A little news from the online organizing biz – the wonderful folks at ONE/Northwest have changed their name to Groundwire.

It’s a clever name, and changing it is long overdue. The organization’s strategy had outgrown its brand. ONE/Northwest was an acronym, “Online Networking for the Environment.” Very techy; too techy. As their Executive Director Gideon Rosenblatt explained to me over beers once, “We started as the guys who crawl under desks. We graduated to websites. Then we graduated again to organizing strategy.” I’ve heard them describe that final piece as “engagement consulting” — a philosophy of deploying technology in ways that maps to best organizing practices, and even pushes those practices further.

Anyway, I could go on about how great they are, and smart, and productive, but you can visit their new site and see it all for yourselves.

Oh, and the pretty design was provided by Free Range, my former employer. Good work all around!

This is pretty cool.

In 2008, a couple pro-Obama organizers founded TravelforChange.org, a simple website that connected Obama volunteers with airline miles donors. The idea was to get as many volunteers to swing states as possible. The PAC that I ran, Vote Today Ohio, got three or four volunteers to Ohio on Travel for Change miles.

Most of these small operations fizzled out after Obama won. Hell, even some of the biggest operations fizzled! But Travel for Change has been reborn, with a crisp new focus — defeating Maine’s anti-marriage Prop 1. Travel for Change sent out an email yesterday inviting volunteers and miles donors to get back in the game; I’ve posted the email here.

For folks who participate in the cyclical world of political organizing, the “off season” can be a boring, low-energy time. Not that important elections aren’t happening in the off season; indeed, my friend Mark Winston Griffith is barnstorming Brooklyn to win a hotly contested City Council race here in New York. But for those who only get excited by national issues, there’s very little outlet for their energy.

If it sticks around, Travel for Change may help to change that, by allowing nationally focused activists to plug into state-wide or local issue campaigns. I certainly hope it succeeds. Kudos to Alisa Whitfield, Jay Cash and all the Travel for Change donors and volunteers for keeping the momentum going!

I just gave $25 to Tim DeChristopher, aka “Bidder 70.” You should too.

Tim pulled off a ballsy, smart, inspiring act of environmental civil disobedience. He needs $45,000 to close the deal. He’s gotten $21,614 in donations in the past 4 days. I bet you’ll give your $25, too, once you hear his story. The facts:

On Election Day 2008, the Bureau of Land Management announced that it would auction off drilling rights to huge swaths of land in Utah, near Arches National Park. Beautiful country, up on the auction block to the highest oil company bidder. Not pretty, but pretty sneaky — they thought an Election Day announcement would fly under the radar screen, and the oil companies could snatch up the public land without anyone noticing.

Conservationists noticed. They (including my good friend Celia Alario) quickly started a campaign to keep the lands wild. They raised a ruckus, they challenged the BLM, they created Facebook pages. But the auction didn’t get derailed.

So a group of 200 protesters showed up at the auction itself. Tim was there. But instead of holding a sign and shouting, Tim checked himself into the auction … as a bidder. He got paddle number 70. When the auction started, his civil disobedience started. He didn’t shout. He didn’t lock himself to a table. He didn’t throw his size 10 shoes at the auctioneer and call him a dog. He just bid.

And won.

Tim ended up “winning” $1.7 million of leases, or about 22,500 acres. It took that long for the authorities to realize that the unaffiliated, 27-year-old newcomer was buying EVERY SINGLE PLOT. When they did, federal agents stopped the auction. They took Tim into custody. He may face federal charges.

But before that, he has the opportunity to actually buy the land. Or at least put down deposits on it. That is, if we help him.

Tim needs $45,000 for the first round of deposits, which he and his lawyers have agreed is the best way to keep the land drill-free. Why did I give him my $25? Mostly to reward his brilliant, ballsy creativity. And also because if folks like me think that wild lands should remain wild, there are times when we need to put our money on the line.

In fact, I could imagine a whole new wave of online eco-activism sprouting up around BLM auctions. One could use an application like PledgeBank to gather thousands of dollars in pledges for wild lands. Then an agent representing the pledgers would attend a BLM auction. If that agent won an auction, the pledgers would fulfill their obligation to buy the land. And voila, the land stays free.

Not a bad idea, right? I nominate Tim DeChristoper to be our agent!

Read more, and pony up your $25, at Bidder70.org.

The Washington Post just published a smart op-ed by Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org. The thrust of it:

“[Obama must] decide whether he’ll be the first president to actually engage millions of real people, via the Internet, to govern and set the compass of the country. It’s easier to roll out webby gimmicks — everyone can submit a name for the First Puppy! — than to serve as organizer in chief. But embracing connected politics may be the only road to the kind of transformation that Obama promised and that many in the country expect.”

