Change.org

Today is the big day. Hopefully the last day of the primary season. I'll have some overall thoughts up on the nomination process later today.

• Current TV tackles the Millennial generation and the coming political realignment:

• Why have anti-war protests proven so unsuccessful? David Sirota has some answers in The Protest Industry vs. The Players
• Kevin Bondelli follows up on his post here yesterday and outlines why Vote Pledges are important even in heavily Democratic districts.
• Banks are cutting down on loans and leaving community colleges and two-year college students out in the cold.
• A veteran runs the numbers and debunks McCain's fears about the Webb GI Bill.
• Wired runs a mini-profile of Josh Levy, formerly of Tech President but now an editor at Change.org. The story hits on the power of social networking to mobilize change, and Youth to Power merits a mention.
• The New York Times gets hip to the new face of evangelical community, and how young people are redefining the role of politics in their faith.
• Finally, episode one of This Brave Nation is live. In it, Carl Pope and Van Jones provide insight into the development of the progressive movement over the last half century and discuss how and why they became progressive activists. In particular, I found fascinating their discussion (2/3 through the video) about the role of culture in social change and why artists today seem less involved than in the 60s:

Last week Change.org, a social network for social justice and political action, released their own FaceBook application.  It's a smart move for them.  Like most social networks that have aimed at creating political change (Essembly comes immediately to mind), Change.org tried to create new online communities centered around particular issues and nonprofits.  These communities were to be dedicated to achieving some sort of communications, policy or electoral goal - raising awareness about Darfur, donating money to the Sierra Club, or even just electing your preferred candidate to office.  

The problem with such endeavors is that the model is necessarily limiting.  It takes a lot of work to build a new online community from scratch.  Most of the time, only hardcore activists with a certain amount of tech savvy will ever make their way onto a new social network.  And even then, since the only thing to do on these networks is talk about or donate to a single issue, it's tough for these types of strategies to ever achieve a critical mass of membership and become self-sustained and effective communities. There's just not enough incentive to come back on a daily basis.  

Now Change.org is looking to change that.  They've left the walled-garden of their online community and, rather than create a new social network and community from scratch, they've gone to where the users are: FaceBook.  Last week Change.org launched a new Application that essentially ported their whole network and functionality over to FaceBook via the F8 platform.

It's too early to make any real judgments, but the strategy seems to be at least a jump in the right direction.  People stop by FaceBook everyday - for long periods - because they can find information useful and relevant to their daily lives (mostly about their friends).  If you want to create awareness or build a constituency for a cause or for a politician, doesn't it make sense to integrate that advocacy and awareness as much as possible into the daily lives of your potential constituents?  Isn't that part of the philosophy behind a group like Drinking Liberally?  FaceBook is where millions of Americans hang out online.  If you want to engage them in online activism, it makes sense to do it through these highly trafficked, existing communities rather than attempt to create new communities whole-cloth.