also posted on Pam’s House Blend, with an extended introduction, as Towards a rebirth of freedom: activism on social networks, part 1
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:
Dr. Dog’s* Heh! Right Observation, Wrong Venue on Third Pipe puts the ad in the context of campaign finance reform.
Anne Juel Jørgensen’s Can FISA Guide Us to the Future of Web 2.0 politics? uses our experiences to wrap up a class on “Digital Campaigns” — including citing blog posts by Carlo Scanella and Micah Sifry, an excellent example of how writing the history as we go makes it easier for others to build on what we’ve done.
Andrew McClure’s Using MyBo to organize against Proposition 8 (the California state proposition to eliminate marriage equality) takes up Barack Obama’s invitation to progressives to follow our lead and organize on my.barackobama.com.**
It’s also interesting to look at who is and isn’t picking up the story.
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“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.”
— Barack Obama in his Netroots Nation video, encouraging progressives to organize on my.barackobama.com
Hey! That’s us! 🙂
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.
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Update: for more context on why this is important, please see Amy Alexander’s The Color Line Online in The Nation
We’re now at the midpoint of our first, more-leisurely-than-anticipated mutual guest blogging series. Thanks to Melissa McEwan, Sara Robinson, Pam Spaulding, and rikyrah for their time, energy, and extraordinary posts. In retrospect, our original plan of getting all the posts on OpenLeft and the mutual posts on the guest bloggers’ blogs all in one week was a little over-ambitious. Oh well, live and learn.
Another thing that didn’t go as planned was that we didn’t stick narrowly to the initial topic.* Pam and the Jack and Jill Politics folks both said they’d like to take a more forward-looking approach than in our framing. Since our primary goal is diversity of voices on the front page, I said “sure.” Apologies to all for not having communicated this better, and thanks to desmoinesdem, sb, dr anonymous, and Paul for their replies when plukasiak brought this up in rikyrah’s thread. Apologies also to any who see this as resulting in false advertising, biased discourse, or disrespectful towards the concern of feminists/womanists; that wasn’t the intent, but I can see how it could look that way. OpenLeft readers had said they wanted to hear from these bloggers, and I thought their proposed subjects related well to the initial theme. Was this the right decision? If not, what should I have done? It’s a good discussion for the comments. On the communications, all I can say is “oops”.
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At one point during the Get FISA Right campaign, somebody asked me whether I had just put my day job on hold. Fortunately for me, 75% of my day job at this point is working on Tales from the Net, a book about social networks, with my significant other Deborah Pierce and brother Greg (also known as GregoryK of gottabook). So the answer is no, as long as this turns into a chapter in the book. Which I suspect it probably will, so it’s cool.
Also fortunately, people like danah boyd, Ari Melber, Nancy Scola, Micah Sifry have done a great job of discussing the Get FISA Right campaign from a social computing and network perspective. So, tempting as it is to focus on the future possibilties of social network activism (a 50-network strategy to build on the 50-state strategy; ways to evolve the Night of Facebook Action idea), in this post I’ll instead concentrate on a more pressing topic:
Now what?
As Dawn Teo’s latest on Daily Kos says, it’s not over. bmaz’ The Post-FISA Act Amendment Action Begins working thread on Emptywheel summarizes the action: the ACLU’s lawsuit, an upcoming August 8 Moneybomb. What will Get FISA Right’s role be in that? And how will we evolve?
First though:
Sign the open letter.
Use our new thank/spank tool to send email to your Senators telling them what you thought of their votes.
And join the groups on myBO and on Facebook if you haven’t already.
OK, now you can read the rest of the post.
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It’s been a wild few days with the Get FISA Right activism campaign. Our bare-bones media room is the best place to get a quick summary of all the stuff going on; here are a few hightlights: over 22,000 members in the myBO group, and 1700+ on Facebook; we delivered our response and our asks to Obama’s Senate office today (and of course have emailed them as well); and much much more.
We’ve gotten tons of coverage, including an article featuring me by Sarah Lai Stirland on Wired’s Threat Level blog, a call to action and video by Daniel Ellsberg on antiwar.com, and an article by Ari Melber in The Nation that puts this in the context of net movements in general. Will it be enough?
With the vote tomorrow, it’s time for a final push. Announcing: a night of Facebook action
In our final push to influence the vote, we’re creating a Facebook event for us to watch the vote together. People in the DC area who can get passes will try to fill the gallery during the vote tomorrow — and we’re going to have an online component as well, centered around liveblogging, details TBD.
