 Oh, man, so great to see these little intros in the chat. If you haven't checked them out, please go ahead into the chat and introduce yourself. I am loving what I'm seeing. Shout out to Andrew, John, David, Laura, Love It, Michael, Karen, oh my goodness. Shout out to Ken Nguyen. Thanks so much for being here tonight, folks. If you haven't yet hopped down into that chat, let us know where you're signing on from and why you're excited to be here. All right, shout out to Dr. Z, Darryl, Arlene, all in the chat. Love it, Cindy, John. So great to see it, folks. Shout out to Jason from Salt Lake City. We are truly a national movement, folks, as you can see from the chat. Just to shout out a few different areas that I've seen so far. We've got PA on the call. We've got New York on the call. We've got Utah. We've got Missouri on the call. We've got North Carolina, NYC, Upper West Side. Loving it. We've got DC on the call. Massachusetts, California, Tennessee. All right, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Buffalo. This is people power, folks, I'm loving it. All right, I'd love to say hello to the folks who are streaming live from social media. Thanks for joining the call tonight. Y'all are important too, and y'all are in our tent as well. Thank you so much. All right, shout out to Victoria from New Jersey. All right, we've got Pam from Port Townsend, Washington. Welcome, Pam. Just wanna give a quick shout out to some of the familiar names I'm seeing. Seeing Steve Barrett on the call. How you doing, Steve? Seeing Lyle on the call. So many familiar names, but so many new names as well. And we're so excited to welcome you into this movement. All right, folks, and we are gonna start up in three short minutes here, promptly at 8 p.m. Eastern. While we are waiting, if you are just joining us, hop down into the Zoom chat, little chat icon in the bottom middle of your screen if you hover your mouse over your Zoom app. You'll be able to say hello, introduce yourself. We'd love to know where you're signing on from. Of course, we are a national movement, folks, but we still like to celebrate the geographic locations everyone comes from. All right, and now they're streaming in. We've got tons of folks coming into the chat. Shout out to Silas from Houston. We've got Chris from Atlanta, Georgia. Michael from Brooklyn. Oh man, and there's so many people here, folks, that I'm having a hard time keeping up. This is incredible. Shout out to Jason from Gainesville, Florida. We've got Rob from North Carolina. Kelly from Athens, Georgia. Look at that, over 150 folks on the call already, and that's just folks in the Zoom. I'm sure there's a lot of folks who are streaming in. We've got live streams going on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, which is super exciting. This is great. All right, folks, one minute warning. Before we start, don't forget to give us a little intro in the chat. Love seeing where everyone is signing on from. We've got Tanya from New York, Kelly from Florida, Hal from Atlanta. Such great diversity on this call. All right, let's get started. So I just want to start off by thanking every single person on this call for joining, like I said, tonight's call is happening here on Zoom and also streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. If you haven't already, go ahead and post into the chat your name, where you're from, and we'd love to hear why you're excited to be part of the national anti-corruption movement. Before we go too far in, I just want to really quickly run through the agenda and set the expectations for what we're going to cover on this call. We're going to start with some introductions. So you get to know me, my guest tonight, Ronaldo, and our facilitator, Ben, who you've already heard from. We're going to spend a little bit of time digging into the anti-corruption movement in general, make sure that we're all on the same basic context before diving into our current priority campaign, Passing the For the People Act. We're going to talk through what's in the bill, why it's important, and our strategic approach to passing it. And finally, I'll give you some options for ways that you can get involved right now to ensure that this critical campaign wins. So I want to start tonight. So you guys all know who you're hearing from. So for our guests, let's give our names, pronouns, where we're from, and your role in the anti-corruption movement. Ronaldo, you want to go first? Sure, sure. Such a pleasure to be with you all tonight. My name's Ronaldo Pearson. I am Chief Diversity Officer and Director of External Affairs for Represent Us. He, him, I'm calling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thanks, Ronaldo. My name is James Jamison. I use he, him pronouns based out of Western Mass. I'm the Deputy Mobilization Director. So I'm in charge of large portions of our volunteer program, as well as I do a lot of the building and executing of some of our national advocacy campaigns. And Ben. Yeah, my name is Ben. I am the online community organizer here at Represent Us HQ. I run a ton of action teams over on our volunteer Slack community. We've got meme team, call team and text team along with our fellow organizers. So we're so happy to see everyone on the call. Awesome. So I want to start by asking a big question. What's the big deal? Now, Ronaldo, you've been in this fight for a long time and I know that you've sacrificed a lot for this movement. I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about your background with the anti-corruption movement and why you think this moment is so important. Sure, I am happy to do that. Well, let's start with what we know. Here's what we know. We know that for several years now, there's been a vicious four-part cycle of realities that define American government today and our relationship to it. Number one, the Princeton