Grassroots Leadership @Rescue Michigan"

A Grassroots Leadership Lecture on a critical and often-overlooked topic: How to hold meetings that engage your members and lead to effective political outcomes. A lot of groups out there are really just spinning their wheels. Watch this video and see whether your group meets these criteria of successful meetings.

Here's A Resolution Calling For Senator McBroom's Resignation

by Adam de Angeli Posted July 9, 2021

The Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, chaired by Senator Ed McBroom, recently put out a "Report on the November 2020 Election" which among other things called for partisan lunatic Attorney General Dana Nessel to investigate "those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends" in clear reference to attorney Matthew DePerno, whom the report referenced eight times.

Nessel has taken up the offer and now abuses her office with the support of the Senate Oversight Committee.

Rescue Michigan's Adam de Angeli and Shane Trejo discuss the background of the scandal and how grassroots conservatives should respond:

And here's some resolution language discussed in the video that you are free to use:

WHEREAS, American society is structured upon a foundation of God-given, fundamental human rights enshrined and protected by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Michigan; and

WHEREAS, Among those foundational rights are the right to free speech and the right to counsel. The right of free speech is so fundamental that it is protected by the very First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; the right to counsel is found in the Sixth Amendment and in all legal matters in Michigan in Article I, Section 13 of the State Constitution; and

WHEREAS, The foundational right to free speech was grievously damaged by the 2021 sham impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. In that false impeachment, the President was charged with "incitement of insurrection," a non-existent crime, based on the President calling on supporters to peacefully demonstrate at the Capitol. The President's statements contained no incitement to any illegal activity, and no court of law could possibly find otherwise. Nevertheless, the false impeachment was supported unanimously by Democrat members of Congress, joined by 17 disgraceful Republicans. This politically motivated sham trial legitimized forthcoming assaults on the First Amendment rights of all Americans; and

WHEREAS, The foundational right to counsel was grievously damaged by politically motivated sham complaints filed against attorneys affiliated with President Donald J. Trump's campaign. These grievances led to the "preliminary, emergency" suspension of the law license of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has not been given a trial or even an evidentiary hearing. More importantly, meritless complaints calling for disbarment were filed against Michigan attorneys Scott Hagerstrom, Stefanie Junttila, and Greg Rohl by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson; and

WHEREAS, The Michigan Senate Oversight Committee Report on the November 2020 Election, adopted by Senators Ed McBroom, Lana Theis, and John Bizon, despite conceding on Page 24 that the Michigan Court of Claims found that the manner in which absentee ballots – comprising a majority of all ballots cast in that election – were processed in an illegal manner, concluded that "citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan"; and

WHEREAS, The Report referenced attorney Matt DePerno by name no less than eight times in its effort to refute allegations made by DePerno and, clearly in reference to DePerno, "strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain"; and

WHEREAS, The Report alleges no facts to support its assertion that DePerno or anyone else pushed any theory "for their own personal gain"; and

WHEREAS, It would be grossly inappropriate under any circumstances for a report prepared by a committee of the Legislature to single out a constituent resident of Michigan for derision; and

WHEREAS, The Report did not stop there, but continued to recommend "the attorney general consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends," another clear reference to DePerno; and

WHEREAS, Attorney General Dana Nessel campaigned for office on a bad-faith promise to "sue the Trump Administration all day, every day," and carried out on this promise, using her office for partisan political attacks, including those related to the 2020 election. These attacks included seeking the disbarment of President Trump's attorneys and sending legal threats to journalists exposing "DetroitLeaks" -- a recording of Detroit election officials instructing poll workers to abuse social distancing guidelines to intentionally impede poll challengers. Attorney General Dana Nessel thereby sought to suppress facts exposing a conspiracy to commit serial felonies under MCL 168.734; and

WHEREAS, It is unconscionable that a report prepared by the Legislature would exhort a partisan attorney general with a history of abusing her office for partisan political purposes to investigate and harass a Michigan resident based on wholly unsupported accusations; and