I’ve always found the phrase “organizer in chief” particularly compelling. It evokes a vision of grassroots, bottom-up power. Obama projected this brand during the campaign, to stunningly powerful effect. Eli’s op-ed asks, can the realities of his administration match up to that brand?

Let’s assume that Obama actually believes in bottom-up politics; or at least sees the political efficacy of embracing it. (That’s a huge assumption, but let’s go there, for argument’s sake.) If so, how would that translate into “online” governance? Would web-enable democracy actually work?

The devil, as always, is in the details. Will more technically proficient Internet users seize disproportionate power? Will the mechanisms of online democracy unfairly shape the outcomes? Where will money, raw power and lobbyists find the loopholes to exploit?

Despite the possible pitfalls, its hard to imagine an online governance system that performs worse than Washington does now. Would you rather have a couple database geeks skew an online poll, or big pharma lobbyists write our healthcare policy?

I don’t believe DC is fatally broken; but it’ll take a lot of reform to make it functional. Obama has the momentum to strike out with a bold, web-based reform. He should capitalize on that momentum and turn Change.gov into an experimenting ground for true online governance.

Sometimes getting shut out gives you a big in.

Yesterday afternoon, a throng of activists gathered at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan to protest Fox’s racist coverage of the Obamas. From comments like “baby mama” to “terrorist fist jab” to “lynching party,” Fox commentators have set a pattern of using racial slurs against the Obamas, in a thinly-veiled attempt to make them appear like outsiders in their own country. It’s offensive to Black Americans, and to all Americans.

The protest contingency was led by someone who has inspired and entertained me for years — hip-hop legend Nas. Ever since Fox’s Bill O’Reilly started attacking Nas on air, Nas has fought back, hard. Yesterday, he teamed up with ColorofChange.org and MoveOn.org to deliver 620,127 petitions to Fox, calling on the network to Stop the Racist Smears.

Video of the event:

I had the privilege of running the ground operations for the event. Despite many variables and deeply hostile Fox security, we pulled it off without a hitch. The major media coverage was fantastic (search Google News for “fox nas” for a taste).

The protest started at 2:00, but didn’t crescendo until 11:30 that night. Fox, in true Fox fashion, refused to accept the 620,127 petitions. Wouldn’t even let us step foot on Fox property. We organizers didn’t expect such a flat out refusal. But then another idea struck — if we couldn’t deliver the petitions to Fox, why not take them to where they could have even more impact … the Colbert Report.

Nas was already scheduled to appear on Colbert to promote his new album, which just hit #1 on the charts. Instead of talking beats and rhymes, Nas took the opportunity to turn up the heat in his well-known feud with “Poppa Bear” (Colbert’s affectionate name for Bill O’Reilly). And since Fox had rejected our 620,127 petitions, Nas brought them to the Colbert Studio, and actually made them part of the set.

Yep, Nas and Stephen Colbert conducted their interview sitting on the ColorofChange petitions. Could you dream up better placement for a protest prop?

Lesson: Fox shot itself in the face by not just quietly taking our petitions and hiding them in a dumpster. Instead, our message got amplified to every Colbert viewer in the country, and made Fox look like the race-baiting antagonists they are. A media and organizing coup!

Move over, MoveOn — a Pakistan NGO is crushing your petition record.

As of this post, the Yeh Hum Naheen Foundation has collected 8,33,069 petition signatures from Pakistanis who are vocally reject terrorism in all forms. The Say No To Terrorism petition was launched by a coalition of popular Pakistani singers, artists and celebrities, bankrolled by a moderate Pakistani financier. It’s a multimedia blowout campaign centered around a catchy song – kinda like “We Are the World,” but against terrorism, not hunger.

I’m struck by the sheer size of this effort. Eight million is an EPIC number. Google tells me that the largest petition ever collected reached 22 million (though I can’t figure out what it was). The Say No To Terrorism petition seems likely to challenge, and possibly break that record. Compare this to the average online petition here in the states. A hugely successful online petition will get a million signatories. MoveOn’s entire list is about 3 million. Say No To Terrorism has more than doubled MoveOn’s entire list in a week.

Granted, the Foundation has hired 6,000 “volunteers” to canvas Pakistan and collect signatures. That should keep the numbers streaming steadily in. The multimedia hype in Pakistan is apparently huge, so the campaign’s visibility is penetrating deep. And the ask is pretty impossible to turn down. Who WOULDN’T sign a statement against terrorism in a terror-wracked nation?

Still, this is an attention-worthy number, a true outpouring of public sentiment. Like the most successful online organizing campaigns here in the states, this effort has clearly hit perfectly fertile ground at a perfect time with a perfect message.

