Brilliant manifesto, or reheated marketing pap? (David Eaves says the former, I’m less sure.)
What’s your take?
We report, you decide
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Tag Archives: Politics
Krugman
Paul Krugman so often gives eloquent voice to common sense:
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.
There’s still time to turn this around. But Mr. Obama has to be stronger looking forward. Otherwise, the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can’t.
Obama starts a grassroots lobbying group via DNC
It will be very, very interesting to see how Obama’s new “Organizing For America” effort, run through the DNC, plays out.
The new group, called Organizing for America, will be a “special project” of the Democratic National Committee, according to Obama transition spokesman Ben LaBolt, and it appears to be the primary vehicle for issue advocacy for Obama’s agenda. It will also be the keeper of Obama’s e-mail list, which has 13 million addresses.
The DNC has not exactly been a hotbed of authentic grassroots organizing, but perhaps Obama can transform it.
In addition, I wonder whether this new effort will push independent progressive groups like MoveOn to the sidelines or starve them for resources/attention.
“Chaotic, cacophonous, well meaning efforts that will inevitably add up to nothing”
Allison Fine throws some common sense on the fire in assessing post-election “crowdsourcing change” efforts. I’m going to shamelessly quote it at length because the message is worth amplifying and repeating.
Oh, the sacrilege of criticizing well meaning crowd sourcing!! Shouldn’t citizens be allowed, nay encouraged!, to throw do-goody ideas against the wall so that we can then all vote on them and then . . . and then . .. well, somebody should do something, right? These well-meaning, misguided efforts have fallen into two categories: 1. The Confusion of Service Category. The discussion of using a Craigslist approach to scaling up service, as my friend Nancy Scola outlines rightly points out is not very helpful if it’s just more of the same. The notions of increasing voluntary, community service as the solution to government not working right needs to end. I have written about this morphing of public and private service before, most recently here and the basic premise of my argument still holds. Americans have increasingly been volunteering (particularly young people who are required to do so in school and are continuing to do so beyond school), the number of nonprofits has exploded in the past twenty years and yet problems abound. That is because the size of government far overshadows the size of volunteer efforts in terms of resources. Peter Levine compared philanthropic dollars to government dollars for Katrina repair and you will see the difference, $6.5 billion in private philanthropic dollars, nothing to sneeze at, but compared to $120.5 billion in government aid. So, more volunteer databases are not what we need to strengthen the civic infrastructure of the country and overhaul our government. 2. The second category are the idea generating sites that are automatically set up as an “us vs. them” paradigm to help the Obama administration “set priorities”. Ah, yes, we are going to tell you what we think you should do — as if we haven’t just had that conversation over an exhausting marathon of an election — and then we’re going to hold your feet to the fire by stomping our feet and holding our breath until you do. Or just as bad, we, the Obama campaign, are going to “listen” to you as you fill out a survey (oy!) and then we’ll . . . well, we’ll say that we listened to you.
What’s the alternative, then?
This election was about transforming government, not just encouraging people to volunteer more. (Oh, and btw, I don’t buy the idea that because Obama has a large mailing list its the same as a constituency, it’s a mailng list of people who were involved, not a list of people who have signed up for the next phase of the journey – big, big difference that campaigns and nonprofits need to understand much better.) So, here’s my plan of action: 1. The focus has to be on changing government to include citizen participation. [...] The advocacy models of the 1960s were created to protests against government; we need a new model of advocacy that helps us to participate in government. So, the question changes from, “What do we want government to do?” to “How are we going to participate in running our government.” 2. Continue the training. One of the most successful elements of the Obama campaign was training local organizers. Now we need to educate and train people on what government does. [...] We should set a date of say, January 3rd and 4th and use Meetup.com to get everyone go to your local library for a seminar on the fundamentals of government; local, state and federal. How does it work, what does it do, how can we participate? 3. Start local today. One of the dangers of the “throw an idea up against the wall” strategy is that the ideas tend to be too big (“alleviate global poverty”) and too hard for individuals to participate in tackling [...] Let’s make a national to-do list for transforming local government, someplace where we really can make a huge difference right now, today, if we show up and participate. Steve Clift gets us started here. Run for office, go to planning board meetings, ask your town supervisor to start blogging and post the budget online (and keep it updated in real-time!), promote local businesses, revamp the outdated recycling program.
Hat tip to Marnie for flagging this.
