May 8 deadline approaching; five things you can do today

The May 8 deadline for filing comments with DHS is fast approaching -- see here for why this is so important. With that in mind, here are five things you can do today to help:

1. File comments, if you haven't already.
2. Tell your friends and family, and ask them to file comments. Don't underestimate the power of personal connections; if we each convince five people to file comments, that will make a huge difference.
3. Get the word out! Email and post wherever you think it's relevant, and make sure to tell people how to file comments and remind them of the deadline.
4. Ask your state legislators to file comments.
   
5. Tell the media to cover the Real ID rebellion

jon

43 organizations announce campaign to solicit comments!

Today forty-three organizations representing transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, transgender people, and immigrants have joined to launch a national campaign to solicit public comments on Real ID.

Our media release is up on the Privacy Activism site, and the Privacy Coalition site is tracking the announcements of all the groups involved -- as well as providing links to our instructions for filing comments, along with EFF's and the ACLU's. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"The breadth and diversity of the opposition is real testimony to how harmful Real ID is to so many different communities," said Deborah Pierce, Executive Director of PrivacyActivism.org and one of the founders of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "By getting people and groups who are usually excluded from the debate involved at the grassroots level, we can stop Real ID."

"The Real ID Act of 2005 turns our state driver's licenses into a national ID card, costs over $20 billion dollars, infringes privacy, and imposes major burdens on taxpayers, anybody renewing a driver's license, seniors, immigrants, transgender people, and state governments -- while doing nothing to protect against terrorism," said privacy activist Jon Pincus, another founder of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "This commenting process is a great chance for the American people to tell DHS and Congress the Real ID Act is a bad law that needs to be repealed."

The timing of this announcement, right before the webcast, is perfect ... it should give a lot of momentum to the last week's drive for comments.

So please, forward broadly!

Deborah

PS: see the comments for the list of groups who are initially joining -- and we're expeecting more!