Blue America has teamed up with Jamie Raskin’s office to give away a rare, collectible, mint-condition, RIAA-certified Barenaked Ladies gold record award for Born On A Pirate Ship. We’ll tell you how to win it in a moment. Or, if you're in a rush... just go here.
First they want to tell you a little something about Jamie Raskin’s celebrated Democracy Summer project, which this year trained and deployed more than 1,000 high school and college students to participate as Democracy Summer Fellows in critical Democratic campaigns in 44 states across America.
Every year, Democracy Summer fellows not only canvass neighborhoods, knock on doors, register voters, and engage in digital organizing, but participate in seminars on the historical struggles for democracy and freedom in America and on the contemporary threats we face to strong democracy and civic freedom. They learn from leading policy experts, academics, union organizers and Democratic officials, who explain GOP voter suppression tactics, right-wing gerrymandering of state and federal legislative districts, right-wing judicial activism and the serious ethics and legitimacy crisis on the Supreme Court, the reactionary dynamics of the filibuster, the struggle for a national popular vote for president along with Ranked Choice Voting and campaign finance reform, and the statehood drives among large disenfranchised communities in our country, including Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Founded by Raskin in 2006, when he ran for the state Senate, as a way to involve his own three children and dozen nieces and nephews in his campaign, Democracy Summer has educated, energized and inspired thousands of young Americans who are ready to become the next generation of Democratic organizers and leaders.
We propose to use the Born On A Pirate Ship gold record as a means to raise funds for Democracy Summer. Contribute any amount to Democracy Summer on this ActBlue page and you get a chance to win the framed BNL gold award.
Reminder for non-BNL fans: They recorded Born On A Pirate Ship in 1995, before the band had broken through in the U.S. “The Old Apartment,” was the first of their singles to get significant American radio play, with a video directed by Jason Priestly. Another song from the album, “Shoe Box,” was part of the Friends soundtrack. After the big BNL breakthrough album Stunt went multiplatinum, new fans found Born On A Pirate Ship and it started selling and went gold in 2000. The gold record award is extremely rare because only a small handful were ever made. This one was awarded to Blue America co-founder and then-Reprise Records president Howie Klein who donated it to this Democracy Summer 2024 promotion.
We’re not trying to embarrass Rep. Raskin, but he’s probably the most brilliant member of Congress. He’s also one of the most inspiring. Last month he helped define the Democratic Party for his social media followers: “We Democrats,” he wrote, “are the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. They saw fascists marching down the boulevards of Europe and did not see very fine people on both sides of the street— they knew America must stand strong on the side of democracy and freedom.”
It didn’t end there. “We are the party of the women’s movement and the Equal Rights Amendment and comprehensive health care and freedom to make your own choices regardless of what the right-wing theocrats tell you to do. We are the party of Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act because we believe healthcare is a right of all the people and not a luxury good for the wealthy. We are the party of the labor movement and the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. We are the party of the environmental movement and we are the party of science, facts and data— not fake news, conspiracy theory and disinformation.”
Enough? Nope. “We’re the party that passed the most sweeping climate change legislation in American history. We’re the party that ended Big Pharma’s power to set sky-high drug prices for our people on Medicare without negotiating with the government. And we’re the party that says billionaire corporations must pay their taxes too. So while Lincoln’s party of ‘liberty and Union’ becomes Trump’s cult of chaos and disunion, Democrats will continue fighting hard to make democracy deliver for the American people, just as we always have.”
The contest ends on Sunday night, October 20 at 9 PM (Pacific Time). If you want to win but don’t want to contribute online, rush a check made out to Blue America PAC to PO Box 207201, Los Angeles, CA 90027. And, if you want to try to win but times are too tough to contribute, just send a post card to that same PO Box and let us know you want to enter too.
The official, FEC-madated version of the rules are long and boring but if you're a masochist with no life you can read them here.
Again, this is where you can enter for the random drawing: Barenaked Ladies Democracy Summer.
