DontSubmit.org - Advocacy for the Self-Employed

OCTOBER 2012 - 3 WEEKS TO ELECTION DAY

Hang onto your heart

The movie is out. Hang Onto Your Heart: Birddogging for the Self-Employed has some fresh ideas for Republicans and Democrats, voters and strategists. But there isn’t much time left. OFFICIAL SITE

OCTOBER 2012

Don’t submit…to Mitt

Mitt Romney claims to represent American small business. A scene from Hang Onto Your Heart demonstrates that he doesn’t even know there is a Self-Employment Tax on 23 million small businesses. WATCH NOW

MAY 2012

‘Hang Onto Your Heart’ wins accolades

The Republicans’ answers for the self-employed are now the subject of a documentary film. Hang Onto Your Heart earned The Accolade’s Award of Merit for its spirited challenge to the Republican small business mantra, and it will be made freely available before the general election.

JANUARY 2012 - UPDATE

DontSubmit.org in the news

This year’s birddogging expedition gets a write-up in You’re the Boss, The New York Times’ small business blog. Robb Mandelbaum offers commentary on what Romney, Santorum, Paul, and Huntsman had to say about the self-employed. Read the article or see it for yourself.

For more coverage, see WMUR (television host of the New Hampshire debate) and the Los Angeles Times.

JANUARY 2012

Birddogging '12: Republicans on Record

This birddogging season features an entirely different cast of characters—the Republicans—and our story takes a new medium. Just in time for the election, DontSubmit.org’s YouTube channel has all the presidential candidates in New Hampshire on camera. WATCH NOW

DECEMBER 2007

Birddogging '08: Faith in Seeds

New Hampshire is a great place to birddog insofar as nearly all the presidential candidates focus a large measure of their in person campaign appearances there the month before the New Hampshire presidential primary, the events are relatively small, and from the center of the state the candidates are nearly always less than an hour and a half away. READ MORE

JANUARY 2004

Birddogging in New Hampshire

“Birddogging” is an expression used to describe the activities of an advocate who follows candidates for the purpose of declaring a point of view, and hopefully moving candidates to that same opinion. What follows are my experiences birddogging on behalf of the self-employed in the three weeks prior to the 2004 New Hampshire presidential primary. READ MORE

Content by Mark Dunau
Website by Aaron Engelman

Email mark@dontsubmit.org

Hang Onto Your Heart: Birddogging for the Self-Employed

THERE ARE over 23 million self- employed Americans. They account for nearly three-quarters of American businesses, with over a trillion dollars in receipts. The labors of the self- employed are as old as agriculture, and as new as computer programming. The self-employed cut across political party, age, sex, education, religion, creed and geography. They are the backbone of rural and many local urban economies. Because of the Self-Employment Tax, they are acutely aware of their identity as “self-employed,” but not of their large numbers and diversity in the United States. The self-employed are also the fastest growing and largest untapped voting block in the country. Their influence can easily swing future Congressional and Presidential elections. READ FULL ARTICLE

Faces of the Self-Employed: Photographs by Julie Dermansky