Hope you're well! This is David Oks, former campaign manager of the Gravel 2020 campaign. I'm emailing today about three things: the Institute,

Hello,

Hope you're well! This is David Oks, former campaign manager of the Gravel 2020 campaign. I'm emailing today about three things: the Institute, merchandise, and Common Defense.

At the moment, we're busy planning and doing footwork for the Gravel Institute. We just came back from meeting Mike in California. We're happy to say that he's doing great (he'll be finishing his book shortly). We all agreed on the form that the Institute will take; we'll be launching with a video from Mike. We don't want to spoil it but we think you'll be very excited.

We're aiming to launch the Institute sometime in December or January. In the time between then and now, we'll be focusing on ensuring all merchandise orders have been fulfilled (we've been seeing tweets with photos of buttons, shirts, etc.—please keep them coming!). If your merch order has not yet arrived, please email [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Merch%20order) and I'll deal with it. (If you've already sent an email and there hasn't been a reply - our apologies, we get a huge volume of emails. Send another one and we'll reply. I now have someone else who reads many of my emails, and he's much better at it than me.)

Finally, since we want to use this email list to promote organizations that we think are important in building progressive infrastructure, we want to direct you to Common Defense. Common Defense is a grassroots group of progressive and leftist veterans who focus on ending forever wars abroad. They've been remarkably productive at holding candidates and incumbent members of Congress accountable for destructive U.S. interventions in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and dozens of other countries around the world. You may be familiar with their "End the Forever War" pledge, which Bernie, AOC, Yang, and others have signed.

Notably, they managed to confront Rep. Dan Crenshaw on his support for Donald Trump. The video is remarkable. ([link removed]) They also train veterans to be organizers. From an article in The Intercept about the group:

[It's] lobbying campaign is possibly the first of its kind since January 2007 — when new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate were sworn in. More than 100,000 people marched on the National Mall demanding an end to the Iraq War, and the day after, hundreds of constituents met with elected officials, demanding they join the “Out of Iraq” caucus, among other things.

But the effort by Common Defense is unique in that it is driven almost exclusively by veterans and focuses on global conflicts broadly, rather than one specific war. ... Common Defense has translated its work into congressional advocacy by seeking to end Trump’s ban on transgender service members, advocating for support for survivors of sexual assault in the military, and advocating for the demilitarization of the border, among other things.

Frankly, given the number of requests we've received from charity groups and political campaigns to use our email list to their advantage, it is hard to select just one deserving one. (We're also trying not to annoy you with too many emails.) Gradually we'll get to them all. But we're focusing on Common Defense right now since it's such a splendidly deserving organization, the exact type of anti-war organizing we need. It's not enough to show up when war seems imminent; the slow work of organizing, year after year of labor, is crucial.
If you are yourself a military veteran, a family member of a veteran, or just want to support Common Defense’s cause, sign up here to support their "End the Forever War" pledge. ([link removed])

And, if you have some money you can spare, a donation is of course helpful. I've donated $27 to Common Defense; it really was the very least I could do.

Please consider donating to Common Defense to support their anti-war, justice-driven mission. ([link removed])
Yours,

David Oks
@davideoks ([link removed])

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