John,
Wow. What a dumpster fire of a year! I kind of can’t believe we made it through. I hope you and your loved ones are holding up okay. This email is kind of long, but I hope you’ll read the whole thing.
I’m Evan, the deputy director here at Fight for the Future and one of the longest running members of our team. I joined the organization just after the massive Internet blackout protests that defeated the SOPA/PIPA censorship bills back in 2012.
I’ve seen the organization change and grow over time. We’ve evolved from what was essentially a handful of activists and coders in an IRC chat trying to “save the Internet” into a small but mighty ten person team that has become one of the leading voices shaping conversations around tech policy and human rights.
We’re still teeny tiny (in terms of staff and budget) compared to larger organizations like ACLU or EFF. But we’ve racked up an impressive list of victories—from organizing the largest net neutrality protests in history to helping stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership to getting the first Federal legislation banning biometric surveillance introduced.
In the last year alone we forced Zoom to offer end-to-end encryption to all users, worked with student activists to keep facial recognition off of more than 60 college and university campuses, stopped the sale of the .ORG registry to a private equity firm, and played a crucial role in preventing a vote on the dangerous EARN IT Act.1
Even though we’re small, our impact is huge. Our work was regularly covered by major news outlets like the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, Wired, Fox News, NBC and the Wall Street Journal. One of our blog posts is even cited in a new class action lawsuit against Amazon.2 Our strength lies in our creativity and fearlessness. We are willing to say what needs to be said and fight for the things that matter most.
We figure out what needs to happen in order to win on an issue and then we go all in, whether it’s crowdfunding billboards to call out corrupt politicians or flooding Senators with phone calls or organizing small business owners or mobilizing Twitch streamers and YouTubers to sound the alarm about impending legislation.
I feel humbled and inspired by the victories our team was able to achieve in such a challenging year. Some members of our team have significant others who are frontline health care workers. Two of us got COVID. Most of us had our kids home from school, remote learning while we worked from home. There were times we got really worried about how we were going to pay our bills, as many people had to cancel their recurring donations in the wake of the pandemic. But so many of you stepped up to support us, and we made it through.
I am constantly grateful for the activists, technologists, writers, and artists who make up our team. Any of them could easily go work in the private sector for more money. But they choose to be part of our feisty little nonprofit because they believe in our mission and they love to see their passion transformed into actual political impact. They give me hope.
As we head into a new year I am struck by the ways that our work becomes more urgent and necessary with each passing day. From defending freedom of expression on the Internet to protecting the privacy and human rights of the most vulnerable people in our society, we have major battles ahead in 2021—and real opportunities to make change.
Big Tech and telecom companies spend more on lobbying in a single day than our entire yearly budget.3 But time and time again we’ve shown that we can meet them head on, and win unexpected victories, by being smart and strategic and using the Internet to mobilize grassroots action at an unprecedented speed and scale.
We fight for a world where technology is used to uplift and empower rather than exploit and oppress. We fight for a world where everyone has a voice. We fight for a future we will be proud to pass on to our children and our children’s children.
Today I’m writing to ask you to make a donation to Fight for the Future to make this crucial work possible.
The pandemic has left us with a fundraising gap we need to close by the end of the year so we can hit the ground running in 2021. We know many people are struggling themselves and are not able to give. If that’s you, we completely understand.
But if you are in a position to make a donation, I’m asking you personally to stretch and give what you can to help make up that difference, keeping in mind there are many others who want to support but are not able to right now. We are so small that donations of any size really do make a huge difference, and we keep our overhead costs low to make the most of every penny.
We accept credit cards, checks, stock donations, and most cryptocurrencies. Please click here to make a donation before the end of the year.
DONATE
Whether you can give or not, please know that we will keep fighting for your most basic rights in the digital age. And we are forever grateful for your support.
For the future,
-Evan at FFTF
Footnotes:
1. How we fight for the future in 2021: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/2021/
2. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/23/amazon-ring-camera-hack-lawsuit-threats
3. CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/big-tech-spends-20-million-on-lobbying-including-on-coronavirus-bills.html
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
