Larry Lessig has mailed today to remember Aaron Swartz and to join a many-day walk through New Hampshire. Is anything planned in UK/Europe?
Seven years ago this January, Aaron Swartz visited me in Berlin to convince me to give up my work on intellectual property and take up the fight against corruption. Nothing sane would get done within IP — or anywhere else — he believed, until we released our political system from the stranglehold of moneyed interests and corporate influence. He convinced me.
On January 11, the anniversary of Aaron’s death, we will begin a 185-mile walk along the length of New Hampshire, to continue the fight that Aaron began. Along the way, we will recruit as many New Hampshirites as we can to the battle against corruption. We want every presidential candidate at every New Hampshire primary event to be asked just one question: “How will you fix the corruption in Washington?”
Aaron brought a contagious idealism to everything he did. That idealism inspired thousands to join the battle against SOPA and PIPA. But as he believed, it was the thousands — and not him — that won that fight. As he said in the last speech he gave, “We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom and threw themselves into it.”
His idealism continues in the work that the incredible Demand Progress community has done over the last few years. Now we need that idealism, and this community, to spread to the fight against corruption.
If you can walk, join us. Even for just a day, join us. If you can’t walk with us, then help us by spreading the word. Tell your New England friends about this insane idea. And if you don’t have any friends in the northeast, then you can pay the NE-Friendless Tax by chipping in whatever you can — from $10 to whatever.
Please do as Aaron convinced me to do 7 years ago: join this fight too. Two years ago, in the SOPA fight, you took on DC’s most powerful lobby, and beat it. If we can can recruit 10 times the support, we can take on the power of all DC lobbyists, and restore a democracy to this Republic.
See you on the road.
– Lessig
Demand Progress and Rootstrikers
PS — If you’d like to sponsor me on the walk, you can do that here.
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