You know how on FB you get connected with a colleague and stay connected for years and years though the last time you saw them Bush was president and you had a big argument about strategy that he won because he was a big, la-di-dah consultant.

Yeah, that. Every year I am reminded of that argument.

I feel strongly about using short-term strategies that promise more success today, but create impediments for long-term success.

The issue was how we would fight the next round of tax cuts proposed by Bush. The consultants said talking about cuts to first responders polled best. The ED of my organization and I argued that since our goal is fewer police, that messaging around first responders impeded our long term goal to reduce over-policing. Well, they officially won the argument but

we came up with a campaign so clever they ended up adopting ours. We had members dress up as CEOs with signage identifying them by name of some of the CEOs who would directly benefit, how much they would get, and how many people they laid off. We had them panhandle at the unemployment office.

Bush had proposed eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax and refunding it retroactively back to its passage in 1986. Every penny folks who paid the AMT would get years of taxes refunded. The AMT is the tax assessed on wealthy people who wouldn't pay any income tax because of tax code

Anyway, we stopped the tax cut and didn't mention first responders once. And the other orgs in our national network used our actions as well.