The ONLY Way To Defeat PragerU

     Maurice Robert Gravel, better known as "Mike," is a lion of American history. Born in Massachusetts to French-Canadian immigrants during the Great Depression, he spoke only French until age seven and suffered from dyslexia that held him back in his education. He served in the military from 1951 to 1954 infiltrating spy rings in Germany and France, leaving the Roman Catholic faith in which he was educated soon after he returned to the U.S. In 1956, he moved to pre-statehood Alaska. He soon made a name for himself in local politics while going bankrupt because of financial misdeeds by his partner. In 1963, his luck turned around and he began two two-year terms in the Alaska House of Representatives, becoming the Speaker from 1965 to 1967. He established the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights and was the chief architect of the law creating the state's regional high school system, which proved especially beneficial to Alaskan Natives. He even toured 44 states as Paul Revere to advocate for federal tax reform. From 1969 to 1981, Gravel served in the United States Senate, beating a popular governor who was considered the father of Alaskan statehood by flying into Native villages and playing his campaign ads on projectors. In the Senate, he opposed the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the draft, atomic tests on Alaska's Amchitka Island, the classification of the Pentagon Papers, and warmongering in general. He proposed some of the earliest universal basic income and high-speed rail legislation, and, in 1972, ran for vice president, losing in the Democratic primaries. After losing his Senate seat, he remained active, running for president in 2008 and 2020, advocating for direct democracy and the National Initiative, and briefly joined the Libertarian Party to support the latter. Gravel passed away on June 26th, 2021, but his most important work is ongoing. 

     PragerU: if you've spent any amount of time online, you've probably either seen one of its videos or at least know what it is. It's a conservative think tank that pushes far-right, white supremacist views that are presented in a format that makes the viewer believe PragerU is an unbiased, fact-based, reliable source of information. Unfortunately, it is working. 2.6 million people are subscribed to PragerU, and many people who watch their videos and don't subscribe still say its videos changed their mind about something.

     Enter H. Jon Benjamin, the actor famous for his roles in Archer, Bob's Burgers, and Family Guy. In September 2020, he narrated the launch video for the Mike Gravel-founded Gravel Institute, a progressive, Bernie Sanders-style think tank whose singular focus is overtaking PragerU. The idiocy of PragerU is not going away: politics is a game of numbers, and accomplishing our mission means getting the Gravel Institute more views and more subscribers. We're off to a good start, and the fact that Mike lent his name to such an important mission absolutely didn't hurt. In its first year, the Gravel Institute got more than 300,000 subscribers and 8.3 million views, compared to 4,000 subscribers and 340,000 views for PragerU in its first year. The message is clear: progressives are on the right track, and bringing on more famous guest speakers (including, hopefully, AOC, Chelsea Manning, and Bernie Sanders) and tackling tough issues (from how Brazil slashed poverty to the murderous police gangs of Los Angeles) should help speed up the Gravel Institute's growth. However, that still leaves over two million subscribers to make up, and PragerU is still infecting peoples' minds. We also have a GOP leaning further right than ever, and the 2022 and 2024 elections are coming up quickly. We need to defeat PragerU now, not 10 years from now (which, by the way, is a century in internet time). Please, join the mission today!