study based on 20 years of data that tells us that opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all on the policies that end up becoming law. That's number one. Number two, we know that largely due to the fact that our elected Congress members, the policy makers, are spending up to 70% of their time fundraising and two thirds of that money come from just 0.2% of Americans. That is the wealthy few at the expense of the many. Number three, we know that polls show that public trust in government is at an all-time low. And number four, we also know that we have a voter turnout problem in America. Yes, prior to November 2020, we were near the bottom of the list, 26 out of 32 leading democracies in the world for voter turnout. And even after November 2020's historic voter turnout, 80 million voters still didn't show up, which moves us up about 10 spots to number 16 out of 32 leading democracies in the world for voter turnout. So that's that vicious cycle that we all know. And this is a problem for the world's oldest democracy. Democracy doesn't work without the people. And our government, specifically its policies should reflect the wheel of the people, not just billionaires and their corporations. It was Lincoln who said of the people, by the people and for the people, right? So this is why hundreds of us, March, probably many people on this call, March from Philadelphia to DC in April of 2016, 2016 during democracy spring. This is why I personally walked over 700 miles from Georgia to DC in 2019, democracy 911, some of you recall that. We were calling on presidential candidates to pledge to fix democracy first and calling on Congress to pass sweeping legislation that would protect our right to vote, make elections secure and competitive and end political corruption. And this is why represent us has been advancing these anti-corruption reforms in red and blue states alike, winning more electoral reforms at the state and local level in 2018 than at any point in US history, building momentum state by state until we reached a tipping point at the federal level. And that's where we now are, the For the People Act, HR1 in the House, S1 in the Senate. It's the most important anti-corruption legislation since Watergate, the most important civil rights legislation of our lifetime and the most fundamental reform of our political system since the civil war. And that's according to constitutional scholar and my friend Larry Lessig, some of you may know him. I mean, everything from automatic voter registration, which of course registers voters when they get IDs from their states to felony re-enfranchisement, which gives a second chance to returning citizens by allowing them to vote after incarceration and even paper ballots to back up vulnerable voting machines. Then there's small donor matching systems to curb the corrupt influence of big money in politics funded by Wall Street, lawbreakers and tax sheets and ending during Mandarin in Congress. And so much more that we'll talk about more here and none of it, none of it would have been possible without this movement, this people-powered movement, this cross-partisan movement, winning aspects of our anti-corruption act across the country in red and blue states. Which is probably why this bill is pulling so well right now among Democrats, Republicans and independents across this country. So hopefully that gives a little insight into this moment and hopefully you can read my excitement. Thank you so much, Ronaldo, seriously, this is an incredible moment for the movement. Now, before we dig back into the specifics of what's happening for the People Act, I do wanna take a moment and zoom out a bit and talk about the anti-corruption movement as a whole, especially for folks who are joining us for the first time. Really, this movement is tied together by a single idea that our government should work for us and our families, not just a handful of billionaires and special interests. Now, if you're like me, you're sick and tired of a government that doesn't represent us. And you might also feel that there's nothing you can do about it. And the public confidence in our government is at an all-time low. More than 80% of Americans feel like the two major parties don't actually reflect their values. And it increasingly feels like average Americans don't actually have a say in our democracy. And wouldn't you know it, that feeling is right. Ronaldo touched on this. A 2014 Princeton University study examined over 1,800 public opinion polls over the course of 20 years to study how what Congress does or doesn't do relates to public opinion. And the study found that regardless of how many Americans support a bill, there's only ever about a 30% chance for that bill to become a law. 0% of the country supports a bill, 30% chance of passing it. 100% of the country supports a bill, still about 30% chance that it will pass. Now, the research has said it best. The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically insignificant impact on public policy. This, my friends, is the result of legal corruption in our political system. Politicians spend upwards of 70% of their time in office fundraising for their next reelection campaign. Lobbyists write our laws. The two-party duopoly forces us to choose between the lesser of two weevils at the ballot box. Gerrymandering has rigged our voting district so that over 85% of our congressional districts are uncompetitive, but there's a solution. If corruption is illegal in America, we stop it by making corruption illegal. To find a solution to this pretty massive problem, years ago we gathered some of the smartest people that we know, constitutional scholars, movement leaders, even former lobbyists, all experts in the anti-corruption field to come together and draft a law that is now known as the American Anti-Corruption Act. Now, the American