Those of us who wrote to Theresa May about Kiana Firouz’s case should start celebrating, as she has just found out she can remain in safety in the UK! This shows what a difference people-power can make!

The 27-year old actress and lesbian activist faced deportation back to Iran, where she would have been at risk of torture and death as a result of her sexuality. 1,942 of us wrote to Theresa May telling her that this must be stopped.

Together we have shown that we will not sit back in cases like this where asylum seekers are at risk because of their sexuality.

38 Degrees has also teamed up with Still Human, Still Here to tell the government to give asylum seekers permission to work. Please get involved here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/Permission-To-Work

Just sent this email out to all the people who got involved in the campaign to stop Rod Liddle becoming editor of the Independent. A great example of people power working, really pleased about it.

—
Dear David,

We usually try to avoid sending two emails in the same day, but I wanted to let you know straight away that we seem to have won the campaign to stop Rod Liddle becoming editor of the Independent. The Guardian web site reports that thanks to the outcry, Lebedev has “had a change of heart about appointing the Sunday Times columnist to the paper.”

This is a great example of people power working. Thousands of us worked together through facebook, twitter, and the 38 Degrees web site to spread the word about Liddle. We sent almost 3,000 emails to Lebedev and to the Independent’s Managing Director Simon Kelner. Together we’ve stood up for keeping the Independent as a progressive, campaigning newspaper.

If you aren’t already following 38 Degrees on Facebook and Twitter you can find us on the links below – so often that’s where campaigns like this get kicked off.

Thanks for helping win this campaign,

David

Since 38 Degrees launched in early June we’ve achieved a huge amount together. We’re building a people-powered movement for real change in the UK. From demanding new laws to make MPs answer to us and flooding Parliament with emails about climate change to defending valued public services and calling for the Iraq inquiry be held in public, we’ve made our voices heard.

In just 6 months 60,000 of us have taken action 177,695 times. Across the UK we’ve been signing petitions, calling decision makers and inviting our friends to get involved.

Bankers: take responsibility
We were outraged to see bankers awarding themselves massive bonuses just after the government had to bail them out with our money. When plans to put a 50% tax on bankers bonuses leaked out, bankers went into overdrive trying to force government to back down. We stepped up to outweigh the banks’ pressure – in just 48 hours, thousands of us pressed the Chancellor to stand up to the banks’ lobbyists. People power worked: Alistair Darling stood up to the bankers and imposed the tax.

Tackling poverty, sticking up for public services
We’ve worked together to make sure the recession doesn’t hit poor families hardest. Together we helped convince the government to extend free school meals to protect an extra 50,000 children from poverty – in the words of the End Child Poverty Coalition this was “a major achievement….and could not have been done without 38 Degrees“.

We also took action to protect public services, defend the NHS from unfair criticism from a Conservative MEP and stand up for the BBC against attacks from James Murdoch. Our campaign against top-slicing the licence fee ended with a big success, with the government shelving the idea until at least 2012.

Cleaning up Parliament
The expenses scandal showed us the urgent need to make sure MPs really answer to us. Together, we’ve pushed for a recall law to give voters who have lost trust in their MPs the right to call a fresh vote. It’s great to see party leaders, and even the Prime Minister, slowly coming round to a recall law – but we’ve got a long way to go. Cleaning up Parliament is a big task and we’ll need to continue working hard both to make recall a reality and to force politicians to reveal their links to lobbyists.

Speaking up for Human Rights and Civil Liberties
We helped to convince Peter Mandelson to scale back his plans to disconnect millions of suspected internet file-sharers. We also worked with Tripping up Trump in Aberdeenshire, to oppose Donald Trump’s plans to evict families to make way for his golf course. We’ll continue to work with Tripping Up Trump in 2010. In the meantime, an 85 year old woman named Molly Forbes has begun legal proceedings to defend her home from the threat of compulsory purchase. You can show your support by sending her a Christmas card, addressed to – Molly Forbes, Paradise, Mill of Menie, Menie, Aberdeenshire, AB23 8YE.

Climate, Copenhagen 10:10, Quizzing the Minister
Our campaigning on climate change got the government’s attention. In October over 10,000 of us contacted our MPs in just 48 hours to ask Parliament to reduce its own emissions by 10% next year. This month, 38 Degrees members quizzed Ed Miliband (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) in the first-ever public conference call with a Cabinet minister.

