GREEN GRASSROOTS EMERGENCY ELECTION PROTECTION COALITION
 

Dear GREEP Friends, Colleagues and Co-Conspirators…



 It’s our abiding hope that a year from now we can gather to say that in 2024 we tangibly helped save America from both dictatorship and eco-disaster.
 
Toward that great moment, we hope to raise $60,000 (half from our extended community) to stay on the air and pay our four part-time team-members a minimal but fair monthly stipend to sustain GREEP’s work for social justice, grassroots democracy, election protection & a sustainable planet. 
 
So if you get value from our zooms---and endorse the extended progressive communities we support---please join our in-house CrowdFunding campaign. You can donate here  and see our recent 16 minute pitch presentation.
 
Below is an overview of GREEP’s work since our 2020 birth amidst a national grassroots election protection campaign that helped save American democracy.
 
A steady stream of legendary organizers & powerful leaders continue to grace our zooms and take that movement to a new level…where it MUST go in 2024.
 
You could help multiply that power by sharing our links with others who might join and/or support our diverse Monday zooms. Please search your rolodex/database and social media contacts (Facebook, Linked-In, X, Reddit, etc) to help us find new Greepster cohorts. 
 
If you can take us to any likely major donors (even $250 or more) – individuals, foundations, family funds – we would certainly welcome that as well. If you’d like us to support you, join you in a pitch letter, or reach out to anyone on your behalf, just contact HarveyW ([email protected]), Camilla Rees ([email protected]) &/or John Steiner ([email protected]).
 
A little teaser: one of our speakers on Monday will be Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a tech addiction expert and best-selling author, who'll talk about screen time brain effects and the algorithmic threat to self-authority and democracy.  
 
We welcome your comments, criticisms and/or suggestions.
 
With deep appreciation….for democracy in 2024 and a sustainable post fossil/nuke planet far beyond...
 
 From our funding team….HarveyW, John Steiner, Camilla Rees & many more
 
 
WELCOME TO OUR TRANSFORMATIONAL
COALITION-BUILDING PROGRESSIVE
GREEN GRASSROOTS EMERGENCY
ELECTION PROTECTION (GREEP) ZOOM GATHERINGS.
Harvey Wasserman / Executive Summary:

Since April 2020, as American democracy fought for its very life, GREEP has convened more than 160 gatherings of top activists and organizers, movers and shakers, writers and thinkers to change, shape and help guide the American political future towards grassroots campaigning, a healthy green post-fossil/nuke planet…and another Titanic Test of our political will.

Vital ideas, organizations and alliances have been formed on these zooms with tangible impacts on voting and vote counting in Georgia, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and more. 

Our action-oriented networking has helped set a new bar for Get-Out-the-Vote, relational organizing, democracy centers. New campaign strategies have been proven, connections made and documents published to clarify how grassroots democracy really works, and freedoms are protected.

Likewise, the conversion to renewables, ecological sanity, the startling recent rise of organized labor, choice, legal cannabis, nonviolence, diverse speech all find new life and insights at these lively creative sessions. 

Together we’ve conducted national gatherings, compiled lists of key organizations, a state-by-state referenda index, a “Georgia Way” book, an action guide (in progress), zoomed training sessions, network-building, etc. 

With four part-time staff, very low overhead and a loyal band of focused co-conspirators, we’re a vital green grassroots engine that loves all we do.
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From Dolores Huerta to Dan Ellsberg, actor-activist Mimi Kennedy to Romero attorneys Dan Sheehan and Sara Nelson, Minnesota AG Keith Ellison to NOW President Christian Nunes, US Rep. Jamie Raskin to author Nancy MacLean, Common Ground founder Andrea Miller to eco-attorney Steve Donziger, Green Amendments’ Maya von Rossum to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, two-term Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts to Ray McClendon (formerly of the Atlanta NAACP, now with Communities United), legendary safe energy advocates Dr. Helen Calicott and Damacio Lopez to author Brynn Tannehill, green energy visionaries Amory Lovins and Karl Grossman, Emmy-winning documentarian David Saltman, Ken Stern of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate—along with scores more legendary movers and shakers---we have convened 160+ strategic non-partisan 2+hour dialogs meant to forever change how American does its political organizing, conducts its elections, gets its energy, speaks its peace, sees and shapes its future.

Since April, 2020, with up to 250 participants and an ever-widening reach, the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition (GREEP) has convened most Mondays at 5-7pm ET / 2-4 PT. 