WHEREAS, Attorney General Dana Nessel has agreed to carry out a harassment campaign under false color of an investigation, expressly citing the Oversight Committee's request;

WHEREAS, Senator Ed McBroom cannot be considered a neutral party with respect to DePerno. DePerno was the attorney of record in a lawsuit against the Michigan House of Representatives and then-Representative McBroom. Additionally, at the time the suit was filed, Senators Lana Theis and John Bizon were also members of the House of Representatives; and

WHEREAS, Senator McBroom opted not to recuse himself, not to refrain from personal attacks against personal enemies, and not even to disclose his past adversarial relationship to DePerno; and

WHEREAS, In the broader context of ongoing attacks against the American people’s right to free speech and the right to counsel, the Report bolsters and encourages these attacks in a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence all citizens exposing the misconduct of election officials, challenging the results of the election, and advocating for legal and policy remedies; and

WHEREAS, This Committee finds the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee Report on the November 2020 Election to be the product of gross official misconduct. It is improper that the report isolates an individual to make unsupported allegations that the individual makes claims for personal profit, unconscionable that the report calls upon the Attorney General to harass that individual based on said unsupported allegation, and a compounding breach of ethics for Committee members to fail to disclose their past adversarial legal relationship to the target of these allegations; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, This Committee calls for the resignation of the author of the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee Report on the November 2020 Election: Senator Ed McBroom; and be it further

RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to our Republican representatives and senators in the Michigan Legislature, to the Michigan Republican Party, and to local news media.

The Real Nature of Politics and Politicians

by Adam de Angeli Posted July 2, 2021

Adam from Rescue Michigan interviewed Dan Thiele (right) and Tony DeMott (center) of the Foundation for Applied Conservative Leadership on the Real Nature of Politics and Politicians.

Unfortunately there were some audio issues but they were cured a few minutes in.

Upcoming FACL Schools:
Grassroots Leadership, Gaylord, July 17
Grassroots Leadership, West Bloomfield, July 24
Campaign Management, Brighton, August 21
Request Your Own

Big Lies In Politics: The Ineffective Form Letter

by Adam de Angeli Posted June 11, 2021

In our latest members' email, we encouraged members to sign and send a letter to a state representative encouraging her committee to take up our election integrity legislation.

I received this response from a member:

I'm told that sending form letters is not as effective as doing your own... In the past, these forms are just tossed out... It seems the Pols prefer your own words.... And, it is a form of spam. So, just copy, paste, reword your own way and send off.

She has a kind heart, and I know where she's coming from.

But this is incorrect.

And it's actually one of the big myths in politics, perpetuated by the politicians themselves.

Notice how it benefits politicians for people to think they don't care about "form letters." Many people don't have the time to write a personal letter. Some people aren't confident in their mastery of an issue, or their writing skills in general.

If every constituent had to write a personal letter, politicians would get fewer letters. They like it that way. They don't want to be troubled to respond. They don't want to be "pressured" by the will of their constituents. They want to be on voters' minds as little as possible.

Writing a letter to a politician isn't about changing their minds or pulling their heartstrings. If a politician isn't already motivated to do the right thing, it isn't because he (or she) doesn't know it's the right thing.

Politicians are, with few exceptions, motivated by their own ambitions. Those in tough districts are desperate for re-election. Those who aren't are desperate to make sure they maintain (or reclaim) the majority, and want to lead their caucus or run for higher office.

When a politician receives a "form letter" from 100 constituents, how does that compare to 100 personal letters on the same issue?

It's exactly the same. It's 100 concerned constituents.

Not only does it not matter whether it was a personal letter or a "form letter" -- the form letter is actually more powerful.

Why?

Because the "form letter" sent by lots of people is lots of people, with an organization behind them.

An organization with a list.

An organization that might contact that list again, should the politician do the wrong thing.

When politicians get letters from angry voters on any given issue, the most important question to them is: How many people are mad about this?

The "form letter" makes it easier to give them a truer figure.

