Late Summer Hopium Chronicles Paid Subscription Drive - Help Me Get to 300

The resources we raise together will help improve the Hopium experience

Dear Friends,

Over the summer our paid subscribers have been in a conversation with me about how to improve the Hopium experience. As I like to say I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started this thing, and now that it’s up and running I wanted to take a step back and kick around ways to mature our offerings in the coming months. I appreciate everyone who has weighed in. We’ve gotten many great recommendations, and I have learned so much through this process.

To have the resources to make some of the improvements people have suggested, and expand our offerings, I am launching a late summer paid subscription drive. With your help, I’d like to sign up 300 new paid subscribers by Labor Day. To make it more attractive for people to sign up, including for the tens of thousands of free subscribers here, I am offering a 10% discount on all full-year paid subscriptions. So rather than $45 a year, it will be $40.50 through Labor Day.

Paid subscribers get three main benefits:

• Additional live events, in Zoom meeting format, for better discussion and community engagement

• The ability to post comments and engage in conversations with other proud patriots here in the Hopium community

• The satisfaction of knowing you are helping support this growing community, and my own research and writing. The more paid subscribers we have, the more content I can produce, the more events we can do and the greater our collective impact becomes.

The main thing I am going to do with the additional resources is bring on either part-time help or an intern or two for the fall.

How can you help? If you are a free subscriber, you can upgrade your membership here. If you do this before Tuesday evening you will get access to one of our special paid subscriber events on Tuesday night at 7pm EST, and if you can’t make it, the ability to watch a recording afterward. These events can only be seen by our paid subscribers, and they will allow you to go deeper into the ideas and concepts here each month.

If you are already a paid subscriber (thank you!), try to bring in one new paid subscriber before Labor Day. Just one! It will make a big difference.

In our daily communications, I will be updating our community on our progress, and hopefully, we can celebrate getting to 300 together, soon.

Five months into Hopium I want to report to all of you that I am really enjoying this community we are building together. Writing every day has been far more rewarding than I thought it would be when I was putting this together. I was worried about having things to write about every day, but it turns out that hasn’t been a problem, has it? All in all, this has really been a lot of fun, and am so grateful for your support and involvement.

Finally, and most importantly, I remain blown away and inspired by the work you all are doing to ensure freedom and democracy prevail. I knew conceptually that this work was happening, but to hear you tell your stories of what are doing, getting to talk to the groups you are part of - it’s been really remarkable. I work hard every day because you are working hard every day. Your passion inspires me, lifts me up, and challenges me to do my best here. So really in every way, this site is a community project. It takes a village, as Secretary Clinton used to say. Or perhaps it’s better to say that it takes a few million proud patriots fighting ferociously to make sure their country doesn’t slip away. For that is what we are doing here at Hopium - fighting with everything we got to make sure this great nation is there for our kids and grandkids the way it was for us.

I close with this recent comment from paid subscriber Irene on August 3rd, which is the kind of experience and sentiment I hoped we could create when starting Hopium:

General Comment:

Thank you Hopium Chronicle Community and Simon for sharing your projects and works. Your ideas and resources have provided me the ability to pick and choose where I’d like to focus my energies this next year.

My “Working hard”

(as Simon encourages us) is as follows:

My first focus is on donating to and monitoring Issue 1 in Ohio. Winning here could be such an accomplishment for Ohio and the nation; a model to follow IMO.

My next focus for the year is Youth Voter Registration. Arizona has a group working to have every AZ High school have a voter registration program. And they are requesting donors to “ adopt” a High school to provide financial support for needed supplies. I will wholeheartedly adopt one and follow it as it evolves! Arizona was a miracle story in our last elections and their democratic Group want to hold their wins.

I’m also reaching out to my local nearby High School to set up or support Youth Voter registration. The same for our local Community College. There is heavy Hispanic presence in both here in the California central coast so excited about that also. So far just phone calls to educate myself what might be already in place. After listening to the executive director from Southern California for Youth Voter registration and receiving program material from her she inspired me to tackle a couple of places. Either to initiate programs or to support their programs through volunteering. These will be my priorities for 2023-24 to #GetTo55! I’ll report back as I learn more.

I’m also building up communication with the Seattle Student Union, a High School group who have been hugely successful in making changes within their communities. I’m really encouraging them to add Youth Voter Registration to their activism. Washington has an on line voting program for youth that has made it much easier for their youth to register to vote. Now ( IMO) they need to have Voter Registration drives to market this process, enhance their political power and bring their voices forward nationally. This group is tied to similar activist groups through coalitions so as one group rises in their activism more and more groups rise as they share their successes! I recommended they may want to invite Simon to come and speak with their group to speak to them about #GetTo55! These youngsters have amazing energy, talent and resolve. And they already have proven successes locally in their larger community. Our communications are in their infancy stage and I’m respectful of not intruding but I sense real interest in their responses. They just don’t realize ( yet) the power their voices could have both locally and nationally as coalitions of Youth Voters.

This is so exciting!

Again, thanks all for sharing your work and projects and thank you Simon for prioritizing where our work might be most effective. I joined your group to listen, learn and focus my money and energies where they could make a difference and help save our democracy. After just a few months HC has given me that information and I’m ready to get to “ working hard” 🙏🏻

Thank you, Irene, and thanks to all of you for what you do, every day. It is how we have been winning, and it is how we will get to 55 together next year. Please help me to get to 300 by Labor Day, and keep working hard all - Simon