[luau] NEWS: GeekPAC seeking Volunteers and Donations

[Warren Togami]

This is a follow-up about GeekPAC mentioned a few days ago.  This is OUR
CHANCE to make a strong political action group that represents us in
Washington D.C.  The big corporations have the money and lobbyists to
influence legislators.  This group exists to organize our political side
and perhaps eventually lobby too.

I personally plan on donating several hundred dollars when they begin to
accept donations.  Please join me with your backing so that this can
stand a chance of becoming a strong national political group.

http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/04/15/1951200.shtml
by Grant Gross
The American Open Technology Consortium, the geek lobbying organization
that began getting media attention last week, has raised nearly $30,000
in pledges without really asking for them yet, and organizers are
thinking about splitting the group in two comply with U.S. political
action committee rules.

 Organizer Jeff Gerhardt, host of the Linux Show, has revised the
group's position statement since news of the AOTC's pending launch was
first reported on NewsForge April 8. The goal of the AOTC itself, which
organizers hope to create as a charitable organization, would to educate
the public and politicians about issues near and dear to Open Source
advocates and Internet users at large. The second organization, the
proposed GeekPAC, would be a more traditional political action
committee, with its focus on directly impacting the outcome of elections
and legislation. GeekPAC wouldn't accept corporate donations, while AOTC
would.

 "So far, in conversations with lawyers, the dual organization structure
proposed in the latest proposed Position Statement ... has passed basic
legal muster," Gerhardt says. "So we are now interviewing lawyers for
the task of creating documentation on the PAC."

 Also announced today was the group's first board member, veteran Open
Source advocate Eric Raymond, with more to follow in the coming weeks.
"We are announcing Eric first, because he is helping craft the language
of our documents, and I think people ought to know that we are not doing
this alone," Gerhardt says. "We are using some of the best geek minds in
the world. "

 In the meantime, AOTC would use more help to get launched, Gerhardt
says. Although "we have had several hundred people pledge in spirit both
volunteer sweat equity and cash" once the group launches, to the tune of
nearly $30,000, an angel investor would help the group take its first
steps, he says.

 "The problem is, when we pick the law firm, we need seed money to get
the process in motion," he writes in an email to a couple of Web
journalists today. "It will be way 'cleaner' if we can find an angel do
donate $5,000 to $10,000 to get the ball rolling. It will be way easier
to do this (legally), by getting all the money from a single source,
rather than by pushing the edge of the legal envelope, starting to do a
general fund raiser BEFORE the papers are filed. So guys, the bottom
line is: we need an angel. If you know of any dot com millionaires that
have not been wiped out yet -- or any other folks whose largesse might
be attracted to our mission here, please spread the word."

 Organizers Gerhardt and Doc Searls of Linux Journal are also looking
for two teams of volunteer Web developers to build sites for AOTC.info
and GeekPac.org, both of which Gerhardt hopes to launch this week.
Gerhardt and Searls are looking for developers at the moment, artists
later.

 "Although the AOTC site IS NOT going to be a news portal, we are
looking for people who have worked on a portal or who understand how to
harvest from other sites," Gerhardt says. "We need to integrate stuff
from at least four other sites into this site, and it is likely that
list of source sites will grow. "For the GeekPAC site we are looking for
people who know CGI or JAVA (Tom Cat available) and have at least a clue
about MySQL database," he adds. "We are going to create a very elaborate
'score card' system for tracking house and senate members and issuing
them a 'Report Card.' From that report card we will be integrating a
payment system to donate moneys directly to campaign funds. We are going
to call this system 'GeekPAC Incentive Bucks.' "

 AOTC organizers are also working on further documents that "discuss not
just what we are against, but what we are for and how we propose to do
what we suggest," Gerhardt says. "Rather than just whine, we need to
provide realistic alternatives that everyone can live with -- or we will
lose."

 Gerhardt says such position statements are necessary because AOTC is
already being criticized as anti-business in some media, with its goals
including a consumer-friendly Microsoft antitrust settlement and limits
on corporate control of the Internet. "We do NOT want people to think we
are anti-business or anti-private property," he says. "We are far from
it. It is just coming up with solutions that provide a safety net for
everyone, not just a corporate welfare program."