Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Moveon

LeadNow in Canada

dine — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:53:16 +0000

New Orleans I had a fascinating and encouraging conversation recently with Jamie Biggar, the Vancouver-based executive director of what could be an exciting new political force for progressive issues and change in Canada: LeadNow or probably more accurately www.leadnow.ca since the internet is going to be the main membership access to this weapon d’ jour. Part of the excitement of the conversation that morning was the fact that LeadNow website was just debuting on line, almost as we talked, so my biggest challenge was paying close attention to Jamie on the while becoming the #4 follower on their Twitter account, the 300^th and something Facebook fan, and recognizing some Canadian friends on the early scrolling comments. Talk about ground floor!

LeadNow hopes to cover the ground originally broken in the USA by MoveOn, who invented the basic internet campaigning form when they “caught lightening in a bottle,” as ACORN Canada’s Josh Stuart accurately calls it, while Avaaz.org internationally and other formations in Australia and elsewhere have built from the ground up. Jamie argued that LeadNow in Canada would be different in some fundamental ways if everything worked as they hoped importantly by linking the “air war” of internet campaigning more closely with the “ground war” by forging close working relationships with organizations and possibly creating “chapters” on the local level. LeadNow is also trying to figure out how they might help build bridges on campaigns to create change past the partisan deadlocks of the multi-party parliamentary system. Good luck with that! The third defining objective they hope will be a more robust “voting” or membership input and direction system, which is more my bet, but they are right that this is an important evolutionary step forward for these kinds of organizations.

All of that is in the future as LeadNow pilots what works and where they can find traction and build their base moving forward. Putting projects like LeadNow on the runway and getting them up in the air where they can pick up speed and support is a huge undertaking in itself. I think one of the reasons these kinds of new social change formations are so very important is because they are self-sustaining organizations, relying on the members to fuel the tanks with their donations and therefore not accountable to donors or outside interests.

Jamie and his partners have a good track record with other efforts in the past with environmental issues, students, and others. Getting ready to brave the frozen north in a couple of days as I prepare for another visit with organizers and others in Canada, I can’t describe how important it is for LeadNow to succeed.

My vote: support now, LeadNow!

Finally Left Leverage on Healthcare

dine — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:32:16 +0000

Niagara Falls, Ontario Maybe progressives and liberals are finally willing to exercise some leverage rather than watching painfully as conservatives and moderates strip every bill that arises down to the bone with health care reform being the latest front page casualty? There are signs of a stirring.

SEIU and Andy Stern after having seemed for so long to have been a White House annex office at their headquarters on Dupont Circle finally is snapping back at the evisceration of health legislation. Trumka and the AFL-CIO are unhappy and balking at the compromises. MoveOn which has been indistinguishable from Obama’s Organizing for America is sending out emails targeting Lieberman and praising Senator Bernie Sanders and his threats to NOT vote for the health care bill’s Senate version. There are real discussions everywhere that people gather where folks are trying to find a way to still rationalize supporting so little at this late date in the fight.

My assumption is still that enough no’s will be held to get the votes come hell or high water. That assumption is based on the premise that once passed, evolution would improve the features of the package over time.

Talking to my colleagues in Canada is sobering, since here the evolutionary record is a dilution of health care benefits rather than improvement. Vision coverage for example In Ontario national health care pays for nothing. Not the glasses. Not the eye check even.

I’ve talked earlier about the problems with “opt outs” which are also prevalent in Canada. Each province (think states Americans) can add or subtract some parts of the package especially when it comes to paying for the costs of drugs and other add-ons to the basic health care package.

We need to be careful that we don’t go down from here, like our northern neighbors.

Thanks to Zack Exley

jstuart — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:56:32 +0000

Zack Exley

New Orleans A little less than two months ago I got an email out of the blue from legendary internet and political organizer, Zack Exley. It was a one line note that said, essentially and in so few words: Wade, what the frick is wrong with your blog – I can’t make heads or tails of this!

We might be making a muck of it somehow, but I’m not stupid, and I knew immediately that if I had aroused some pique in Zack, there was trouble in web-land! So, I dusted myself right off and shot back a note with a big, fat HELP. Knowing Zack’s record both with SEIU years ago when he was a union organizer and more recently when he shook George W to his boots, then was organizing director for MoveOn, and so forth and so on with the New Organizing Institute and Thoughtworks, as he pioneered the use of the web and whatever as a top flight organizer, I knew if he didn’t get it, then no one probably did.

So, we immediately shut down the “mailer,” and asked Zack, what we needed to do better and how we could make this work?

To my delight a couple of days later I got a couple of pages of advice, constructive criticism, and, damn, even some encouragement. I was in India when all of this happened, so I walked around mulling over his email for a couple of weeks, but found a quick convert in Josh Stuart with ACORN Canada who volunteered (ok, was drafted and impressed into service, but had a good attitude about it) and also took the “exley memo” as his bible, and Mark Madere, our Crescent City comrade, friend, and true techster, who knew we needed to move from typo 3 to wordpress, but dreaded what it would take to move the content over. Between the three of us (well, mainly the two of them and of course Zack!), very, very quickly something radically different, and decidedly wonderful started to unfold, so that, voila, look what we have now for www.chieforganizer.org! We have the shape of things to come for one thing.

So what’s different besides the fact that it’s “easier on the eyes,” as one of my early testers said? We’ve added a “share” feature so that you can take it with you. We’ve linked to Tweeter and Facebook. The blankety-blank RSS feed finally works so that you can get the blog automatically. We have an easier and more attractive scroll down menu to look for the old archived blogs. We have tags. We have a “cloud” which lets you find common topics. The whole thing just plain works, and it’s a relief and no longer an embarrassment to me (or Zack Exley), but instead, as Zack counseled lets one immediately go to the blog or what you want. The old features that moved the reader to other writings, biography and so forth are in small boxes at the top. We are not finished, but boy are we happy with what we have now: an actual communication and organizing tool!

So, thanks Zack Exley for some real solidarity!

Many people might have looked at the mess we had gradually seen evolve in this website, and snickered and snorted, and turned away. Others might have taken a snide shot perhaps and then let it go. I would submit, that it was a rare act of solidarity in the organizing, and, dare I say, the virtual community, for someone to step up and say, hey, I can help, so I will help and see what those fools do with good and advice. In our case we appreciate great help, and set out to make it happen.

We’re open to good advice and constant comment. Sure improved the work we are doing here, and for that, here’s props, and another big fat thank you to Zack, and a big hope that all of the readers will enjoy the results as we reduce obstacles to the reading and then the reacting.