WHETHER OR NOT YOU CAN MAKE IT IN PERSON OR VIRTUALLY, PLEASE ACCEPT THE EVENT, INVITE YOUR FRIENDS, FORWARD THE LINK IN EMAIL, AND MENTION IT IN RELEVANT GROUPS!
It’s a long shot but if we can get enough people on Facebook to respond, that could get some more press and show the breadth of the opposition to telecom immunity and warrantless wiretapping. Events are the most rapidly spreading mechanism on Facebook; it’s worth a try. With any luck, we might set a record for the fastest-propagating event
More information on the wiki, including troubleshooting and links to groups to spread the word in. If you’re on Facebook, or are willing to join, please help out; if you’re not, please consider joining — it’s creepy, Orwellian, and privacy-invasive, but there are 30,000,000 people there and it’s a great place to do activism. And in any case, please help spread the word about this: blog it, digg it, mail your friends, and call your mom.
Mike Stark’s blog post that kicked the event into high gear was titled Will Obama feel the sting of social networking? Since then, we’ve expanded to a 50-state strategy and are targetting multiple Senators. It’s still a good question, though. Facebook’s got a lot more people on it than myBO, and far richer functionality for stuff like this. Let’s give it a try …
Please join us for a night of Facebook action — and then get up tomorrow and watch the vote with us.
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While there’s plenty of excellent information of FISA out there, one thing I haven’t seen is a short history that discusses how it has steadily broadened since it was introduced in 1998. At least, I hadn’t seen it until now. Originally posted by Deborah Pierce on her tribe blog. Reposted with permission. The references are at the bottom, including one to EPIC’s excellent statistics page.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
Background
FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq [1], was passed in 1978 in order to provide the means for law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance, and later, physical surveillance, for foreign intelligence purposes. It also allows the US Attorney General to authorize emergency surveillance for 24 hours in the event of a lack of a judicial order. [2]
FISA was passed in response to the relevation of Project Shamrock, which was a 25 year effort by the NSA to read every international telegram entering or leaving the United States, including messages to or from US citizens. Senator Frank Church said that the NSA had the “potential to violate the privacy of Americans is unmatched by any other intelligence agency.” and if it was ever used domestically, “no American would have any privacy left…. ” [3]
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(re-promoted, with permission. tick-tock, tick-tock! – promoted by JonPincus)
Also posted on dKos; please visit and recommend! For background, please see our previous open letter to Senator Obama, his statement to the group, and Glenn Greenwald’s analysis. Please repost widely — and when you do, please add the link here.
If you’re blogging or writing an article about this story. please be kind enough to include a link back to the Get FISA Right site and to the group on myBO. — and add the link to our coverage page. Thanks!
If you would like to join us, please call your Senator, join the group on myBO and Facebook, and help get the word out!
UPDATE: digg it!
UPDATE, July 7: Ari Melber’s Online Activists Keep the Pressure on Obama has great perspectives and links on the Get FISA Right “net movement”. Deborah Pierce’s FISA: a brief history discusses how the statute has steadily been broadened since it was first introduced in 1978.
An Open Letter to Senator Obama
From the 20,000+ members of the my.BarackObama.com group
“Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”
Dear Senator Obama,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to us with your post “My Position On FISA” dated July 3rd, 2008. In your response, you pledged to “listen to [our] concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn [our] ongoing support,” and in that spirit, we would like to continue this conversation. We ask that you help transfer our passion and political activism into getting the FISA bill right — now.
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Originally sent to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right mailing list. Cross-posted on Liminal States.
I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the situation. There’s a huge amount at stake and the anger, frustration, and disappointment so many of us (including me) feel comes through in every post. Realistically, the odds are still against us.
Still. We have a chance. We’re in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and in a conversation with Barack and his aides. Like the vast majority of us who have weighed in so far, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the content of his response, and I wish it had come out earlier in the day, but even so … we’re managing to get our voice heard. We’re not out of it yet.
We could turn the tide; and even if not, at the very least we’ve succeeded in getting our message out. There are a lot of people in this country who care about civil liberties, and we are getting very tired of telecom donations being put ahead of the rule of law.
It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties. How cool is that?
(We continue to hear that they’re working on a statement, but it’s getting late, so we decided to take the initiative to make sure we have something out before the weekend.
Please repost widely! – promoted by JonPincus)
sent by Mike Stark to Senator Obama’s office and his campaign at roughly 11:45 a.m. EDT today. also posted on the Get FISA right wiki and elsewhere)
An Open Letter to Senator Obama
From the 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of the my.BarackObama.com group
“Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”
Dear Senator Obama,
On October 24, 2007, your campaign spokesman said, “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”
On June 20, 2008 you said, of retroactive immunity, “I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”
As the largest grass-roots group on your campaign website, my.BarackObama.com, and in the spirit of your open/responsive government campaign pledges, we wish to share our ideas for how we may work together to further the goal of eliminating retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. Although this is only one of the problems we see with legislation allows the government to wiretap the communications of its citizenry without a warrant, it’s the area we think we can help you the most.