A growing team
It’s been a busy few months for our small staff team – David, Hannah, Johnny and Nina. None of our campaigning would have been possible without the help of our volunteers who have worked tirelessly to build and support our campaigns. Thank you Alex, Ashley, Katy, Laura, Louise, Ross, Toby, Tom, and Tosin.

What’s next?
In 2010, it will be more important than ever to keep taking action together. The general election is looming, we’re still in recession, unemployment is climbing and politicians are talking of drastic public service cuts. We’ll be working hard to make sure Blair gets a grilling at the Iraq inquiry, we’ll turn up the pressure for tough action on climate change and will be running local campaigns, like our campaign to make sure Boris Johnson keeps his promise on delivering four rape crisis centres in London.

In the New Year we’ll need to decide together what 38 Degrees should do in the run up to the election. Before that, you can tell us what you think here on our blog.

You are what makes our movement grow. Please keep on telling your friends, family and colleagues about 38 Degrees through Facebook, Twitter and email.

Thanks for being involved,

David, Johnny, Hannah, Nina, Warren and the 38 Degrees team

A few minutes ago Gordon Brown announced that the he intends to “give constituents the right to recall their Member of Parliament.”

This is great news – we’ve been campaigning for a Recall Law since we launched in May.

I wanted to share this email which David just sent out to all our members.

Dear Johnny,

We wanted to tell you about what we think is probably 38 Degrees’ biggest success to date. We’re excited about it!

We’ve been campaigning together for a Recall Law since we launched back in May. A Recall Law would give us new powers to hold our MPs to account. It would mean local voters would be able to come together to call a fresh vote where an MP has lost their trust. At the moment local voters are stuck with their MPs until the next General Election no matter what they do.

Today, Gordon Brown announced plans for a Recall Law. [1] We still don’t know all the details, but clearly this is huge progress. As more details do emerge we’ll need to analyse them and think together what more we need to do to make sure we really do get new powers to hold MPs to account.

There’ll probably be more for us to do together on this campaign, but today it’s worth celebrating the impact we’ve had together. When we started campaigning on Recall it was not really on the agenda at all. Within hours of launching our campaign, 1000s of us had signed the petition.

The first time Justice Minister Jack Straw accepted that Recall “should be looked at”, it was in response to us appearing on BBC News. By the time we handed the first 6,000 signatures to party leaders at the end of June, we’d forced Recall up the political agenda.[2] There’s no doubt that all the campaigning we’ve done together – the petition, the emails to MPs, and the media coverage – have helped push Brown to make today’s announcement.

Back in June, 38 Degrees members took part in a poll on reforming politics. We agreed that new rules tomake MPs more transparent about their activities and more accountable to their voters were key. We made a Recall Law and Lobbying Transparency our key campaigns in response to the MP expenses scandal. Together we’re having an impact, on political reform but also on other important issues like Public Services and the BBC. As MPs return to parliament in a couple of weeks we’ll need to work together to maintain the pressure.

People power is working, together we made this happen. As we grow bigger over time we’ll have more and more impact.

Thanks for all that you do,

David, Hannah, Johnny, Nina and the 38 Degrees Team

PS:

A few other exciting things that have happened this week:

Two former cabinet ministers have echoed our calls for the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system to be scrapped. David Blunkett and Alan Milburn made their comments separately at the Labour Party Conference. Over 5,000 of us have now got involved with this campaign. If you’ve not already done so you can add your voice here: http://38degrees.org.uk/halttrident

Our project to find out how MPs spend their Summer Recess from parliament featured in last nights Dispatches on Channel 4. You can watch it here, we’re in the final 10 minutes:http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#2972656

In Scotland, we’ve passed 10,000 signatures for our campaign to stop local families being forced off their homes to make way for a golf course which Donald Trump wants to build. You can get involved with that here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/donaldtrump/

NOTES

[1] Brown said: “And so where there is proven financial corruption by an MP and in cases where wrong-doing has been demonstrated but Parliament fails to act we will give constituents the right to recall their Member of Parliament.”

Speech in full is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/29/gordon-brown-labour-conference-speech-in-full

Article about it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/29/gordon-brown-recall-errant-mps

[2] Here’s the blog post we wrote at the time: http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2009/06/18/one-down-two-to-go-%e2%80%93-nick-clegg-accepts-our-call-for-a-right-to-recall-your-mp/