Category: Advocacy 2.0

Applying “Web 2.0” innovation in democracy and community-building to progressive advocacy.

Virtual registration of real voters

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Since you read my blog religiously (what? you don’t???) you know that I have been facilitating weekly meetings of the SL Netroots group that emerged from RootsCamp in Second Life back in November. In January, this group put on Avatars Against the War, bringing over 100 people to a peace protest held at Second Life’s Capitol Hill. Since then our participation has ebbed and flowed. I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to put into it, and many of our leaders were also engaged with other important activities like organizing against fascism in SL and putting on Yearly Kos in Second Life (YKSL).

At last week’s meeting we had a lively group with some regulars and some newcomers and folks came up with a great idea: a voter registration drive to make SL residents aware of the need to register and vote and to make it easier for them to do so. Being the voice of reason (a.k.a. seasoned cynic), I recommend that our volunteers bring us a plan to be discussed at our next meeting. (We’ve had issues with folks bringing good ideas but not following-through.)

Sure enough Jamming Independent (a.k.a. John Breyault in RL) has come up with a plan, and we will be discussing it at our weekly SL Netroots meeting tomorrow (Thursday) at noon PDT/3pm EDT. We will also be talking about the Netroots Nation group that emerged from YKSL and how to work together with them in the future.

This is great stuff going on and I am very excited! If you’ve been meaning to come or if you used to and haven’t been in a while, this one is the meetup to attend. Hope to see you there.

Nonprofit Commons gala opening tomorrow

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The Nonprofit Commons is an island in Second Life that houses 32 virtual offices and meeting space for NGOs. They’ve been up and running for a month or so, but tomorrow will the be their gala mixed-reality opening celebration. I recommend showing up early before it gets too crowded. (It shouldn’t be too hard to come early as they are doing it on west-coast time. The challenge will really be staying until the end.)

Much more information is posted below and check back here for live reports and pictures from the event tomorrow night.

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Advocacy 2.0: the slideshow

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I had a few requests for the presentation on network-centric advocacy that I did at Yearly Kos and at BarCampRDU last weekend (two sessions for the price of one PowerPoint!). I’ve posted it on Flickr, and am also working on a more substantial blog post about our session on “Politics 2.0” at yKos. Until that comes together, here are notes from two people who were there: Michael Hoffman at see3 communications and Kenneth Quinnell at T. Rex’s Guide to Life.

I promise, most of the slides are more fun than this one. But if you only see one, it has to be this:
Slide5
Click above, then select ‘View as slideshow’ for optimal experience.

Welcome to politics, Dr. Lessig

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This is pretty exciting news. Lawrence Lessig has been the leadership driving the Creative Commons and “free culture” movement. He is brilliant and widely respected in geek circles. Last week he announced that he is shifting his research and advocacy away from intellectual property issues and toward the corrupting influence of money in politics.

I suggest he look up my friends at Democracy South as well as other grassroots activists who have been working on this issue for many years.

Rally for Habeas today, anywhere

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Today is the ACLU’s Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice. Activists will gather in Washington, DC to rally and lobby to fix the Military Commissions Act and to restore Habeas Corpus.

If (like me) you can’t make it to DC for the main event, come to a simultaneous rally in Second Life!

Tuesday June 26, 2007 8:00 AM to 10:30 PM SLT (Pacific Time), concurrently in Second Life and in Washington DC!

T-shirts and signs at MoJo Fields [Second Life: Mojo Fields (86, 88, 519)], and then teleport to the rally at the Washington Mall in Second Life, where you can also watch a live webcast of ACLU’s Day of Action from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

A great leap forward

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Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation were all founded between 1915 and 1920. I usually refer to organizations this old as “dinosaurs” due to the incredible inertia that comes from being so big and being around for so many decades. I am really impressed with my colleagues at the FOR. They are really open to innovation and change. In my first week on the job, we began a blog and secured a space in Second Life!

I won’t have time to do much in SL this week because I will be traveling with about a half-dozen FOR colleagues to the US Social Forum. You can follow our exploits by way of our new blog: http://FORpeace.net !

If you want to see more dinosaurs evolving into full-fledged 21st century organizations, please support this effort by commenting on the blog, linking to us, or even giving money through our Change widget (right). Next on tap: social networking, RSS feeds, a whole new web site, and about a dozen internal improvements to get us really cooking with gas. It’s going to be a busy year. 🙂
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Changing Change

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Inspired by conversations with Tantek Celik and Chris Messina, I’ve started a group on Change.org to support microformats, starting with XFN and Change itself.

As we invest our relationships and data there, I think we should demand that Change.org allow us to share and export our networks. XFN is an open standard for social network data. If they are really serving the community, Change should give us the ability to own and use our own data.

BTW, I am very excited about what Change.org aims to do, and their new political fund raising features have revolutionary potential, but the site is still in beta, whether they say so or not. (In other words, a lot of stuff stuff doesn’t work quite right.)

CLick here to see and join my change: http://www.change.org/changes/change_page/1187