Dear MoveOn member,

White supremacist groups and their networks across the globe are
manipulating social media to suppress the votes of Black Americans in
critical swing states in the presidential election this November.

Their strategy threatens to disenfranchise huge numbers of Black voters.
It should scare the living daylights out of you.

In 2016, Russian agents created networks of social media puppet accounts
that impersonated Black activists and infiltrated communities of Black
residents in the crucial swing state of Michigan. As Election Day neared,
those accounts spread disinformation to "confuse, distract, and ultimately
discourage" Black voters from turning out.^1

The Mueller report revealed that 70,000 Black Democratic voters in
Michigan stayed home on Election Day as a result of these disinformation
campaigns.^2 Trump won Michigan by only 10,000 votes.^3

Disinformation campaigns—efforts to deliberately spread false information
on social media in order to suppress Democratic votes—work. And they
helped hand Trump the White House in 2016.

This election season, disinformation campaigns are even MORE
sophisticated—which is why MoveOn is investing big in working to take down
fake, racist accounts.

We have hired expert digital detectives who will track disinformation
networks online, follow the threads to their source, expose their impact,
and pressure social media platforms like Facebook to take them down.

But to pull this off, we need a steady stream of funding for the rest of
the year to pay for the staff time and resources needed to ensure these
networks don't impact the election results.



[ [link removed] ]Join our sleuthing squad and help dismantle the disinformation networks
working to re-elect Trump by chipping in $3 today.



Due to the ongoing threats from the coronavirus pandemic, most traditional
in-person strategies for voter turnout are off the table.

That means that this election will be won or lost online. If we allow fake
accounts to spread disinformation on social media and suppress votes,
hundreds of thousands of voters may be dissuaded from going to the ballot
box in the critical battleground states, allowing Trump to cheat his way
to a second term.

But if we all pitch in to take down these fake, racist accounts, then we
have a real shot at defeating Trump and the GOP this November.

Here’s just some of what we have planned:

* Track and take down networks that are working to spread lies,
demobilize and intimidate Democratic voters, and make it harder to
vote. MoveOn has hired an investigations team that is working behind
the scenes to track disinformation networks targeting Democratic
voters to demobilize and intimidate them. When we find those networks,
we will mobilize to force Facebook to remove them, which will also get
rid of most of the content they shared and prevent other voters from
being exposed to it.
* Live-monitor disinformation being spread during key political moments.
As Election Day nears, right-wing social media accounts will begin
spreading conspiracy theories about the polling locations, voting
hours, and voter rolls, as well as lies about vote-by-mail in order to
disenfranchise voters. Our research team will live-monitor the spread
of disinformation to help better track the networks behind these lies
and will work to quickly take them down.
* Run pressure campaigns to demand that Facebook and other social media
companies take action. Facebook's current policy expressly allows
political candidates like Trump to run blatantly false ads, like the
"Super Predators" ad he ran in 2016 to suppress the Black vote. But
Facebook cannot continue to skirt its responsibility for providing a
platform for these lies to spread. We MUST get Facebook and other
social media corporations to change their policies and take down fake,
racist accounts that suppress our votes.

The potential impact from our work is ENORMOUS, and it could quite
literally ensure that Trump FINALLY loses on November 3.

But in order to fully execute our plan and make it successful, we need
your help.



[ [link removed] ]Will you help us fully fund this campaign so we ensure that Trump is
not propelled to another victory through fake, racist, and xenophobic
disinformation campaigns? Chip in $3 today.



The tragic murders of Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George
Floyd, and too many others have brought the reality of systemic racism in
policing to the forefront of our national consciousness. And the
disproportionate number of deaths in the Black community caused by the
coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the effects of racism on our health care
system. But the police and medical systems aren't the only institutions
plagued by entrenched, systemic racism.

In our political system, one of the most vile and time-honored ways racism
rears its ugly head is through voter suppression.

You can help protect the rights of Black voters by helping dismantle the
racist disinformation networks that directly attacked Black voter rights
in 2016 and helped propel Trump to the White House.

Times are tough in this economy, and not everyone is in a position to
give, but if you can, every single dollar could make the difference on
November 3, 2020.



[ [link removed] ]Pitch in [ [link removed] ]$3 today.



Thanks for all you do.

–Ann, Natalie, Kate, Anne, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Russian propagandists targeted African Americans to influence 2016 US
election," The Guardian, December 17, 2018
[link removed]

2. "Election experts endorse Cory Booker’s explanation for Trump winning
Michigan," ThinkProgress, August 3, 2019
[link removed]

3. "Michigan Results," The New York Times, August 1, 2017
[link removed]



Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day
by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage,
defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's
pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must
never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever.
Will you stand with us?



[ [link removed] ]Click here to chip in $3, or whatever you can afford.




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