Report to Our Stakeholders on the First Six Months of the Stand Up Nebraska Campaign

This brief overview is intended to provide our stakeholders (endorsers and donors) with a summary of what the Stand Up Nebraska Campaign has achieved so far.  We also want to convey our thanks to those stakeholders who made this possible through their support and participation. The first meeting, of what was to become our Stand Up Nebraska Campaign team, was on Sunday, July 13th. 

When we first met, we were not a team, but we shared rough concepts of what we wanted to do. We agreed that there were a very large number of Nebraskans (over 500,000) who were very concerned about the threats to our democracy from actions by the current Administration.  For some folks, protest rallies provide a way for them to express their concerns.  However, for an even larger group of concerned folks, rallies were not a comfortable way for them to express their concerns.  The challenge we set for ourselves was to develop tools and methods to reach out, find these concerned folks, and enable them to make their concerns heard -- loud and clear. 

In our first six months, we have:

  • Developed an informal, but functional team, and organization and outlined a rough campaign strategy;

  • Recruited over 1,900 Nebraskans to endorse and publicly lend their names to an open letter entitled “Defend Our Democracy”.  This open letter highlights threats to our democracy and calls on our members of Congress to stand up and defend our Constitution and democracy;

  • Collected the digital contact information, to facilitate future communication, from over 1670 concerned Nebraska endorsers;

  • Received donations from over 250 endorsers/donors, averaging approximately $48/donor;

  • Designed, funded, and published a full-page “Defend Our Democracy” open letter newspaper ad in the Lincoln Journal-Star, with the names of 1,072 Lincoln-area public endorsers jointly calling on our members of Congress to defend our democracy. A similar half-page ad with approximately 200 signatues was published in the Scottsbluff and Omaha papers;

  • Recruited an additional 700 folks who have publicly endorsed the “Defend Our Democracy” open letter since the original newspaper ad cut-off date,  This makes a current total of over 1,900 folks who have now publicly lent their names to our “Defend Our Democracy” campaign and are listed on our website;

  • Published two op-ed pieces in the Journal-Star and one in the Scottsbluff paper;

  • Developed a working/collaborative relationship with other Lincoln-based pro-democracy groups (e. g. Indivisible Nebraska-Lincoln, 50501 Lincoln, Taco Tuesday Familia, etc.) and with the Scottsbluff/Panhandle group (Stand Up Greater Nebraska);

  • Began an outreach/coordination campaign with other pro-democracy groups across Nebraska to determine the interest in a coordinated statewide campaign, with initial outreach to Scottsbluff, Kearney, and Grand Island groups

  • Implemented a yard signs campaign as a way to follow-up on the newspaper ads and to heighten the visibility of the “Defend our Democracy & Constitution” campaign.  Initial printing and distribution across the state of over 350 yard signs.

  • In-person visit with Sen. Fischer and Rickett’s staff to discuss the concerns of the 1,900 folks who have endorsed the “Defend Our Democracy” open letter and have requested a visit Rep. Flood.