In theory, there are a variety of ways to rein in the power of Super PACs and the political influence of the ultra-rich who fund them. Starting your own Super PAC is probably not the first solution that comes to mind. But somehow that’s the path that Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor and campaign finance activist, recently chose.

Back on May 1, Lessig launched Mayday, which, as he explains in this video, aspires to raise tens of millions of dollars in unregulated cash to elect candidates who will radically overhaul the current campaign-finance system, thereby limiting the influence of people who, well, donate millions in unregulated cash. “When we raise the money we need to make impact,” Lessig says in the video, “we’ll hire the best bad-ass campaign shops we can find to make these contributions work. So, yes, we want to spend big money to end the influence of big money.” The irony of the project is not lost on him.

Reassuringly, Lessig has thought through the plan in somewhat more detail than hiring a select few bad-asses. The idea is to raise $6 million in Kickstarter-like pledges from tens of thousands of ordinary voters, which Lessig will then persuade a handful of righteous billionaires to match. Mayday plans to take the $12 million it raises altogether and target five key congressional races this fall, using all the modern tools of political warfare to ensure that the pro-campaign finance candidate wins in each one. Then, in the run up to the 2016 elections, Mayday will use the lessons of these five 2014 races to replicate the effort on a much wider scale—wide enough to influence the outcome of campaign-finance legislation in Congress. Which is to say, it will potentially aim to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, not just $12 million, and target hundreds of races, not just five.

Lessig set out to raise the first $12 million in two phases. Phase one came in May, when the goal was to scare up $1 million from small donors, and then match it with $1 million from a handful of do-gooder fat-cats. After Mayday secured $1 million in pledges in under two weeks, six rich people (whom Lessig had sounded out in advance) agreed to collectively match that first million. Today marks the beginning of phase two, in which Mayday will attempt to raise $5 million from small donors by July 4, then find $5 million in fat-cat commitments to match it.

If you happen to care about things like non-rich people having a say in who holds federal office, you should really go make your pledge to Mayday right now. But since I suspect most readers are pretty skeptical at this point, let me take you through the completely hard-boiled, non-utopian case for supporting the project, which roughly amounts to the following: Mayday, or something like it, turns out to be our last best hope for reducing the massively outsized influence of the 1 percent over public policy.