I look at all this and think one thing: what fools we were not to start doing this earlier. We complain about the zombie box (slang for television) and propaganda, but it’s actually quite clear what needs to be done about it.
Our campaigning machine is gradually getting up to speed. As I already wrote, it will operate in the most organizationally difficult, but also potentially the most powerful way: through volunteers. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly willing to spend a little of their time to counter the hellish frenzy of the zombie box (slang for television) with a few words of truth spoken in person. To a neighbor, a coworker, or just a passerby. Already now, there are more than ten thousand people in our volunteer groups ready to work in the election campaign. http://vk.com/teamnavalny https://www.facebook.com/teamnavalny http://instagram.com/teamnavalny http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/group/52873526575342 https://twitter.com/teamnavalny http://email.navalny.ru/h/i/610F2DC5FF1DA7E9 We need your contribution too. Here’s how you can make it: 1. The most important contribution anyone can make is campaigning itself. In other words, your concrete actions to persuade another person. We need that more than anything else. More than money, organizational resources, transportation, or cheerful little flags. No amount of money can buy people who sincerely say what they think. People who stand by a campaign cube because they want to campaign and believe it’s the right thing to do. Leonid Volkov, the campaign manager, wrote a post about campaign financing and the main areas of outreach work—give it a read. Among the announced areas of field work: - street outreach (campaign cubes, one-person pickets, stickers...) - cars (campaigning in traffic jams, stickers, and other formats aimed at drivers...) - apartments (door-to-door canvassing, phone calls, and other forms of contact with city residents in their own environment...) - metro (we have several ideas about this) - internet (social media, direct messaging...) - special actions. Right now we’re setting up the key area: “street outreach.” All of this is very complicated work—there are hundreds of volunteers, with different skills and different amounts of free time. It often happened that someone would come to headquarters saying, “I’m ready to help, give me something to do,” and there was no work. Or no work matching their qualifications. For example, there was a funny situation when Volkov came to the Volunteer Headquarters and found an acquaintance there—a hedge fund manager—folding leaflets. The guy came in and said: give me something to do. So they told him: right now we need leaflets folded. So that’s what he did. He seems to have been quite pleased with it, actually. Still, we are learning, improving, and getting better. Not that long ago, putting up three or four campaign cubes in central Moscow was HELL—manual control and the entire headquarters straining to make it happen. Congratulations to the whole team: this weekend we had twenty campaign cubes up each day. Not only, and not even mainly, in the center, but also in wonderful places like Zyuzino, Molodyozhnaya, Lyublino, and so on. Here is the table from the campaign headquarters’ Situation Center for yesterday:
All of this is already working without the chaos and nerve-racking strain of manual control. With glitches, yes, but as a system.
Through these campaign cubes, together we will make several million “campaign contacts” with Muscovites.
We will keep improving our logistics and management. We really need you to help campaign. To make things convenient, we created an interactive map where you can see where campaign cubes are planned.
http://cube.navalny.ru/ The map doesn’t just show where the cubes are and how many there are—you can also use it to sign up for a cube through your social media account. Want to set up a campaign cube in your neighborhood with your friends? Here’s the link to register as an organizer. Want to set up a cube in your neighborhood, but don’t have friends to campaign with? Sign up through the link and we’ll find 5–10 people for your campaign cube. Right now, organizers are the most in-demand people of all—become one. You’ve always wanted to be in charge of a cube, haven’t you? Want to, but feel nervous and don’t know what to do? We run training sessions for beginner cube volunteers. Every day at 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. at headquarters (22 Lyalin Lane). Do you have a car and are ready to help deliver a cube to the campaign site and assemble it? Excellent—we really need you. Write to cube@navalny.ru as soon as possible. In fact, write to cube@navalny.ru with any questions about cubes. We hold special meetings so that people who have worked at the cubes can give feedback, and by election day we won’t just have campaign cubes—we’ll have SUPER-MEGA-CAMPAIGN CUBES.
In other words, you are not “working for headquarters”—you are headquarters. Our super-group, which worked a miracle during the collection of signatures from municipal deputies, has also joined the work of the Volunteer Headquarters in full force.
Campaigning is cool. Campaigning is useful. You will become part of real political work, not some disgusting fake put on by those pretending to be the authorities and by certain lapdog “opposition” figures.
A campaign cube will help you find like-minded people and new friends. A campaign cube will help you find love. Let me answer the obvious question right away: no, we do not drag attractive young women and men over to the cubes just to photograph them for publicity. They somehow appear on their own in unbelievable numbers. Of every age and gender. And yes: they are not only attractive, but smart and sincere too.
We really need those few hours of your time that you are willing to devote to our common struggle against the crooks and thieves stealing the future from all of us. Please be understanding and patient about the fact that not everything is working perfectly yet. We’ll keep fine-tuning and improving everything. Join us.
2. And, well... money, of course. We need that too, naturally. I’ll write about it many more times, but for now you can already read what it’s needed for and how to transfer it. Details of the special election account: Payment recipient: Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny Account number: 40810810938040000005 at OAO “Sberbank of Russia,” Moscow Bank, VSP No. 01827, Moscow, 17 Gazetny Lane, Building 2. BIC 044525225 Payment purpose (example): Voluntary donation to the election fund of candidate A.A. Navalny, Ivanov Pyotr Mikhailovich, passport 6501 123456, date of birth 10.11.1980, Tambov Region, Tambov, 32A-128 Montazhnikov St., citizen of the Russian Federation The donation collection system is trapped in super-idiotic legal constraints designed specifically to make fundraising difficult. Don’t be angry with us. Putin and Churov set it up that way. Here are general instructions on how to transfer money. Thanks in advance to everyone. Remember: every ruble you transfer to the campaign causes a tiny nervous tic in all these Zheleznyaks, Yarovayas, Rotenbergs, Sobyanins, and Putins. It reminds them that the end is inevitable. Your time. Your money. We need both. P.S. Sharing this post is very welcome. Surely someone out there wants to campaign with us but doesn’t know where to turn. And then—BAM—they see your link and understand everything.