Great glimpse behind the scenes of the campaigns
Newsweek offers convincing evidence that “mainstream media” is still possible and relevant with a fantastic, in-depth look behind the scenes of an epic election campaign. Their web presentation is a bit choppy, but here are quick links to the seven in-depth chapters. Well worth a read.
Socialst? Not.
Obama’s no socialist, but McCain and Palin are acting more and more like fascist demagogues all the time. I’ll be glad when this election ends in a blowout that sends them both scampering back to their caves with the last remanants of the revanchist right.
Snap!
Indeed.
Well put, Gail Collins:
On Friday, McCain announces he’s canceling the weekend until Congress makes the beetles go away.
Here’s a theory…
I don’t have a degree in psychiatry, but it occurred to me the other day that Sarah Palin represents the right wing’s subconscious longing for collective suicide.
I’m just sayin’.
Thought of the day
Received via email. Kudos and amen to its anonymous creator.
Happy May Day!
Zephyr Teachout waxes eloquent about May Day:
May Day is not about people in the streets. I like streets as much as the next person, but streets, like the internet, are only tools–in 1890 they were powerful tools, and the right tools to use, but if you confuse the image with the action, you can spend years in the streets (or on the internet) and never get anything done. May Day was an actual expression of power that was being wielded to allow people to control their own lives. And May Day is not about an ideology, unless that ideology is democracy.
Hat tip to Michael Gilbert.
Liveblogging “Political Campaigns and Technology”
[18:00] I’m liveblogging from the event ONE/Northwest is hosting tonight, titled “Political Campaigns and Technology.” We’ve got about 50 people in our office here in Seattle, gathered together for a fast-paced peer-to-peer learning session in which we’re going to explore the various ways that political campaigns are using technology to build and sustain relationships, and what nonprofit activist organizations can learn from the fast-paced world of political campaigns.
Gideon Rosenblatt — ONE/Northwest Executive Director
Gideon is welcoming people, explaining the concept, how it relates to our work. We’ll have three speakers, followed by some group discussion and general socializing.
Karen Uffelman — ONE/Northwest Program Manager
Questions to audience:
- In the last 12 months, how many have seen a candidate website? Lots
- How many have been contacted by a candidate? Lots
- How many have taken action on behalf of a candidate? Lots
- How many would have 4 years ago? Lots (!)
[18:05] Karen: dramatic changes in how candidates are using technology. Karen posed several discussion questions for people to consider in small groups, which they are now doing…
[18:10] Report outs:
Group one:
What’s the most innovative use of interactive media you’ve seen this campaign season?
- Viral videos used to hold candidates accountable for what they’re saying
Group two:
Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?
- Yes, but some campaigns have done a better job than others at using new media to get their messages out there. The technology itself is beginning to shape how candidates present themselves and their communications style. Think that Obama is less concerned with controlling events, more focused on explaining things as they occur. George Allen’s “macaca” video is an extreme example of loss of control. Control models are going to work less and les in the future.
Group three:
Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?
- You can’t control what people say about you online. The blogosphere has some tendency towards self-correction, though. Retractions and debunkings can happen very quickly.
Most innovative use of interactive media?
- Email from Obama campaign: you’ve donated before, would you like to match a first-time donor? Can send personal message to the first-time donor, and they can respond to you. Very gratifying way to make a small personal connection with a fellow supporter.
Group four:
We talked mostly about the “relentlessness” of the Obama campaign’s online organizing work this year. In 2004, seemed more episodic than continuous. Lots more use of video from candidates; e.g. video of Obama on his donation page. Very slick.
Group five:
We talked about some of the tools we’ve seen on Facebook and their longer-term potential. How social networking has been used as a fundraising tool, ability to raise money very quickly. Rapid response of Ron Paul campaign around specific issues. Blast updates vs. segmentation.
Group six:
Increased turnout of youth vote during primary cycle. Challenge ahead is how to translate election excitement downballot and to ongoing long term issues. How can we get people to care about the fights that follow. League of Young Voters Facebook application attempts to find people through the campaign opportunity, get a sense of issue priorities as well.
Group seven:
Unexpectedly viral things. Change in tone of campaign emails from “donate now” to fake(?) insider emails. New phonebanking tools. Washington Trails’ experience creating a small Facebook application.
[18:25] Three Speakers
Brett Horvath – Your Revolution
A new nonpartisan nonprofit.
