Website Raises $1,000 To Bring 'Tier 5' Unemployment Petition To Washington

Issa Decker thought only friends and family would sign her online petition demanding Congress give additional weeks of unemployment benefits to the jobless. First it went viral and garnered more than 28,000 signatures. Now, thanks to a grassroots fundraising effort, it's headed to Congress.

"I'm kind of blown away," said Decker, a laid-off schoolteacher in California. "It's all being done officially now. It's being printed and bound and delivered."

Decker posted her petition on Change.org in March. Theresa Cahill, a writer for a site called WorldNewsVine, repeatedly wrote about the petition as it gained signatures, no doubt fueled by the extremely dedicated online community of jobless folks across the country.

Once the petition had more than 20,000 signatures, the question became: How do we get this thing to Washington? Decker herself couldn't afford the printing costs -- it's nearly 1,000 pages long -- much less the airfare. She sent emails to the folks who'd shared their signatures in hopes someone lived near the Capitol. It turned out to be pretty difficult to find an unemployed person who had the means and the nearness.