Anti-Corruption Act is a living, breathing policy platform. It's a suite of impactful policies that we use to steer our education and advocacy efforts around the country. Broadly, the American Anti-Corruption Act covers three major areas. It stops political bribery by making it illegal for politicians to take money from lobbyists, closing the revolving door where special interests routinely offer public officials high-paying lobbying jobs and prevents politicians from fundraising during working hours. It ends secret money by ensuring full immediate disclosure of political fundraising and spending and prevents donors from hiding behind dark money groups. And it fixes our elections, or fixes our broken elections, by ending gerrymandering, letting all voters participate in open primaries, letting voters rank their top candidates on the ballot to prevent spoiler candidates, establishing automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, and ensuring the availability of voting from home for all voters. All right, that's a pretty cool bill, but how are we possibly gonna pass it? The first step is to really make sure that we're bringing in conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between together to ensure that there is massive public support for anti-corruption reform. There's so much hyper-partisan rhetoric out there that's designed specifically to keep us fighting with each other. But the truth is that 87% of all Americans support the reforms within the American Anti-Corruption Act. That includes 91% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans. When it comes to fixing our broken political system, we just can't win unless we're willing to come together across the political spectrum and work with folks on this issue even when you might disagree with them on everything else. The second piece, we gotta go around Congress and pass the American Anti-Corruption Act at the state and local level. Look, America has a long tradition of pursuing federal reform through the states. Look at women's suffrage, marriage equality, or open carry laws. These are all successful federally after significant wins at the state level. And then finally, the third step here, we need to build a true national grassroots movement to unite folks across the political spectrum and get them involved. Studies have shown that when a movement is able to activate 3.5% of the population to take meaningful, impactful action on an issue, it hits critical mass, and that's when real change can occur. 3.5% of the American population, that's 11 million people. That means that's our goal. Through massive public awareness and grassroots infrastructure, we can build a movement that's big enough that nothing can stop it. All right, that's a pretty good theory, but how does it shape up when we put it into practice? Well, as it turns out, when we put that theory into practice, we start winning. So since 2012, our members and leaders across the country have achieved 127 local and state victories for policies within the American Anti-Corruption Act. 2018 saw the most wins for the movement in history. And even last cycle, even though we were very thoroughly disrupted by the pandemic, we saw another 24 state and local anti-corruption victories, ranked choice voting in Maine and Alaska, anti-jerrymandering in Colorado and Virginia, dark money disclosure in North Dakota and Oregon. I mean, the list is way too long for me to say on this call, the momentum is real and it's building. And right now, with our first sweeping federal anti-corruption bill is being introduced in Congress, we have confirmation that our theory of focusing on the states does indeed lead to federal action. Now, I wanna take a moment and ask you, folks who are watching, I want you to think about the American Anti-Corruption Act. What do you like about it? What do you wanna learn more about it? And specifically, I want you to answer this and we're gonna take a couple of minutes and I wanna see your answers. How do you see the American Anti-Corruption Act improving your community? Now, take a couple of minutes, type up that answer, add it to the chat. If you're watching on the live stream on Facebook or Twitter, add it to the thread. If you're watching this later, maybe on YouTube, add your answer to the comments now. How do you see the American Anti-Corruption Act improving your community? We're seeing some great answers here. You want providing stronger voice to marginalized folks? Yes, the AACA gives me hope that we can have a democracy, absolutely. Ranked choice voting will increase viable candidates, not just two parties and voter for the lesser of two evils. I love it. The will of the people will be enacted, not just the will of powerful industries, yes. Finally here, knowing where the funding comes from, oh man, that is important. All right, so I love seeing the responses. We all come at this from different spaces and we all have a different answer, but we can pretty much all agree the American Anti-Corruption Act can and will improve our community. Now, I want to zoom back out and really talk a little bit more broadly about what's happening right now. Now, as we've mentioned, Congress has introduced the Further People Act. This is the most ambitious set of federal anti-corruption reforms, certainly in my lifetime, the biggest since Watergate and some, Wesseg, are calling it the biggest since the Civil War. This is huge and I want to spend a little bit of time talking about what's actually in this bill, why this bill is huge. So what this bill would do is dramatically increase election security and voter participation. This includes requiring paper ballots to be used, ensuring that voting machines are manufactured in the US and introducing automatic voter registration, felony voter re-enfranchisement, expanding early voting and enhancing absentee voting options. It