Change.org

An Anti-GLBT group, National Organization for Marriage, is holding a rally today in Rhode Island in support of traditional marriage. The rally is going to serve as a local platform for Maggie Gallagher, the national leader of the organization, to tell fellow bigots in Rhode Island why straight men and women should enjoy more rights than gay Americans.

The encouraging thing about this is what happened after Change.org got a hold of some information linking the Canadian coffee shop Tim Hortons to sponsorship of the event.

Last Sunday, Change.org published the story, and the feedback funneled to Tim Hortons was amazing, prompting the company to take action:

Folks, this is huge. In the past 17 hours, we've had more than 1,600 folks send letters to Tim Hortons, asking why a franchise in Rhode Island was sponsoring an anti-LGBT festival hosted by the National Organization for Marriage. Well, guess what? Tim Hortons has answered our emails, loud and clear. Here's the message that just came in from their company headquarters.

Tim Hortons responds to inquiries about Rhode Island event sponsorship

Recently, Tim Hortons was approached in Rhode Island to provide free coffee and products for a local event, as we do thousands of times a year across Canada and the United States.

For 45 years, Tim Hortons and its store owners have practiced a philosophy of giving back to the communities in which we operate. As a company, our primary focus is on helping children and supporting fundraising events for non-profit organizations and registered charities.

For this reason, Tim Hortons has not sponsored those representing religious groups, political affiliates or lobby groups.

It has come to our attention that the Rhode Island event organizer and purpose of the event fall outside of our sponsorship guidelines. As such, Tim Hortons can not provide support at the event.

Tim Hortons and its store owners have always welcomed all families and communities to its restaurants and will continue to do so. We apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience this may have caused.

Yet another example of the value and possibilities of internet-based activism. Congrats to Change.org and to those who wrote the company. Consider thanking Tim Hortons for standing up for equal rights by contacting them here.

Change.org recently announced its new Jobs for Change initiative, linking those wishing to pursue careers in change-making with available positions in organizations serving the common good.

Over the past few months President Obama has inspired a renewed interest in public service, providing a historic opportunity to mobilize a new generation of Americans to address the major social and environmental problems we face.

Yet there are few resources connecting people interested in social change with careers in service, threatening to limit the potential impact of this new civic spirit. We aim to change that.

We are currently building the largest database of nonprofit, government, and social enterprise jobs on the web and have just hired a team of career advisors to provide daily advice and guidance to help people of all backgrounds find and develop a career in social change. We have also partnered with more than a dozen leading organizations that will give Jobs for Change reach to millions of people interested in deeper civic engagement.

While those observing the trend toward public sector jobs among youth usually focus on the success of programs like Teach for America and City Year, this initiative will fill a large hole enabling one-stop career shopping for youth already involved in creating positive change. Many more organizations will now be in the spotlight thanks to this tool, and as a result, the millennial mobilization will be strengthened.

What I especially like about this site is the extra stuff. Along with the job postings, Jobs for Change offers "Career Advisors," who are assigned to various areas/aspects of the job search process, such as college students and AmeriCorps. In addition, young job-seekers are able to ask questions to their peers regarding change-making careers. Finally, content offering tips for young job-seekers is regularly published on the site.

A variety of organizations have teamed up with change.org to provide our progressive youth movement with an excellent resource. Kudos to everyone involved.

Change.org's "Ideas for Change in America" contest (previously covered on FM here) ended yesterday with a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. The ideas were presented to Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media (and change.gov), who represented the transition team at the event. As Phillips noted in his address following the ceremony, the Obama administration will be taking citizen-driven efforts like change.org's seriously, as it attempts to engage Americans in their civic responsibilities.

The overall initiative was very successful, according to change.org. Almost 8,000 ideas poured in, with more than 600,000 votes cast. Change.org counts almost 175,000 participants in the initiative. Nonprofits will step in next to champion each idea, turning it into actual policy.

Here are the ideas themselves:

• Pass the DREAM Act - Support Higher Education for All Students
• Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence
• Free Single Payer Health Care
• Develop and Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability
• Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT Couples Nationwide
• Make the grid green in 10 years
• Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana
• Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties
• Save Small Business From the CPSIA
• Health Freedom IS Our First Freedom

Each idea seems to represent the influence of the Millennial Generation on our nation's political discourse, with sustainability efforts, LGBT rights, and a focus on higher education being a few examples.

I'm very interested to see where this process goes, as we ramp up efforts toward what Kevin labels "user-generated government." While this progress is great, we can't stop here. We need to continue innovating new ways for all Americans to participate in governance.

The second round of voting in Change.org's Ideas competition begins today. The top ten vote-getters will be presented to Congress on January 16th. Change.org will also launch an advocacy campaign on behalf of each of the 10 winning ideas.

