What the Zuck? Tell Mark Zuckerberg to pull his dirty ads!
From Russ Feingold's "Progressives United" . . .
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg recently helped found a dark-money political group to push for immigration reform, but then the group started running ads favoring the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and drilling for oil in ANWR. Why?
Zuckerberg and his fellow corporate heavies want to boost senators they think are helping them on immigration. They think running these ads will help their allies, so all other concerns fly out the window.
It's another clumsy example of why ultra-wealthy individual and corporate interests shouldn't be able to buy influence in our democracy.
But there's something unusual about this particular example: If you have a Facebook account, you have leverage over Mr. Zuckerberg.
That's why we've joined forces with other progressive groups to build opposition on Facebook itself.
[link:http://www.facebook.com/heyzuck|Go to Facebook and 'like' our new "Hey Zuckerberg: Pull your dirty ads" joint page to show Mark Zuckerberg your opposition to his dark-money ads.
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As Progressives United, we're not stopping here. Until this is resolved, we will be discontinuing all our paid ads on Facebook.
Progressive partners like the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, 350.org, Presente.org, CREDO Action, and MoveOn.org will be joining us. We won't sit by while our advertising dollars go to fund a Washington power play completely at odds with our values.
Mr. Zuckerberg and his friends have every right to talk about the benefits of comprehensive immigration reform to the technology industry. But this back-door strategy does nothing but feed public distrust.
It's a shame, because Facebook has emerged as one of the true avenues for grassroots democracy.
But like any powerful grassroots platform, we don't need to spend money to make an impact there. We can unite instead, and take this fight right into the very house that Mark Zuckerberg built: Facebook.
[link:http://www.facebook.com/heyzuck|Send a message to Mark Zuckerberg through his own creation: Facebook. 'Like' our new page telling him to pull his regressive dark-money ads today.
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Thank you for uniting as a progressive,
Russ Feingold
Founder
Progressives United