Show of hands: who has a Facebook account? (Many) Who actively uses it? (Few)
Your Revolution: building a Facebook app focused on voter registration. Hope to scale up voter registration efforts by leveraging the reach of the Facebook platform.
What differentiates Facebook from other social networking platforms: Facebook is a “social utility” that allows people to actively do things. Some stats about rapid growth of Facebook.
Massive protest in Colombia, organized via Facebook. Something different is going on here that’s not going on elsewhere.
- Big difference between a website and a web presence. Facebook gives you access to lots of people who are already nearby and comfortable consuming information there.
Obama online: my.barackobama.com — allows users to self-organize, plan events, build groups. Houe parties, fundraisers, phonebanking etc. All outside of the control of the campaign.
Quick rundown of Your Revolution features:
- Register to vote from within Facebook
- Tell you which of your friends are registered to vote
- Send a reminder/invite to your friends to get them to register to vote — peer pressure!
- Ask about issue interests during process
- Connect you with groups that are working on what you’re interested in.
Your Revolution gives nonprofits some collaboration and project management tools for their constituents.
Working with students to bring online voter registration to states around the nation (!) (Now: WA and AZ are the only two states that allow it, but Rock The Vote has technology for generating paper forms online.)
Questions for Brett:
Q: What kinds of privacy safeguards are there? How exposed is your personal information?
A: You can control how much info people see on Facebook. Your Revolution doesn’t keep or use any data from FB.
Q: Is hard to get off of Facebook?
A: Actually, yes. Hard to fully delete all of your profile information. This is generally pretty true of anything you put on the internet these days.
Q: How do you prevent voter reg. fraud?
A: Require valid drivers license info, which is verified by Secretary of State.
[18:50] George Chung – Win/Win Network
How Democratic Party technology has trickled down to interest groups.
An example: anti-immigrant ballot measures in Washington in recent years. Hard to defeat hot-button ballot initiatives like this. Insight: find all the people who voted against a previous anti-affirmative action initiative. Problem: it was virtually impossible to find, and we had to start from scratch. A “learning moment.” Each campaign should build long-term organizing capacity, win or lose.
Democratic political campaigns have consolidated their voter file databases and interfaces. Catalist, Voter Activation Network are two companies that were started by major Democratic party donors to consolidate disparate voter file, demographic and consumer data and then provide sophisticated applications built on top of that, e.g. phonebanking systems with real-time feedback. Trickling down to state parties and the precinct captain level.
Campaigns don’t end when the election is over. Then we go to elected officials and push for policy change. More thinking about cycles of accountability. Elections are means to policy ends.
Win/Win Network – started by Washington Progress Alliance. Goal is to defragment progressive issue communities at the state level so that we can work more powerfully together. Shared services, e.g. voter mobilization tools from Catalist/VAN.
[19:00]
Q: Doesn’t sharing of names among organizations like this pretty much amount to spamming people without their permission and run the risk of inundating people?
A: Learning from the work the environmental community has done here, how to get the word out without violating permission. We don’t actually share emails among groups.
[19:15] Steve Andersen – ONE/Northwest
I work on CRM systems for environmental groups. Constituent Relationship Management. Technologies and techniques for helping organizations develop relationships with their supporters. Companies use CRM to sell stuff. Nonprofits use it to build power. We use Salesforce.com as our main CRM tool; it’s not nonprofit-specific… it’s used by businesses, political campaigns, and nonprofits.
Four very quick demonstrations of how political campaigns use CRM.
1) Raising money…
… and reporting on that fundraising. A core component of any CRM system, but also one of the least interesting. 
Moving on…
2) Managing speaking opportunities
Candidates need to keep track of where they and their surrogates are going to appear, from a huge field of opportunities and possibilities. Nonprofit activists have the same problem. We’re currently working with Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center on a system for managing hundreds of speaking requests per month.
3) Influencing key decision makers
e.g. Superdelegates and precinct leaders. (Or, after the election, running issue campaigns for nonprofits). Quick demonstration of a system we built for Futurewise to track their success at influencing regulatory decisions around land-use. The same model can also be used to track efforts to secure endorsements for a candidate. Track decision makers, people & organizations who influence those decision-makers, whether they support or oppose us. Campaigns to our members who relate to that decisionmaker. Share all of this data with the campaign team.
