The one vital function that lead to the successful protests on December 12th and January 6th was spreading the word. While not everyone will show up for anything, the infringement of our voting rights that occurred in the 2004 fall election is an issue that threatens every citizen's rights and our country's future as a freedom-loving democracy.

Word-of-mouth has long been known as the best form of advertising. The Internet extends the reach of word-of-mouth exponentially. By web site, email, instant messaging, bloging, posting to message boards and user-groups, 2/3rds of the country can be reached within days.

The primary strategy for communicating the December 12th protest relies on citizens utilizing the potential of the Internet to communicate and rally Americans to come to the defense of one of their most basic and most important rights: the right to choose our leaders. We have developed a method to leverage Internet word-of-mouth based on an old idea: chain letters. We call this tool Chain-Mail©.

When you combine the reach and speed of the Internet with millions of people's personal email address books, you have an awesome tool that can reach most of America with a common message in a very short time frame. This is the fundamental reality upon which Chain-Mail-News is based, and the one that will get the word out to most Americans about the December 12th protest.

A new "word-of-mouth" paradigm, Chain-Mail© utilizes each person forwarding Chain-Mail only to people known to the sender or who explicitly enroll to receive Chain-Mails. Because of this, Chain-Mail can't be considered "spam".

Chain-Mail requires only a few rules to function effectively:

While these rules are not legally binding, they are bound by honor. We rely on chain participants to notify us of violations to the spirit of Chain-Mail.

Chain-Mail chainers are our first-tier of all chain-mails. Chainers help administer chains and have access to participate in researching, recommending (and perhaps authoring) Chain-Mail-News content.

Links participate in the chains as either forwarders and recipients(Senders and Enders). Senders agree to the 5 Golden Rules and forward Chain-Mail but prefer not to participate further. Enders are passive recipients of the News in Chain-Mail-News. "Missing Links' are those who drop out or never receive any Chain-Mails.

Chain-Mail requires only a small amount of preparation on the part of Chainers and Senders:

1. Sign up to receive Chain-Mail-News
2. Make a Chain-Mail List containing the email addresses of people you personally know. This can be done in notepad and most email programs.

That's it. You are ready to go.

Chain-Mail-News is our secret weapon. With it, we can break the media wall of minimalism, spread the word about the plight of our voting system, and call on all citizens to converge on their State Capitals and the Federal Capital on December 12th in protest of the loss of our voice.

To enroll in a Chain-Mail chain, you first provide your name, state, and email address. Then you select your level of participation: chainer, sender, or ender:

Chainers agree to:

• Abide by the 5 Golden Rules of Chain-Mail
• Accept enrollments from this site
• Keep all enrollment information confidential
• Use enrollments solely for the purpose of disseminating Chain-Mail-News
• Maintain their Chain-Mail Lists, adding and removing members as requested
• Not alter Chain-Mail-News content or subject lines, only adding a personal message if they wish
• Forward Chain-Mail-News to their chains reliably
• Notify their chain and return any Chain-Mail listings we provided them to us should they cancel or change their participation

Senders agree to:

• Abide by the 5 Golden Rules of Chain-Mail
• Not alter Chain-Mail-News content or subject lines, only adding a personal message if they wish
• Forward Chain-Mail-News and keep their chains active
• Notify their Sender and Chain should they cancel or change their participation, providing a sign-up link to their Chain in the personal message section of last
  Chain-Mail they forward

Senders agree to join a chain by having their sign-up information distributed to a top-level chainer so they may receive Chain-Mail-News.

All enrollments in Chain-Mail-News will expire on December 31st (at which point we will purge our database).

To cancel your participation in a chain, simply reply to a Chain-Mail with Unsubscribe in the subject line. If you are a sender, at the time you you cancel, please take the courtesy of forwarding notice to your chain with our email address included.

Chain-Mail-News will continue as a free service disseminating important news and information not found in major media outlets. You will be provided with an opportunity to renew your membership after December 12th.

Chain-Mail-News adheres to commonly accepted standards of decency. While we have no control over personal messages added to any Chain-Mail, we expect all participants to adhere to common decency and to remove any added personal content that violates those standards before forwarding.

In some cases, forwarding your first Chain-Mail may take some work, depending on the email software you use. You may be forced to enter email addresses one at a time into the BCC field of your sending email. Do not despair. I will show you how to avoid this in the future.

Send, THEN Read. The reason? So you don't second guess how any one Chain-Mail will be received by those you are sending it to (your 'Links'). What any one person thinks of Chain-Mail content has nothing to do with who sent it to them and poorly serves the links down-chain from you.

1. Open the Chain-Mail-News you just received.
2. Select [Forward] from your email program's menu.
3. In the email to be forwarded, highlight and delete any personal message at the top and any signature at the bottom. Likewise, highlight and delete the original email information (consider this information nobody's business except yours).
4. Now, enter any personal message at the top (optional), and your recognizable personal email sign-off (signature) at the very bottom (required). Notice, there are always two lines delineating the body of Chain-Mail text from personalized text. STAY OUTSIDE THE LINES!
5. Enter the email addresses from your Chain-Mail List into BCC: fields of your email program's email address block. Depending on your email software, you may have to cut and paste each email address separately (this is the hard work!).
6. Now, enter the Send to: email address as: chainmailnewscounts@51capitalmarch.com (When these emails arrive, we do no read them, we just count them. This allows us to count the chain)

1. Open the Sent folder in your email program
2. Locate the first Chain-Mail you sent and open it. Highlight the subject line and delete its contents. Also, except for your signature, highlight the entire contents of the email and delete it.
3. Save the now near-empty email as a template or a draft. You now have a reusable Chain-Mail blank with all of the BCC email addresses in place ready to go.

1. With the next Chain-Mail you receive, open it, highlight just the Chain-Mail-News text (be sure to include the lines!). Type [CTRL-C] to copy the text. Be sure to avoid any personal information at the top (look for the line!).
2. Next, open the template or draft you saved and paste [CTRL-V] the new Chain-Mail content into the body of the email. Now, repeat cutting and pasting the Subject line. Send your Chain-Mail, you're finished. Time to read