First, Senator Obama, we ask that you make the same tools that we used to call undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire available for us to call our fellow citizens in West Virginia, Nebraska, Delaware, Florida and other states that have Senators committed to voting against the amendment that would strip telecom immunity. You have the tools and we have the people power. Together, we are confident we can bring Change; we can make the government listen to the people instead of the telecom lobbyists.
Second, Senator Obama, we ask that you attend the Senate debate and schedule floor time to speak about the violence done to the rule of law when Congress retroactively immunizes the illegal conduct of a special interest. We know you understand that justice should not be sold to the highest special interest bidder; we also know that you can persuade other Senators that are not so clear on the issue. Of course, if you do this, our committed members will surely capture the video of your inspiring oratory, load it to YouTube and spread your words to our friends and family far and wide. We trust in your ability to bring a new way of doing business to Washington and look forward to helping you make that Change a reality.
Senator Obama, the my.BarackObama.com caption reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” We’re ready to put these words into practice.
Thank you.
The 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of
“Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”
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Hopefully everybody has seen the update that the statement from the Obama campaign is now expected tomorrow morning. Let’s assume that it comes out at noon.
How best to make use of the time between now and then?
One important thing to do is to redouble our recruiting efforts. Because it’s the day before a holiday weekend, it’s likely that things will be reallllll slooooooowwwwwwwww … what can we do to attract more people? It’s a good time to hit the social bookmark sites like digg and reddit — the group’s main page is still only at 150 diggs, which looks kind of paltry next to the 2000+ on Steve Elliot’s post. More on the wiki under “social bookmarking”*
What else should we be doing? Unsurprisingly I have a few ideas (so expect some more email from me on the list later tonight 🙂 ) but I’m sure that these are only the tip of the iceberg.
Suggestions?
jon
* there seems to be a bizarre bug in the HTML engine here and so I can’t put in a link, sorry
We’re going to be kicking off the mutual guest blogging next Monday, with participation from Pam’s House Blend, Jack and Jill Politics, Orcinus, and Shakespeare’s Sister on the topic of “feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the race — and why this matters to progressives”. Something to look forward to!
And it’s mutual: several of the bloggers have invited OpenLeft front pagers to post on their blogs as well. We still need to work out the details of this. If any front-pagers reading this have a post they’d like to make on the topic, please say so in the comments.
As the astute observers on this site have no doubt noticed, we haven’t had the vote yet on followon topics. As an experiment, we didn’t put the nominatino thread on the front page … and it didn’t get any action. Oh well, live and learn. And this week, with all the stuff going on with FISA, it felt like it wouldn’t have gotten much attention.
Speaking of FISA though … wouldn’t that be a good topic for mutual guest-blogging?
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(Now Obama’s GOT to notice. – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
also sent as mail to the list …
Lots of attention to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right group on my.barackobama.com, now over 6000 members and continuing to grow rapidly. Still haven’t gotten into the MSM or tech blogospheres (other than Wired’s Threat Level), but these are really solid links:
Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spyingby Ari Melber on The Nation’s Campaign Matters, June 29. digg here.
Networking Group Opposing FISA Cave On Obama’s Web Site Grows And Grows, Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central, June 30
Obama Critics Find Support on Obama’s Web Site, Brad Haynes in the Wall Street Journal’sWashington Wire, June 30.
Telecom Amnesty Foes Lobby Obama Using Obama Tech by Ryan Singel on Wired.com’s Threat Level, June 30. digg here.
Obama Supporters Petition Obama … by Michael Scherer on Time’s Swampland, June 30.
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As we head to the start of mutual guest-blogging next week, it’s time to start working on the follow up. The topic discussion thread led to a bunch of great suggestions, all of which fit our basic criteria:
important for the progressive movement in general as well as the November election
very little good discussion of these to date in most of the progressive blogosphere
consistent with and reinforcing Chris, Matt and Mike’s goals and strategy for the site and the movement
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Please make sure to vote in the poll! For related threads, see the guestblogging tag If you’re on Facebook, please join the group!