My own idea didn't make it to round two, but here are the ideas that won my vote in this second round. Most were chosen not only because I believe in the issue, but I think that the person/group proposing the issue has the chops to make headway on that issue in partnership with Change.org. In no particular order:

• Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT Couples Nationwide
• Citizen Funding of the Nation's Elections
• National Early Voting
• Rebuild and Repower America with a Green Stimulus Package
• Interactive Government
• Get FISA Right and Repeal the Patriot Act
• Pass the Dream Act Now
• Make the Grid Green in 10 Years
• Restore Investments in Rail Service and Infrastructure

On a side note - there are A LOT of repetitive topics that made it into the final round. For instance, a number of folks want to end the drug war/legalize marijuana. It might have been better for Change.org to find a way to mediate between the parties and get those with similar ideas to unite behind a common thread, rather than take up multiple slots in the top 30. As it stands, they're all probably splitting votes that, together, might carry their issue over the top and into the winning 10.

Some Sunday reading for you.

• The Nation profiles a young immigrant rights activist fighting for the rights of Cambodian women facing deportation.
• A 29 year old Stanford grad and sports agent pushes her clients to reach out to the communities in which they work to give back; not for financial/PR reasons, but because it's the right thing to do.
• Andrew Revkin, at the New York Times blog "Dot Earth," labels the Millennial Generation -- already Generations Y, Q, and O -- Generation E.
• In addition to launching its Ideas for Change in America, change.org is expanding by seven blogs
• The Nation counts the victories of youth activism in 2008.

Using Digg-style voting systems for organizing purposes is all the rage lately. The Obama Transition Team got in the game this week with the launch of Open for Questions, a Google-powered, Digg-lite service that lets supporters put forth their queries to the incoming administration in a forum where all users at Change.gov can rate them. Top-voted questions - supposedly - will be answered by the Obama team, though how and when that will happen is unclear. Needless to say, reviews so far are mixed.

At Tech President, Nancy Scola says "meh," noting that the system isn't all that well organized and will not likely scale. In the comments, Marc Laitin agrees that the service has a lot of problems - notably that questions are mostly unlinkable and therefore difficult to organize around, stymying any sort of grassroots multiplier effect from within the community - but he views the attempt itself is revolutionary and thinks it bodes well for the future.

At the Politico, Ben Smith notes that Obama supporters aren't having any difficulty organizing rapid response on the system. Since the service opened they have been actively voting down any question relating to the Blagojevich scandal. Smith's piece raises concerns as to whether Open Questions represents a real attempt at transparency, or will be a de facto fig leaf the transition team can hide behind while ignoring uncomfortable questions.

At Pushback, Jesse Singal has what I think is the appropriate answer to Smith. Jesse thinks that biased, community-moderation is just part of the game, and Smith's desire for "uncensored" or "unbiased" community voting are unreasonable and uncharacteristic of any social media community.

For myself, I'm with Nancy. This is kind of "meh." I agree that the idea is great, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. There's no good way to organize these questions (browsing and voting by topics would be nice) and there aren't even comment sections to allow users to discuss the merits of each question. The entire set up seems designed to discourage community formation and organizing, leaving participants isolated and atomized. The answering and accountability process - meaning how the Transition Team will answer high rated questions - is also unclear. Will they wait a month and then answer the top ten, or will they take the time to answer the top ten rated questions every day? Will answers be archived somewhere so they are easily found and referenced? Who knows . . .

I believe that the transition team had a great idea here, and are operating in good faith, but implementation problems at this point leave me worried that that the whole thing will be little more than window dressing.

By contrast, the new Ideas Contest sponsored by Change.org offers a much better model for how Digg-style social media filter to bring citizens into the governing/policy process. The rules of the contest are simple:

Here's how the competition works: anyone can go to www.change.org/ideas and submit a policy idea, discuss with others, and vote on the best ideas from around the country. On Inauguration Day we're going to host an event in Washington, DC and hand-deliver the top 10 rated ideas to a representative of the Obama Administration. We'll then launch a national lobbying campaign with the support of our nonprofit partners to ensure that each winning idea gets the full consideration of the Obama administration and the 111th Congress.

Ideas can be sorted into 29 different issue areas. All ideas are independently linkable and Change.org provides widgets for embedding your idea on your blog or on a variety of social networks, allowing participants to rally support around their idea (you can view a widget linking to my Idea in the sidebar). All questions contain a comment section to allow discussion around the proposed idea, and there are clear rules/guidelines so participants know what they can reasonably expect in exchange for their participation.

I take it on good faith that the Obama Transition Team had the very best intentions with the launch of Open for Questions - and I think Smith's comments of censorship are way off base. Nevertheless, I think Change.gov could learn a lot from Change.org when it comes to integrating this kind of voting system into their work.

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.