5 Friends

Check out this PSA that's been making the rounds about voting and getting involved. (Warning for some language.)



Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker have created public service announcements to encourage American youth to register to vote. The non-partisan PSAs, produced by DiCaprios Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to register and vote and participate in the upcoming election. Celebrities appearing in the PSAs include: Amy Adams, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker.

Home Again

Today, Christy and I were fortunate to speak with the seniors at my alma mater, Sacred Heart Academy. We went to let them know about Working Families Win and how to get involved, and more generally the importance of being involved with your community. We also had a chance to talk a little bit about some of our key issues here in Western New York - health care, energy, and trade. It was a great experience listening to the girls talk about which points really stick out for them, and what their generation is concerned with.

It was even more heartening to see how disappointed some of them were that they'll just miss the cut off for being able to vote this year. While we need all of the good, progressive voters we can get, the fact that many of them were so energized and engaged about the process was great. It's a good sign for our future that young people actually want to be a part of the process rather than becoming disengaged. We're really looking forward to working with SHA students and other high school volunteers from the area.

Slacker Uprising

Starting today, residents of the US and Canada can download Michael Moore's new movie, Slacker Uprising for free. The film details Moore's road trip across the swing states during the 2004 election season (62 cities in 42 days) with the purpose of getting young people out to vote. Check out the trailer below.



You can watch the entire movie absolutely for free by signing up here. After you sign up, you'll receive an e-mail link that will allow you to view it one of the following five ways:

1. blip.tv is providing streaming right from slackeruprising.com, free of commercials and advertising.
   
2. Amazon Video on Demand is providing a higher resolution version of the above stream for people with lots of bandwidth.
   
3. iTunes will make it easy for you to download "Slacker Uprising" on your iTunes, iPod, or Apple TV, and view it there or transmit it to your television. This way, the film can be portable as well as for home viewing. (This is not available yet, but will be soon!)
   
4. Hypernia is providing bandwidth and servers to host MPEG4 and DivX versions of "Slacker Uprising" online, so you can burn a DVD or download the film to watch on your computer, XBOX, or PS3.
   
5. Lycos is providing free streaming of the film and an on-demand version.

If you sign up and don't receive the link shortly afterward, be sure to check your spam mailboxes. I've heard reports that some mail systems have been filtering the e-mail there by mistake.