Our goal is to empower concerned Nebraskans to join together and make our collective voices heard. An initial focus was to publish, in our local newspaper, a full-page, open letter to Nebraska’s Congressional delegation. The letter expressed our serious concerns about the authoritarian policies of the current Administration. The text of the letter is here. The full-page ad would include the text of the letter and the names of hopefully 600-700 local citizens who had endorsed it. We were ultimately able collect the endorsement of over 1,000 Lincoln-area residents.

Individually, we all know 10-20 people who share our concerns. To facilitate the collection of endorsements, we developed a printed endorsement form that included the text of the letter and a place to sign to authorize the use of their name. The endorsement form also included a line for them to “clearly print their name”, a place for street address, a place for contributions, and a place for optional digital contact information (email or text phone). We highlighted our commitment that we would share that contact info with anyone. The form also included info on where to return the form and our website address. All of this information required the form to be a front & back form. We later learned that in collecting endorsements at rallies and similar public gatherings, it was not practical to need to turn over an endorsement form Consequently, we develop a one-page form without requesting donations, nor providing return address and website info.

To facilitate the use of social media to collect endorsements , we developed a PDF version of the endorsement form that could be downloaded and printed or attached to an email or text to friends.

When we started this campaign, we were under the impression that the newspaper would require a printed form, with signature, and with street address, before they would allow the use of a person’s name. This was the requirement of the Scottsbluff folks when they printed a signature ad in the Omaha World Herald. Late in the campaign, we discovered that the Lincoln paper would allow for online collection of endorsement names as long as we took responsibility for each person’s permission to use their name. The bulk of our endorsement names were collected via paper but about 300 of the 1,000 names were collected via an online submission form.

We know that hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans have concerns about the threats to our democracy from the current Administration and its Congressional allies.  Polls, way back in June, of Nebraska’s 1,258,588 registered voters found that over 40% (about 500,000) disapprove of Trump’s job performance.  Our challenge is to help those 500,000+ Nebraskans who disapprove of the Administration’s authoritarian efforts to first, find each other, and then jointly develop ways to make our collective voices heard.  Such efforts will help us overcome our sense of personal isolation and exercise our collective power.