An appeal from the TUSC national chairperson, Dave Nellist:
“Five hundred and sixty TUSC candidates for the local elections is a magnificent achievement; but unfortunately it fell short of the too-high requirement for a national election broadcast (although negotiations are still going on for a number of BBC regions).
“We need to find as many other ways as possible to use the short time between now and May 22nd to publicise TUSC’s electoral challenge. But, by and large, the establishment media restricts access to those signed up to the overlapping austerity agenda of the big parties – not to a working class alternative challenging that agenda.
“TUSC will hold a national press launch on Friday, May 9 in London, and press releases and letters to local papers can still produce results – see https://www.tusc.org.uk/16972/05-05-2014/more-local-news-coverage-for-tusc-but-bbc-downplays-council-elections
“And whilst there is no substitute for direct campaigning, leafleting and canvassing, one avenue which the TUSC steering committee believes may allow us to reach a wider audience is a more organised use of social media, for example by using a tool called ‘Thunderclap’.
“A Thunderclap asks people to sign up to allow their social media accounts to be used simultaneously to broadcast a message to potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
“In just 36 hours we have found 250 volunteers to get our Thunderclap ‘up and running’! When our message goes live on Monday May 12th we will already be reaching potentially 127,000 people via Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr!
“But this could rise quite quickly with a sustained and methodical approach. We could even double those numbers and reach a quarter of a million people with TUSC’s socialist alternative.
“We are asking every TUSC supporter with a Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr account to visit http://thndr.it/1neKLAO and sign up to our Thunderclap. If you sign up please also click to re-broadcast your support to encourage others, and repeat the request to your own networks (especially Twitter) once-a-day to catch more people.
“Please do it straight away, as the planned ‘broadcast’, using material from the national press launch, will be on May 12th at 1pm”.