Sign those petitions, folks. The politicians in Lansing are counting the signatures.

Arizona Parents Overthrow Mask Cult School Board

by Adam de Angeli Posted April 28, 2021

Stories like this warm my heart and renew my faith in America:

Hundreds of parents showed up to the Vail School Board meeting to demand the board make masks optional. The board didn't want to hear it so they walked out of the meeting before it even began. So the parents, under Robert's Rules of Order, voted in a new school board. Then, the new members voted to end the mask requirement in Vail Schools. The old school board members revealed exactly who they are and that includes GOP LD 10 Chairman, Chris King.

You can watch the full video of the meeting at the link above.

This is not the end of the story, of course. A legal battle will ensue. The cowardly school board members will not relinquish their titles without a fight. But the parents won't back down, either. They need to turn up in even greater numbers next time.

This is the power of people when they organize locally. Every local school board meeting should be like this.

In Rochester Hills, Michigan, the school board is attacking the parents who are exposing their misconduct. The parents are now working to recall four of its members. I hope they succeed. Recalls are extremely difficult in Michigan, but even if they don't get enough signatures, they can grow an organization around this and run candidates in the next cycle.

This is how a movement grows. Get people engaged, and get them involved in a worthwhile political fight.

Defending the rights of children is a very worthwhile fight.

Victory: Bureau of Elections Approves Unlock Signatures

by Adam de Angeli Posted April 20, 2021

It only took six months for the Bureau of Elections to verify 506 signatures:

Of the 506 signatures sampled, 434 or 86% were determined to be valid, the bureau said Monday. The result led the staff to estimate about 460,358 signatures of the total 538,345 submitted were valid. Unlock Michigan needed 340,047 signatures to obtain certification.

The Board of State Canvassers will take up the measure on Thursday, April 22.

The opposition group "Keep Michigan Safe" (Keep Whitmer Dictator would be an honest name) whined that the Bureau of Elections report ignored "90% of our many procedural and substantive challenges" and promised to "make our case to the Board of Canvassers and the courts to stop this ill-conceived and irresponsible petition drive."

Which reminds me: What ever happened to the Attorney General investigating the fake signatures that opposition operatives planted?

Next to boxes of valid petitions, a lone box sits off to the side...

It bears to photo of the left-wing operative that attempted to poison the Unlock Michigan campaign...

On September 28, 2020, sociopath Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that, as usual, her office would be opening a criminal investigation into an organization whose cause she disagrees with.

Unlock Michigan identified the operative that organized the hit job and, after delivering their 537,000 petitions to the Secretary of State, delivered the box of his signatures to the Attorney General.

And that was the last we heard of it.

I doubt we will ever hear about it again.

But it was my privilege to serve as Washtenaw County Coordinator for this great undertaking, and if nobody else leads the call for "Unlock Part 2," to end the governor's last remaining lifeline to dictatorship, the Health Code, count me in.

Rep. John Reilly On How His Grassroots Group Took Over the Township

by Adam de Angeli Posted April 12, 2021

State Representative John Reilly discusses how an ordinary Joe became a state representative. Before becoming State Rep, his local group took over their township board and put a stop to lots of bad policy.

And then they helped him become their representative for 90 thousand people in the state legislature.

It involved getting like-minded people together and knocking on some doors.

Rep. Reilly is the proof of the power that citizens can have when they organize locally.

Grassroots Leadership: An Introduction

by Adam de Angeli Posted April 4, 2021

This is a video version of my first Grassroots Leadership article, posted here.

If you're ready to get involved, be aware of these two major pitfalls.

Check out Rescue Michigan on Rumble.

The Most Powerful Form of Activism Is Knocking On Doors

by Adam de Angeli Posted March 24, 2021

Last night, the Washtenaw County Republican Party hosted Ken Matiyow, former campaign manager and legislative staffer for Jack Brandenburg, a former lawmaker who served for 14 years in the Michigan legislature – the fullest term possible under Michigan term limits.

