Dear Susan:
I have five children. Sometimes I try to explain to them what it was like to live in America in the Sixties and Seventies. When the federal government listened in on phone conversations of civil rights leaders, and bugged their homes. When the President of the United States and his henchmen plotted to kill a reporter, Jack Anderson. When one major party burglarized the headquarters of the other major party. When the National Guard shot and killed college students. When rioting prisoners were picked off and killed by marksmen with rifle scopes.
There is one candidate for Congress this year who knows all about that. Because the FBI had a file on him. When he was 14 years old.
Norman Solomon is running for Congress in California. He is running in the very blue district now represented by Lynn Woolsey, former head of the House Progressive Caucus. He needs to win the primary election, on June 5.
Show your support for Norman Solomon by clicking here.
Here is how Solomon describes how it came about that the FBI opened a file on him when he was 14:
"I'd heard that some people were protesting at an all-white apartment complex close by, near the D.C. border, named Summit Hills. I was just a kid, but I'd figured out that segregation was wrong. So I picked up a sign, and joined the picket line."
And that, ladies and gentleman, was enough in 1966 to label you a "subversive," and put you under FBI surveillance.
But what's important now is that Norman Solomon showed what he was made of, at the age of 14.
Support someone who doesn't just talk the talk, but someone who walks the walk. Someone who has been walking in picket lines and protest marches for the past 46 years. Someone whom J. Edgar Hoover wouldn't like at all. Someone named Norman Solomon.
A lot of people who have been working in progressive causes for almost half a century are too tired, too burnt out, to run for Congress. But not Norman Solomon. He still has the energy, and the drive, and the conscience, to make a difference in Congress.
But Norman Solomon faces a very tough primary two weeks from tomorrow, and he needs your help. Who should represent San Francisco in Congress, Norman Solomon, or some useless, empty suit? It's up to you.
Let's help a lifelong progressive make it to Congress, where he can do good things for all of us. Click here, and click now.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
P.S. Almost 2,000 of us rallied to the cause last week, and contributed to our "Fight Back" fund to help us respond to the Chamber of Commerce's $324,000 blitzkrieg of lying attack ads. To those who contributed, thank you. To those who didn't, forgive me for asking, but what are you waiting for? "The time is always right to do what is right."
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