The big question in my mind is, what will the Yeh Hum Naheen Foundation do with its huge list? Do they have any online organizing experience? Savvy? Should they be getting advice from Avaaz and MoveOn?

Expect to see this story break in the American media soon.

(NB – as of July 26, the petition count has reached 23 million. Crazy!)

This is a heartwarmer.

Darcy Burner, a progressive congressional candidate from outside Seattle, has long been a favorite of the netroots crowd. On Tuesday, Darcy’s house burned down. To the ground. Lost everything. Her husband, son and dog survived. The cat died.

Having worked on a heated congressional race like Darcy’s, I wouldn’t be surprised if a tragedy like this ended her candidacy. Campaigns can take a huge personal toll. Fires can take a huge personal toll. Together, those tolls could be too much.

But Darcy ran out of her house wearing this t-shirt:

That logo on her shirt is programmer code for “end war.” Six small characters that proved, even at her most vulnerable moment, that Darcy is both an anti-war crusader AND a big nerd. In other words, the perfect fit for the netroots blogger crowd.

Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas picked up on this image and used it to start a firestorm of fundraising for Darcy. He wrote, “Darcy is a huge netroots sensation because she is truly one of us — a former Microsoft exec who is a geek at heart … Darcy needs to raise about $150,000 this July … and everyday she takes off makes her campaign budget that much harder to hit. That’s about $5,000 a day. And that’s why I’m joining with bloggers nationwide to ask our readers to contribute what they can today, to help give Darcy the breathing room she needs to tend to her own affairs without worrying about neglecting her campaign.”

As of today, the effort has netted almost $100,000 through Kos’s “Orange to Blue” Act Blue page, including $100 from me. I ponied up because the Congress will be a better place with Darcy in it. But also because I appreciate innovative, interesting online organizing asks. I especially appreciate times when progressives rapidly respond to emotional moments, and harness powerful, touching narratives to advance our agenda. Bravo to the Kos community for getting beyond dry, intellectual arguments and creatively going for the heartstrings. If we did more of that, maybe we could /war a little sooner!

My brilliant comrade Steve Anderson at ONE/Northwest is building a great new Salesforce module. He calls it Outcomes. And like most super-intuitive apps from Steve, the name says it all – Outcomes is a way to track your campaign’s, well, outcomes.

I could explain it to you in a few paragraphs … but why do that when Steve has created a concise little Jing video? Jing is a software that lets you capture what’s happening on your screen as video, and narrate over it. It’s a great tool for software trainings and explaining new tools like Outcomes.

Check it out, both as an example of a great screencast and an example of a technology that maps to real-world strategy and also, if built right, will inform and elevate that strategy.

Find more PETA videos at PETATV.com

A pretty great little video from Free Range and PETA. I’m proud to say I helped to invent the genre of vuppetry – vegetable puppetry – with the 2005 hit, Store Wars, which I wrote and acted in. Now the Free Range guys have taken our original idea to electoral politics. Timely and funny!

Democracy in Action is integrating with Salesforce.

Yes, it’s true. And it’s big news.

For DIA users, this integration will open up the world of Salesforce – a super-robust CRM tool that I’ve blogged about before. For Salesforce users, this will finally mean that there’s an affordable, full-fledged advocacy / email blast / online donation toolsuite in the AppExchange. For those who already use both DIA and Salesforce, this will increase the power and effectiveness of both tools.

The integration will be released in versions, with limited functionality at first, becoming more robust with time. Planned for version 1:

- A contact entered into one tool will flow seamlessly into the other tool
- Editing a contact in one tool will edit that contact in the other tool
- Donations and actions taken in DIA will flow to Salesforce

The integration is happening as we speak. Alpha testing will continue through the end of 2007. Beta testing will begin in January, with a public launch scheduled for late winter.

I’m really excited about this DIA+SF integration, because I’ve needed something like it for YEARS. In fact, I’ve been working on it for years.

Back in 2006, Leda Dederich and I (under the name dotOrganize) launched a big study of social change organizers’ tech needs. The #1 lesson? Organizers need integration. They need their tools to work together. So I launched the Integration Proclamation and started working with vendors to build bridges between tools. Our data suggested that of all the possible integrations, Democracy In Action + Salesforce would do the most good for the most organizers. So we started working with Chris & April & Jason at DIA, Steve Wright at the Salesforce Foundation and Steve Anderson at ONE/Northwest, and now I’m heavily involved in getting the job done right.

Note that despite my heavy involvement, I’ve got zero financial stake in this integration. There are no kickbacks from DIA or from Salesforce. I just get better tools for social change organizers. That’s reward enough. My paycheck comes from the Surdna foundation, which generously (and wisely) supports nonprofit infrastructure initiatives like this.

If you have any questions, or want to participate in the beta testing, let me know.