Last week, YouTube partnered with WITNESS, an international group that uses video to promote human rights, to begin a series of blog posts that will demonstrate and explore how film has become an integral facet of the worldwide human rights initiative.
Last week Saturday’s blog post kicked off the start of the series, and featured the full-length version of “For Neda,” a documentary on citizen reporting. The title of the documentary is a reference to Neda Agha Soltan, the young Iranian woman whose death by a sniper during the 2009 Iranian election protests was captured on camera and quickly distributed across the internet.
Pride at Work's latest stunt infiltrating the Westin St. Francis is now a YouTube sensation, generating over 35,000 hits yesterday. It was featured on two local evening news shows, the progressive webzine Common Dreams, and the LGBT blog Towleroad - and on countless Facebook pages. But besides being a fun video, it deftly shows how activists can adapt to new ways of getting their message out. Mass rallies are much less effective today than they were in the Sixties, but too often progressives want to re-live this era by using the same tools and expecting a different result. People don't get their news from just a few channels anymore, so it's possible to have a march with thousands of people with little effect. Today, ideas catch fire and take hold through online social networks. "Caught in a Bad Hotel" was not the first YouTube flashmob, but it was the first one with a political purpose. And hopefully, it won't be the last.
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What was this week's theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter's addition of "most popular tweets" to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.
Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired "Divvyshot", a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.
More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.
But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's speeches to Fat Joe's music video "Make It Rain".
On a lighter note, April Fool's Day did not go by unnoticed. Here's a list of Mashable's favorite pranks from this year.
And of course, we couldn't resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven't heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you...
A lot of nonprofits are still just starting their outreach on the web. When someone from these groups needs a quick, short answer on where best to simply get started, I invariably direct them to Google for Non-Profits.
Launched approximately a year ago, Google opened up a one-stop shop featuring an array of tools. Beginners will have heard of many of the tools (e.g. YouTube) but the site serves as a reminder that these tools can be harnessed for nonprofit communications and advocacy.
The site is also replete with tutorials on how to use each of Google services. Some of the highlights are:
David Sirota mentioned some Democrats' (ahem, Harry Reid) plentiful lack of backbone when it comes to empowering workers to organize.
Last Friday night, I was in Colorado and attended a House party for recently-appointed Colorado Senator Mike Bennet. Joining me was Darcy Burner, the legendary people-powered congressional candidate from Seattle, who spoke on a panel with me the next day.
I was very much looking forward to taking inventory of this new senator. Was he smart? Was he authentic? Did he connect with regular people? The answer to all of these things was yes. Indeed, in 30 minutes of Q&A, he quickly rose on the list of politicians I respect.
With one big exception. For some odd reason, he seemed to freeze up -- twice -- when asked about his position on the Employee Free Choice Act. He said he didn't have a position.
The next day, Darcy mentioned this during our panel. Local progressive activist Max Tyler raised his hand and said he asked Bennet the same question at another event and got the same answer. Colorado blogger John Erhardt of SquareState.net describes what happened next:
Darcy Burner challenged us in that discussion to call [Colorado] senators and congressmen, to pressure them to support worker's rights. So when the panel ended, an amazing thing happened. Candidate for CO-06, David Canter came to the front of the room and asked if he could be part of that challenge.
On the spot, Canter cut a YouTube video with Darcy and Max Tyler, announcing that he was posting an online petition urging Colorado's congressional delegation to stand with workers and publicly endorse the Employee Free Choice Act. Here's the video:
This was a remarkably bold thing for a first-time congressional candidate to do--challenging a sitting U.S. Senator and others to get off the fence on an important issue. You can add your voice to Canter's call by signing his petition here. (You can also give this bold progressive a buck by donating here.)
And Senator Bennet, if you'd like to do something similarly bold, feel free to announce your position on the Employee Free Choice Act right here at the OpenLeft!
Some of the greatest talents in the country are undiscovered. But did you know that some of the greatest talents are in the GOP and/or Bush administration? Help us discover these unsung heroes and shatter the myth that liberals are the only creative ones. We would be remiss if we didn't take the time to honor the unsung artistic heroes of the outgoing Bush administration and outgoing GOP. And because the GOP is all about counting (certain) votes, Republican Idol counts on your civic participation. You get to vote for the nominees. (All ties will be brought to a supreme artistic council made up of impartial judges like Kid Rock, Kelsey Grammar, Drew Carey, Victoria Jackson, Patricia Heaton, and Hick Hop idol Cowboy Troy.)
If you're one of the thousands of voters angry over the Democrats' cave on domestic spying and telecom amnesty, a new online grassroots movement is now making it easy to buy a local ad on MSNBC, CNN and several other networks, for less money than you'd think.
The Fight FISA on TV! campaign we're doing in partnership with SaysMe.tv got some major momentum when Sarah Lai Stirand's Opposed to Wiretap Amensty? Run a TV Ad for Six Bucks on Wired's Threat Level got picked up by Slashdot. [Credit where credit is due: Jack and Jill Politics was had covered the ad a day earlier. Looks like they're not as popular with Slashdot readers as Wired is. Who would have guessed?] We're over 3,000 views of the two versions of the video on YouTube ([1], [2]), well on the way to our goal of 10,000-20,000 by September 2, and at least dozen ads have been placed already. OK, nobody's plunked down for the four-figure prices for placements like Fox News in New York yet, but SaysMe.tv's going to be introducing the ability for people to pool their contributions for these pricier placements ... I bet we'll get some premium placements by the end of the month.