Things have been going extremely well on the mutual guest blogging project. Thus far we’ve got acceptances from Jill Tubman from Jack and Jill Politics, Pam Spaulding from Pam’s House Blend, and Sara Robinson from Orcinus. The idea’s steadily improved, and response has been consistently positive. It seems to me like we’re on track for a major success. (Additional details below; invitation list and discussion here.)
We’ll be going live the week of June 30, with a sequence like the following:
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A couple of times I’ve inadvertantly posted a diary entry to the front page. [It would be better if the default were to leave the box unchecked, but I digress.]
Once I do that, is there any way to un-promote? I couldn’t find one, and resorted to deleting the diary entry and reposting.
Recapping the first-round blogger guest-blogger nominations so far, bearing in mind that the topic is “feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the race — and why this matters to progressives”:
Melissa McEwan of Shakesville (nominated by Taylor, 3 recommendations); her For the record post is a great articulation of the feminist perspective, and Shakesville’s 100+-and-counting “Hillary Sexism Watch” series has been tracking this for months.
brownfemipower of La Chola (nominated by me, 3 recommendations); her because you asked and I think that you’re seriously considering… puts forward a perspective I haven’t seen here — or many other places in the progressive blogosphere.
Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, seconded by Populista; 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined)
Orcinus (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined) featuring Dave Neiwert and Sara Robinson
Talk2Action, also a group blog (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined), where recent posters include Bill Berkowitz, Rob Boston, Frederick Clarkson, Bruce Wilson, and Richard Bartholemew.
Egalia of Tennessee Guerilla Women, “Fighting to end sexism in Tennessee and the nation” (nominated by Sadie Baker and enthusiastically seconded by johnieb, 1 recommendation)
These all seem like great potential guest bloggers to me, and there’s good diversity in a lot of dimensions, so I think we’re off to a fine start. I propose inviting all seven of the initial nominees, giving them the option of whether they prefer starting with this first round or waiting for another topic.
Thoughts on this? And does anybody have any good connections with any of the blogs and bloggers?
Increasing diversity
The number of nominations was small enough that we’ve still got several empty slots — we wanted to choose at least 10-12 to allow for some deferrals and cancellations — so it’s worth asking what additional perspectives we’d like to see represented here. A few things to think about:
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(This diary continues the discussion of mutual guest blogging. This is an exciting proposal, and your opportunity to make suggestions about the shape it should take. Please join in! – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
There was a lot of support for starting the mutual guest-blogging project with a topic related to feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the race — and why this matters to progressives. So this thread is to collect nominations for potential guest-bloggers on the topic. Hopefully, it will also serve as a useful resource for those wanting to explore the issue themselves.
Please put your suggestions in as comments. The next steps will be to discuss, then filter the initial list, discuss, and then vote. We’re going to leave this thread up for a couple of days to give people time to think it over; feel free to come back and add more later.
More on the nomination criteria and a few examples, below the fold.
For other discussions of mutual guest blogging, please see:
(Here is a second diary to advance our thinking about the mutual guest blogging proposal. The previous one focused on the “who,” this one focuses on the “what” and “why.” – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
This thread is to collect potential topics for the mutual guest-blogging project. There’s no shortage of good ideas; we’ve starting out with eight possibilities (included below).
Let’s use this thread to discuss more potential topics as well as the criteria that we want to apply to choosing the best ones for mutual guest-blogging.
(Here is our second American Blogger winner from this week. A very timely followup to my previous post in the “Women’s Voices / Women’s Struggles” series. – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
We propose that OpenLeft feature 5-7 guest bloggers each week, prioritizing diverse voices and perspectives not usually heard on the front page. OpenLeft front page posters will reciprocate, by blogging on the guests’ sites, and the combination will (with luck) create a temporary hub in the progressive blogosphere. The result is improved mutual understanding, links with other tightly-connected networks, and a base for more collaborative and effective strategic actions.
Note: This diary entry refines several ideas from the “American Blogger” thread including input from Taylor, Syrith, me, and several others who asked to remain anonymous. Thanks to all the reviewers of the earlier versions!
I’m working on a draft diary entry on the “American blogger” idea of mutual guest-blogging. A lot of the people I’m getting feedback from aren’t on OpenLeft, so it’s up on my blog Liminal States. Comments either there or here are very welcome!
We request that each front page poster swaps with somebody from another blog at least once a week: the OpenLeft person guest-blogs on the other site, the other person guest-blogs here OpenLeft’s front page, and both participate in comments in both places.
This diary entry refines several ideas from the “American Blogger” thread and elsewhere, all with the goal of improving dialogue and mutual understanding by exposing us to perspectives and topics that we’re not hearing about first-person — and at the same time exposing our views to audiences that may not have heard them directly.
…
