Regular readers of this blog know of my great admiration and appreciation for the work of our NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. One of Bloomberg's signature issues has been gun safety. When you ask Mike about this issue, he tells you that after a few visits to the wives and children of NYC police officers who have been shot and killed on their job, you get pretty worked up about this issue. And worked up he is.
Bloomberg and many of the urban mayors around the country have created the Demand A Plan organization to fight for gun safety. It is currently the leading gun safety group in the US.
Many leaders in the Internet/tech industry have been working with Demand A Plan over the past few days to kick off a large and sustained social media and regular media campaign to pressure our leaders to do something about the gun safety problem in our country. I have been involved in this effort and I support its goals completely.
Here are a few things that are launching today:
1) A full page ad in the New York Times which I have signed personally
2) A viral social media campaign at the Demand A Plan website
3) Change your twitter avatar (I changed mine)
I will update this post with additional efforts that launch today. Like the PIPA/SOPA efforts last year, this effort is diverse, distributed, chaotic, and hopefully effective and powerful. I am not aware of everything that is going on right now. There is a lot of activity out there. But I will try to stay on top of it today and keep you all up to date as well.
In addition to our Mayor, I would like to thank Ken Lerer, Ron Conway, and Eric Hippeau for their excellent leadership of the tech sector's work on this issue in the past few days.