4) Media tracking
How to keep track of all the blogs, viral video and online news coverage that campaigns are getting? Can’t just follow three networks and a few newspapers anymore. Quick demo of a media tracking tool we built for Futurewise. Media clips are connected to decision campaigns (above). Simple bookmarklets make it fast and easy to save items that you find in your web surfing.
“We haven’t had the need to clip YouTube videos for very long.”
Salesforce lets us build little tools like this really quickly. Took us about an hour to be able to clip & watch YouTube inside of YouTube.com.
[19:25] Questions
Q: Can you spit back out stuff that you capture?
A: We can get stuff back out through Salesfore’s APIs and show it via a website to the public, or pull it into an email message.
Q: Can data be linked to projects? Groups of people that might take action?
A: In principle, yes.
Q: How do you assess if an organization is ready for powerful new tools like this?
A: It’s hard. 
[19:30] Gideon Rosenblatt – Thanks, Closing and General Hanging Out Time
These are the facets of a new kind of democratic process emerging. It’s all about putting power back into the hands of self-organizing groups of people.
With that, your loyal liveblogger went off to get a well-deserved beer.
Dear Ralph Nader…
We’re tired of your self-aggrandizing posturing. We have an election to win. We don’t need your pathetic sideshow (again).
Respectfully, America
Paul Krugman Talks
I listened to a good chunk of Paul Krugman’s recent talk at the Commonwealth Club on the radio tonight. Damn, he’s good. History will judge him well as someone who spoke truth in the face of power.
Marty and Zack
Most the people talking to you (especially nonprofits) think of the web/internet as a tactical support for the rest of the operations. They want the “web†guy to support our restoration initiative, the web team to support fundraising, the web team to support field, the web to support membership. Web is a tactic the departments should use. The reality is that dominating the web conversation is now a strategic pillar that can drive success in influencing the politics, fundraising, field and other key elements of the operation. A good strategist and senior management operative will need to look at the over all mission, understand the constraints of other managers, understand the path of the campaign and organizational culture. The good strategist will compete in a larger organizational context for funding and the freedom from other departments to begin to implement a plan to dominate web discussion.
Amen!
The Partisans of Ali
NPR’s recent hour-long special The Partisans of Ali is an concise and engaging historical overview of the long sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Well worth a listen if you want to understand the deeper long term conflicts that we’ve gotten uncomfortably close to these past few years.
ExxonMobil: $40 billion a year, and still “tacky”
Matt Stoller lets ExxonMobil VP Ken Cohen have it:
The politics of ExxonMobil are interesting, though expected. Cohen is not only the VP of Public Affairs, but the head of ExxonMobil’s PAC, and the head of the ExxonMobil Foundation that distributes charitable grants. That’s a lot of hats for a PR guy. I basically let him have it. I told him that I think the only reason he’s reaching out to progressive bloggers is because the Democrats control Congress and he’s trying to ward off an excess profits tax. Until Exxon acknowledges error and funds a PR campaign that suggests that gravity of the global climate situation, I told him I would strongly support such a tax because ExxonMobil clearly just won’t engage in ethical corporate behavior. Cohen explained at one point in the discussion that ExxonMobil supports Republicans because ExxonMobil is a business and he can’t find pro-business Democrats. I frankly don’t care and am glad Democrats don’t get oil money; it would be better if he actually convinced Republicans to take global warming seriously. Anyway, I don’t think it’s weird that the PAC director is the foundation director is the PR director of a company that makes $40 billion a year. It is tacky, though, especially when he tried to tell me about how ExxonMobil believes in traditional Jeffersonian principles. Tacky.
Idahoans Are Environmentalists
So says a new poll from the Energy Policy Institute, which found that 70% of Idahoans believe that global warming is being caused by human activity, and that 54% said Idaho should reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
On the other hand, this means that 30% of Idahoans still don’t accept established scientific fact.
Proclaim: Integrate!
My colleagues and I from ONE/Northwest recently signed onto the Integration Proclamation, a first step towards encouraging funders, software developers and those of us who work with them to invest resources in making tools that play together better.
If you agree that social change activists need tools that assume they’re part of a larger picture, not a world unto themselves, then take 30 seconds and sign.
It’s a first step, not a solution. But solutions start with attention.
Eben Moglen is WorldChanging
Alex Steffen of WorldChanging covered Eben Moglen’s Plone Conference talk. Bruce Sterling comments skeptically.
It’s great to see this speech getting out there. I’m really glad we invested in taping the Plone Conference so extensively. You never know when something amazing is going to happen.