also includes ending gerrymandering in Congress by requiring states to use independent commissions to draw congressional district lines and explicitly prohibiting partisan gerrymandering. That's huge. It strengthens ethics and financial conflicts of interest laws for the president, for Congress and the Supreme Court. Now, this includes requiring presidential and vice presidential candidates to disclose the previous 10 years of tax returns. It eliminates the use of taxpayer money to settle discrimination claims in Congress. It sets new disclosure rules for presidential inaugural committees and bars them from taking corporate donations. And it sets binding ethics rules on the Supreme Court which currently is the only court in the US without binding judicial ethics rules, which is kind of wild. It also shines a light on dark money and rains in super PACs. This includes imposing stricter limitations on foreign lobbying, requiring super PACs and dark money organizations to disclose their donors. And it restructures the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, to have the actual teeth that's needed to enforce these rules. It also closes lobbyist loopholes. This includes increasing conflict of interest laws and requiring divestment for members of Congress. It slows the revolving door by preventing members of Congress from serving on corporate boards and getting cushy lobbyist jobs after their time in Congress. And it finally dramatically decreases politicians dependence on special interest lobbying money. This includes introducing public financing, voluntary public financing for campaigns. And what's nice, it expresses official support from Congress for overturning Citizens United. Now, that's a lot. And there's a lot of ways and we'll include some sources where you can read in and dig into the specifics. I'll tell you, I'm not a math nerd. I'm more of a history nerd, but I wanna highlight some of the back of the map, napkin math about this bill. So currently I'm estimating that we're about 15% of the way towards establishing the key tenants of the American Anti-Corruption Act in states across the country. If and really when the For the People Act passes, that number will skyrocket and it's really gonna be more like 60% of the way across the entire country. That is huge. And then here's the thing. It's not just a matter of policy though. When you're looking at a campaign, whether it's a ballot measure or a piece of legislation like this, you need to consider how the political viability factors and one of the best indicators that there is of political viability is public support. And boy, howdy, does the For the People Act have public support? Look at that, 77% of Democrats, 56% of Republicans, 68% from independents and third parties. That is some cross-partisan, beautiful public support if I do say so myself. Now let's talk a little bit about what to expect on the path of victory here. So last year, the House passed a nearly identical version of the For the People Act. So it's fairly reasonable to assume that they can pass it again. Doesn't mean we gotta not put pressure on them, but we think there's a solid chance here. Congressional leadership in both chambers have announced their intentions to prioritize the For the People Act. Nope, it's also likely that we're gonna see COVID relief and economic stimulus bills that may actually take that top priority. Now we know that things shift very quickly in politics. So take what I say with a grain of salt, but I anticipate that we'll see a House vote first and then a Senate vote following along probably at least a few weeks later. The Senate is also focused on the impeachment trial for at least the next couple of weeks and they'll be tackling that before they start prioritizing other bills like the For the People Act. Now to win this thing, represent us in concert with a large coalition of other democracy reform organizations really has four broad strategies to ensure that this bill passes. The first, we gotta shout about the For the People Act from the rooftops. That same poll that showed widespread support for the bill, it also shows that only 13% of Americans have heard of the For the People Act. That is not enough. We gotta get out there and tell the world not just that this bill exists, but that it's a big effing deal. At the same time, we gotta get members of Congress on the record supporting the For the People Act. Right now in the House, we only have a handful of cosponsors. That means we have to put pressure on the rest of the House, ask them publicly to support the bill and to cosponsor it. We also have to ensure that it moves forward in Congress. Now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has publicly stated that the For the People Act is his priority and that we're gonna get a vote on it. So that means we're gonna need to put some pressure on leadership in the House and the Senate. Make sure that they stick to the word. Make sure that we do get the votes that we've been promised. And finally, we have to make it politically painful for any legislator in either chamber to oppose this bill. A combination of massive public education and the proper framing can pull this off. I mean, who wants to be known for opposing the For the People Act? That's good messaging. So, James, I hear you say, I'm bought in. How can I get involved? I'm glad you asked. For that, I wanna pass it over to Ben. He's gonna guide you through the various ways to ensure that we win. Thank you so much, James, for that excellent setup. Well, folks, we have a number of volunteer actions that are active for this campaign. Our first is happening tomorrow. Our phone banking team will be making patch-through calls to represent us members who live in target house districts, updating them about the For the People Act, and then patching them through to their house member's office