Thank you so much for your willingness to be part of this effort, an effort with a history running back to the 50s and 60s. You range from grad students, experienced folks on contingent appointment, and new assistant professors to endowed chairs. You include administrators, nonteaching staff, and public columnists. You are joining a movement supported by nationally known figures and leading organizations. We are grateful for your support of the petition candidacies for this year's MLA officers. If you're interested in participating in the #mlademocracy movement further, you can do that by shooting me back a brief email at pmbousquet (at) gmail.com There are four main ways to contribute: 1) Join #mlademocracy's Organizing and Communications committee. You'll work with top, experienced organizers like Allen Riddell (SEIU) and Lila Nayden (U Mich LEO), who have volunteered and who I hope will serve as co-chairs. I'll be part of this as well, and hope to see Rebecca Schuman (Slate columnist) and Lee Bessette (IHE columnist) in this group as well. We'll build a website that provides information, allows volunteers to sign up and take action, propose resolutions and actions for MLA. Visitors to the site could: a) endorse candidates b) comment on policy c) volunteer specific expertise d) take a survey (how fucked up is the profession? are you happy with MLA's response over the past 50 years?) e) publish "I am the 70%" tumblr selfies with handwritten statements: "I pee in the bushes because I have no time between classes." etc. We'll probably also develop a low-maintenance organizational structure and bylaws in this group. 2) Offer yourself as a candidate for MLA's Elections Committee, which creates candidacies for the delegate assembly and the discussion groups, and/or the MLA Nominations Committee, which selects officer candidates. These are critically important. Within a year or two, #mlademocracy wouldn't need to run petitition candidacies, but could place excellent choices on both sides of the ballot. These positions are being recruited now for this year's elections. 3) Offer yourself as a candidate for an MLA officer position. There are just four or five of these open every year: 2nd VP (becomes pres 2 years later), and 3-4 positions on the Executive Council. A good candidate is someone like Sue Doe, with a long track record and public profile in multiple organizations, or Bob Samuels, the head of the California statewide lecturers' union, and numerous publications on labor issues. We managed to get four candidates on the ballot by petition this year, on a working deadline of less than two weeks. We have eleven months to prepare for next year's officer positions. 4) If you happen already to be a member of MLA's delegate assembly, you can offer to run as a DA rep to the Executive Council or as a member of the MLA DA Organizing Committee. Margaret Hanazimanolis will be coordinating the DA position candidacies, but I'll pass along the names of anyone you know currently on the DA who might be a good choice. For all MLA positions there are distributional requirements. A key point however is that Composition and Rhetoric and Digital Humanities are considered "other than English and American" for purposes of most races. You do not need to be an MLA member to join the #mlademocracy movement. You do have to be a member to vote or hold a position. More soon. Again, warm thanks to all of you. Solidarity, M