Brandenburg, a Republican, was first elected to the House in a district that hadn't been represented by a Republican since 1942.

Consisting mostly of Saint Clair Shores, the district consistently elected and re-elected left-wing Democrat Sander Levin to Congress, from 1983 until his retirement in 2018, when he was replaced by his son.

Republicans seldom compete in "Democrat strongholds," but Jack Brandenburg was determined, and Ken Matiyow discovered the winning formula.

The major issue that year, according to conventional wisdom, was the Single Business Tax. Knocking on doors, Matiyow was giving the usual pitch, until one day shortly after the NAACP had its convention in Detroit. All of the candidates for governor – Jennifer Granholm, David Bonior, and James Blanchard – attended the event, and each pledged support for "reparations": government quite literally robbing citizens of their money to give to black people, ostensibly to atone for slavery, which was abolished in 1865.

It was probably nothing more than the usual identity-politics pandering that dominates left-wing politics, but Matiyow found it interesting enough that he asked for, and received, Brandenburg's permission to experiment with the issue in his door-to-door work.

The response was stunning: The first day he began discussing the topic with voters, he placed 30 Brandenburg signs in people's yards.

The Brandenburg campaign found a winning issue, and created a campaign piece on the topic. Brandenburg became the first Republican to win the district in 60 years.

There are two lessons here. The obvious lesson is that political consultants are poor judges of winning issues. Consultants routinely advise politicians to avoid the issue of immigration, despite the fact the huge majority of the public opposes it.

Consider the 2014 referendum in Oregon on Measure 88. Oregon is, by all accounts, a left-wing state. Yet when voters were asked to approve the measure to grant driver licenses to illegal aliens, voters rejected the proposal by 2 to 1.

Rejecting giving driver licenses to illegal aliens was more popular in Oregon than legalizing marijuana, the incumbent governor, and the incumbent senator.

Last year, California voters said no to "affirmative action," another proposal to grant special privileges to particular minorities over everyone else, despite the forces supporting the proposal outspending the opposition 14 to 1.

The very issues that the "experts" tell Republican politicians to avoid seem to be the very same issues that actually resonate with voters.

But the more important lesson is to the power of knocking on doors.

I have written about this before. Knocking on doors is critical to growing an organization. It's critical to recruiting candidates.

But here we see it's also critical for identifying the best issues to campaign on.

When you go out and talk to 30 voters or so, you get valuable insight into what issues really motivate people. You can test an issue out on a small number of people, and see what works.

You'll also likely identify like-minded people worth connecting with and inviting to meetings.

It really is incredibly effective, and often becomes fun once you get over the initial apprehension about doing it.

But as Ken Matiyow noted, too many conservatives are just too chicken to do it.

"We talk a good game at our own events," he noted, "But then we freeze up at the notion of going out and actually advocating for our beliefs with strangers."

This is why conservatives are losing in the long run. We allow the radical left to present their morally obscene ideas as perfectly normal, and ours as "hateful."

Knocking on doors is the best, and possibly the only, way to change this paradigm.

Matiyow made this important the media: all the media combined only reach a few million voters, in a nation of 128 million of them. The huge majority of people aren't watching the media.

But if every passionate patriot reached out to just a couple hundred people every few years, we would be winning everywhere.

He noted the incredible political shift that just happened in Ontario, Canada.

For 15 years, the socialist Ontario Liberal Party was the most powerful political party in the province. Prior to 2018 the party won every election since the beginning of the 21st century and governed the province for the previous 15 years.

In 2018, conservative leader Doug Ford ran a Trump-style populist campaign. The socialists lost all but 7 seats in the legislature. It was the worst defeat for a party in provincial history.

40% of Canada's population lives in Ontario. This defeat was the equivalent of New York, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota turning from Democrat to Republican in one election.

It can be done. Socialism, which is the true platform of the Democrat Party, is unpopular on its face when voters understand what policies it actually advocates, and disastrous in its practice.

We can win everything back in 2022.

If – and only if – we find the resolve to get out and knock on doors.