to demand that they publicly support the bill. This is happening throughout the day tomorrow from 12 p.m. Eastern to 8 p.m. Eastern. You can sign up to join the phone bank by going to represent.us slash fdpa underscore phones. James Jameson has just posted that in the chat. So if you would like to head down there, copy and paste that link, it is there for you. All right, if spreading the word about the For the People Act is more your style rather than hopping on the phone, then you'll want to join me. Yes, join me. The more the merrier, of course, join me for our weekly meme team event happening on Monday, February 1st at 7 p.m. Eastern. At meme team, we are a brand new team. We not only create memes and eye-catching graphics, but we also spread action links all over social media and online, helping to push the bill one step closer to victory. Another way to get involved is with our next TextBank scheduled for next Thursday, February 4th. For that action, we'll be sending text to members across the country, giving them updates on the bill and asking them to call their house members to demand that they support the For the People Act. You can sign up to join the TextBank next Thursday by going to represent.us slash fdpa underscore texts. That link, as well as the meme team event, which I missed, is in the chat if you want to copy and paste it, throw it into your browser right now and sign up. The meme team link for those listening in is represent.us slash fdpa underscore memes. All right, folks, so all these great opportunities, as you can see on your screen. Now, don't worry, folks, these links will be sent to you in an email after the call, so don't feel like you've got to jot it down right now. However, if you're feeling extra motivated, hop into the chat, find those links and sign up. All right, and that's not all that we have for you. There are plenty of other ways to get involved in this fight and they are equally as important. If you can't donate your time, you can still help by donating, well, your money. So important, the Commonwealth is our monthly giving program where donations are specifically used for the frontline fights such as this one. You can join the Commonwealth right now and make a donation at any level by going to represent.us slash fdpa underscore donate and yes, folks, you guessed it, that link is in the chat as well. So hop down into the chat, copy and paste that and pitch in if you can so, so appreciate it. And we are not done there, folks. Now, if you can't volunteer and you can't donate, you have to do something, right? We got you covered. Go ahead and check out our call pages. We've set up where you can enter your info and we'll give you the contact for your members of Congress. And even give you a script so that you can easily give them a call and demand that they publicly support the For the People Act. So much of our outreach is going to be driving these calls to the House and the Senate. So I really urge everyone to call. It's really easy, takes 30 seconds, go to these links. They are in the chat, copy and paste them, throw them into your browser, pop your information in and get on the phone right after this call. So, so important for this bill to keep that pressure at an all-time high. All right, so let's just say, you've done all the things, you've donated, you maybe have signed up for a volunteer event and you are going to, after this call, make that call to your representative and senators. We don't wanna leave you there. We wanna stay connected and we've got two ways for you to stay in close touch with the team here at HQ. First, you should join our volunteer community, hosted on Slack. You can connect with our volunteers, activists and leaders from across the country who are all working to end corruption and fix our broken political system. You can join the community by heading to represent.us slash chat. It is one of my favorite places to be. We have got community, actions, just a good time. So plop that link as well. It is in the chat represent.us slash chat to join the community. Second, we'll be hosting these calls every two weeks, which means the next strategy call is scheduled for February 10th on that Wednesday, two weeks from now. You can sign up for the next one by heading to represent.us slash strategy call. Now that link is in the chat. Now this is really important folks. We need to share that link with everyone you can. All right, we need everyone to get into this call so that they can learn about this, this really important moment and they can learn about the opportunities that they can take to get involved and take action. So represent.us slash strategy call, spread that like wildfire. Everyone's got to know about it. Send it an email text message. We've got to get folks to these calls. All right, thank you so much everyone. And we're going to pass it back to James to wrap us up. Awesome, thank you, Ben. Now, like I said before, in order for this movement to hit critical mass, we need 3.5% of the public to get meaningfully involved. Now you are no exception. In fact, you my friend are the rule. We need you to get involved to do something to support this movement. And does that sound good? Of course it does. And that's why I want to tell you a rule that I have. You never make an empty promise. I want you to go ahead and tell me right now how you are going to take action for the anti-corruption movement. Head to represent.us slash commit and tell me what you're going to do. Will you join tomorrow's phone bank? Will you make a contribution? Will you call your members of Congress? Go to represent.us slash commit and let us know. Now in the final minute here, I just want to say thank you. Together we can pass the further people act. Together we can fix our broken political system and together we can end corruption in America. Stay safe and stay frosty. Thank you.