And although it's less flashy, our work to influence the platform is also going well. jawboneblue's leading the effort to get our language adopted as part of the Netroots platform, where our Get FISA Right plank has now merged with various others into the highest-ranked civil liberties plank. We've also gotten our position, and in many cases our exact language, adopted in the Obama campaign's in-person "listening" meetings in at least five states; Thomas Nephew's "Listening to America" hears "Get FISA Right" on newsrackblog.com is a particularly good writeup. Once again, our timing's perfect: the existence of these new channels for grassroots influence is tailor-made for groups like Get FISA Right, and our members continue to be great at finding effective ways to work with them.
It's interesting reading different people's perspectives on the ad campaign and more generally on Get FISA Right. A few I found particularly thought-provoking:
The Obama campaign is spending $5 million dollars to air ads during the Olympics. Meanwhile, an individual civil liberties geek can pay less than 0.001% of that amount to put a Get FISA Right ad on cable TV.
"We've got more than a million volunteers on my.barackobama.com. They've planned more than 70,000 offline events through the system, made millions of phone calls from home, and formed thousands of grassroots advocacy groups, including one you might have heard about recently."
There's a lot of energy in the Get FISA Right group these days. The getFISAright.net website is the best jumping-off place to find out what's going on, and the Strategy page on the wiki gives a big-picture overview. It's all interesting, it's all timely ... and I'm going to ignore most of it in this post and focus on the "Don't let our Constitution die" video.
A day or two before the July 9 Senate vote, some folks from LA-based startup SaysMe.tv approached us with an intriguing suggestion: would we be interested in working with them to get ads about FISA on cable TV? SaysMe's community-funded ad model, where people can pay for a single placement of ads in various markets, seems a great match for our grassroots style. And the timing's perfect -- it's a great chance to spread the word that while we've lost a battle, the fight to roll back government surveillance and restore the rule of law isn't over yet.
The video came together remarkably quickly; we revised the script collaboratively on the wiki and message board and email and IM, getting input from over 20 people. Cognitive diversity in action: we had lawyers, journalists, techies, ad execs, marketing people, a professional comedian, and plenty of "just plain folks", and virtually every piece of input was valuable.
Viacom won a court order forcing YouTube to turn over data on every video viewed by registered users. Their goal is clearly to sue and/or intimidate users of YouTube and similar sites for viewing copyrighted material. (Before long, look for somber propaganda ads in movie theatres threatening, "If you watch a copyrighted video on YouTube, you can be sued.")
Fuck that world. Let's push back hard. We need a complete overhaul of copyright laws to bring them into line with the moral standards of our generation. My quick suggestions: Make every television clip older than 25 years free to upload, download and view in most cases. For more recent clips, I suggest a two-week window of free use around any broadcast date thereof. (How do you like your own medicine, assholes? You're going to stick actors and writers with no-pay online windows? Well we're going to do it right back to you!) Another way to go would be to allow a limited number of views or downloads for every media clip as a "community record." I could also support the revocation of corporate charters and broadcast licenses of media companies that wage war against the communities they exist to serve.
Someone linked to this in a comment early this week. If they fess up in a comment, this diary will have one comment. If I see it, I'll give credit here.
The political market is structured such that the real money in political consulting goes to the specialists. If you focus on TV ads, or mail, or phones, or whatever, you make lots of money. If- like me- you don't like that kind of politics and/or are bored by specialization, you stay poor as a general consultant.
The thing is, though, it is diversification of tactics- having a lot of different tools in your tool box- that makes far winning campaigns.
This S-CHIP fight is a classic example, and as Matt wrote here, it is working. Blogs are getting their readers to call, we're paying for calls, and we're doing print ads. In the Bush Dogs campaign, we're profiling politicians, talking about Google ads, and discussing primary challenges. On the potential war with Iran, we are building a drumbeat on the blogs, getting politicians to take clear stands, and just this morning, the issue advocacy group I chair, American Family Voices, is going up with paid phone calls on the issue into targeted districts.
We obviously aren't always successful, but it is exciting to me as an old political campaigner to see the energy and creativity in the progressive movement right now: protest marches, TV and radio and newspaper and blog ads, phone call drives, Google ads, blogging, YouTube video, door-knocking campaigns. It is exciting to see all this happening, and it's important to keep being creative.
I often get asked by people whether a given tactic, be it Google ads or robocalls or TV ads or YouTube videos or whatever, is effective. My answer is that doing a single thing is almost never effective all by itself, but building a larger campaign with a lot of different ways to deliver your message frequently is. This is the kind of progressive movement we should be building- one that is aggressively trying a wide range of tactics, and is always willing to experiment with different ways of driving our messages home.
This morning (Oct. 7, 2007) on Fox News Sunday, Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to thank Rupert Murdoch's Fox for being pro-environment. "Look at that, Fox News, leading the way in environmental protection and reversing global warming."
But Robert Greenwald's YouTube video "Fox Attacks: The Environment" shows that Fox is a consistent global warming denier. And while Rupert Murdoch recently said NewsCorp will be carbon neutral, Sierra Club president Carl Pope points out, "The most meaningful action companies...can take to help the planet is to make sure the public knows the truth about global warming. That means rejecting Fox's pattern of misinformation."
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