Moderated by activist / author / talk host Harvey Wasserman, these warm, eclectic, free-wheeling zooms gather cutting-edge movers, shakers, organizers and thinkers to inform, strategize and connect on the vital issues of democracy and the ecosphere.

The sessions are live-webcast, recorded for re-broadcast at the Progressive Radio Network (PRN-Live) and now at the audio-port of the Pacifica Radio Network, available to some 200+ affiliates.  They are archived for further use at
www.grassrootsep.org.  

Amidst the manic mandate to facilitate real change, focused on core content, the discussions and presentations are fun, focused, fast-moving. Personal attacks, partisan rancor, boring fluff and factional infighting are strictly banned (as are four-letter words the FCC won’t tolerate). 
Suits and ties are welcome...but rare. We like good beards, weird hair, eclectic t-shirts, standup hats, grabby visuals.

We promote grassroots democracy and freewheeling dialog while protecting elections and re-greening our Earth…driving progressive focus and funding into local-based relational organizing with democracy centers meant to make lasting change.

In 2020, we joined legendary organizer Andrea Miller (Center for Common Ground) with Ray McClendon (then of the Atlanta NAACP, now with Communities United) and others whose cutting-edge brilliance helped win the 2020-2 “Georgia Miracle: Strategies that Work for Winning Elections"; televised here; brief transcript here.

This transformational two-year bottom-up campaign helped a black and a Jewish candidate from the Home of the Klan tip the US Senate’s balance of power at a pivotal moment.
In 2021, our five-hour national on-line forum on grassroots elections live-cast 300+ of the nation’s most powerful democracy organizers (event ). 

In 2022, we live-cast a day-long outdoor National Grassroots Congress from Santa Monica (here ). 
 
In our weekly zooms, we’ve connected Ray and Andrea with Rachel Coyle, Pat Marida, Vina Colley and others in Ohio, where grassroots election and ecological organizing just won statewide referenda on cannabis and choice…now under predictable assault by gerrymandered legislators.

GREEP mainstays John Brakey and Ray Lutz---joining with Republican state Senator Ken Bennett—helped fight off the theft of Arizona’s 2020-2 elections.  They continue to reshape how votes are cast, counted and recounted nationwide. 

From Ohio, Steve Caruso does our tech.  Wendi Lederman reports from the DeSantis danger zone.  Mike Hersh and Joel Segal wade through DC’s festering swamp.  Californian Tatanka Bricca navigates the Indigenous community and Romero Institute. 

Aaron Wazlavek heralds the rising labor movement.  Eco-pioneers Camilla Rees and Julie Levine illuminate 5G and antenna densification’s dangers.

Myla Reson, Linda Gunter, Linda Seeley, Robert Freehling, Kevin Kamps, Paul Gunter envision Solartopia. Deepa Driver and Vinnie DeStefano bring us to the Assange campaign. 

Britney Yarrow and Christopher Lindstrom have opened a new Indigenous-based community in upstate New York.

John Rosenthal and David Hogg bring their brilliant campaign for gun control and youthful political activism. 

Jerry Ashton and Ilene Proctor promote the Abolish Medical Debt movement that’s cancelled literally hundreds of millions of dollars in otherwise un-payable medical bondage.

And now Camilla Rees and John Steiner lead a funding effort to expand GREEP’s grassroots impacts.   
 
To make all that tangible, Staffer Wendi Lederman has produced this compendium of grassroots organizations, and this guiding 50-state document on referenda.
 
To help transform how we make non-partisan electoral change, we’re now producing THE GREEN GRASSROOTS GUIDE TO GET-OUT-THE-VOTE DEMOCRACY CENTERS AND RELATIONAL ORGANIZING to serve as an effective game plan going forward.  



We are likely in 2024 to webcast special national gatherings on election protection, Green Amendments, 100% renewables, Julian Assange, Leonard Peltier, reproductive choice, grassroots fundraising, and whatever else arises to demand a national vetting.  
 
SO...we welcome your help with all we’ve done and hope to do through the defining election of our lives…& beyond.
 
BUDGET/STAFF: Lead Convener: Harvey Wasserman;  
Organizers: Wendi Lederman, Mike Hersh, Steve Caruso. 
Estimated 2024 need for part-time staff & expenses:  ~ $58,000.
 
Please donate to Grassroots Election Protection
today via 501-c-3 Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) 
https://grassrootsep.org/donation
1021 E. Broad St.; Columbus, OH  43205


Please ask your employer if they match donations, too!
And share with friends who care about protecting our elections, the environment, and reinvigorating the engine of our Democracy from the grass roots!!
 
We’re grateful for your support!
Your weekly zoom, your vote & your planet thank you.