Wild Willpower PAC – America’s first “Civil PAC”
by Sondra Wilson. [email protected]. Updated 11/25/2022.
While most PACs are formed by political parties, businesses, associations, or candidates, we are the first registered “Civil PAC” in the country – founded by and with the purpose of funding Citizens. Because our mission is to “help people live sustainably from coast to coast”, we seek to use campaign contributions to put our money into direct action: helping people purchase solar panels, gardening supplies, or other materials for purpose of “helping them live more sustainably”. Because money can be given “for First Amendment purposes” according to Buckley v. Valeo, instead of trying to overturn this ruling (in the manner that Citizen’s United is), we are instead using this important ruling to fund direct action efforts of U.S. Citizens who are working toward social justice or trying to live sustainably.
Excerpt from the Federal Elections Committee court ruling “Buckley v. Valeo“:
“A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate’s increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.” [1]
People often look at me funny when I tell them I founded a Political Action Committee (“PAC”) – most people avoid politics like the plague. If you want to skip ahead and read about the justice reforms I am proposing for the State of Iowa – and why I am calling for them, click here. Otherwise, below you can read “why I founded a PAC” and take a tour of everything our organization plans to do.
Why I founded a PAC:
I was originally going to create a non-profit organization, but after getting ticketed and charged more than $600 for “camping within city limits” (I was homeless – not camping) by the City of San Rafael, I was directed by the Marin County to contact Legal Aid of Marin. I was told they would help me, “They’ll just have you do some community service, and the state will drop it from your record.”
I told them that was not acceptable, “So first you ticket a homeless person $250 for sleeping outdoors, then you exploit them for free labor in order to get these charges off their record?”
So, I called Legal Aid of Marin and told them I’d like them to file a class action lawsuit against the State of California for “homeless harassment laws” – city ordinances that ultimately end up being used to target the homeless. I’d been living outdoors for years studying wilderness survival, mycology, and other things I find interest in, street performing with my guitar, hitchhiking, and foraging wild plants to survive. Although this was all well and dandy, I’d become very frustrated over the years as a result of constantly being ticketed and threatened with arrest for sleeping outdoors.
Anyway – the woman on the phone at Legal Aid of Marin hesitated, then replied, “I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but we can’t do class action lawsuits because we’re a 501c3 – but you can file one. I can’t tell you any more.”
Full stop. This was was weird – but it kind of went with something else I’d noticed: when researching grant opportunities to fund Wild Willpower (as a nonprofit – not a PAC), I noticed that every grant application I found at The Foundation Center (largest grant library in the world) contained a provision stating that assets obtained through the grant could not be used for political purposes. I contacted the FEC and requested information to create a PAC, redesigned the website accordingly, now here we are.
There’s a great deal of information throughout this website which took well more than a decade to compile. I hope you will take a minute to look around, read about my current quest to reform Iowa’s justice system, and if you like where all this is going, please come back and donate. Its the only way I can afford to keep these websites (yes, there’s more than one) available to the public.
These PACs are not sponsored by or connected to any of the aforementioned entities, & are free to solicit contributions from the general public. [1] These PACs are financially independent, which means they must pay for their own administrative expenses using contributions they are able to raise. Although an organization may spend funds to establish or support a nonconnected PAC, these expenditures are considered contributions to the PAC & are subject to the dollar limits & other requirements of the Act.”
Wild Willpower PAC Plans to Soon Register as a form of Hybrid PAC:
Hybrid PAC – committee that intends to establish a separate bank account to deposit and withdraw funds raised in unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations, labor organizations and/or other political committees, consistent with the stipulated judgment in Carey v. FEC. The funds maintained in this separate account will not be used to make contributions, whether direct, in-kind or via coordinated communications, or coordinated expenditures, to federal candidates or committees. [3]
We Are Operating Explicitly “For Non-Commercial Purposes”:
We are not “a commercially-centric organization” specifically because we do not wish to impose strict Admiralty Law as a result of the transmittance of any of the information we’re providing. This can be done because we are consistently working to help redesign our infrastructure in such a way that humanity will not remain absolutely dependent upon the economic system for the purpose of basic survival- Wild Willpower PAC has been mapping & plotting a course to get from “where we are now” to “where we can be” for several years.
References:
[1]: “Buckley v. Valeo” Federal Elections Committee ruling: http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation_CCA_B.shtml#buckley
[2]: Federal Elections Commission, “Hybrid PAC”: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registering-pac/
“What is a Political Action Committee?” on the Federal Elections Committee website: http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_pac.shtml#pac
“Separate Segregated Funds” (SSFs): http://bolderadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The_Connection_Ch4_paywall.pdf
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