how you should use their newsletter software. Plus, the presenter was really a jerk.

Several years ago, I used Constant Contact at a nonprofit and it was a real pain. It messed up our emails. They looked ok on our screens, but when we sent them to donors they looked terrible. I always recommend that people not use it, but now I’m REALLY going to encourage them to go with someone else.

For example, Aweber. Now I use Aweber and I like it a lot. Aweber ROCKS! It’s cheaper, it’s easier to use, your emails actually look like you WANT them to look, and it’s easy to make a widget to get people to sign up for your newsletter without ANY programming background at all. And I get a 40% open rate, which is SO MUCH BETTER than the industry standard! They have the best deliverability rates. That means that they are hardly ever marked as spam.

What are your thoughts? Have you been burned by ConstantContact too? Do you love Aweber? What’s another email software that you like?

I would recommend you get your social media training from someone who DOESN’T have an agenda, someone who is NOT trying to sell you something. Aweber is so fun. If you have to think about your nonprofit’s bottom line, use Aweber.

Have you ever gone to a sales pitch disguised as workshop? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 20, 2011.

What is the ladder of engagement?

Footprint: The reach of their activities, both online and offline
Engagement: Readers engage with their content
Individual Behavior Change: Impact on users behaviors, purchase decisions, and daily lives that are in line with sustainability
Societal Change: Impact on society, policy discussions, and conversations that advance sustainable practices.

How can you get your nonprofit to start to use this ladder?

A1. Listening dashboard: Netvibes

A2. Generate engagement metrics: SproutSocial

A3. After 18-24 months, tie Social Media efforts with more petition signing, volunteers, and donations

A4. After another unspecified amount of time, help laws get enacted to help more people care about and work towards a solution that your cause deems important.

So, the first two steps seem simple, and the second two, much more complicated. How do you go from X to Z?

Do you have any ideas?

Do you use The Ladder of Engagement in your organization? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 13, 2011.

What are the techniques of propaganda?

• Glittering Generalities
• Transfer
• Name calling
• Card Stacking
• Testimonials
• Plain Folks
• Band Wagon

Want to understand what they mean? Watch this video from 1950. Now, when you see propaganda, you can start to be immune to it. You’ll recognize glittering generalities, testimonials, and band wagon.

I would say get out the vote, for sure, but ask yourself, will the values I hold dear be upheld by the person I help get elected? Or will their loyalties be with those who have far more money than me?

On October 6th, 2011, people will occupy Freedom Square in Washington DC, until their demands are met.
What are their demands?

1. Corporatism– firmly establish that money is not speech, corporations are not people, only people have Constitutional rights, end corporate influence over the political process, protect people and the environment from damage by corporations.

2. Wars and Militarism – end wars and occupations, end private for-profit military contractors, reduce the national security state and end the weapons export industry. War crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace must be addressed and those responsible held accountable under international law.

3. Human Rights – end exploitation of people in the US and abroad, end discrimination in all forms, equal civil rights and due process for all people.

4. Worker Rights and jobs – all working-age people have the right to safe, just, non-discriminatory and dignified working conditions, a sustainable living wage, paid leave and economic protection.

5. Government – all processes of the three branches of government should be accountable to international law, transparent and follow the rule of law, people have the right to participate in decisions which affect them.

6. Elections – all citizens 18 and older have the right to vote without barriers, all candidates have the right to be heard and to run and all votes should be counted.

7. Criminal justice and prisons –end private for-profit prisons, adopt evidence-based drug policy, prisoners have the right to humane and just conditions with a focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

8. Healthcare – create a national, universal and publicly financed comprehensive health system.

9. Education – all people have the right to a high quality, publicly-funded and broad education from pre-school through vocational training or university.

10. Housing – all people have the right to affordable and safe housing.

11. Environment – adopt policies which effectively create a carbon-free energy economy.

12. Finance and the economy – end policies which foster a wealth divide and move to a localized and democratic financial system, reform taxes so that they are progressive and provide goods, monetary gain and services for the people.

13. Media – airwaves and the internet are public goods, require that media be honest, accurate and accountable to the people.

14. Food and water – create systems that protect the land and water, create local and sustainable food networks and practices.

15. Transportation – provide affordable, clean and convenient public transportation and safe spaces for pedestrian and non-automobile travel.

This is not occupy wall street, but a national movement that will hopefully force Congress, the President and the Senate to take action on these issues and acknowledge what the majority of Americans want.

Do these issues reflect what YOU want? Is anything missing?

VIDEO: How can you recognize propaganda? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 10, 2011.