Abolition 2.0

Peer-to-Peer Recruitment Via Sub-Communities

2011-09-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

The most cost-effective way to build an online movement is through peer-to-peer recruitment. The key challenge is to give supporters both an incentive to reach out to others and an effective method for enlisting their sympathetic friends. People are more likely to recruit their friends—and friends are more likely to accept—if the cause seems specific to an identity they share.

Let’s take the case of a national advocacy organization: “Americans Against Domestic Violence.” Building the constituency could be greatly accelerated by creating informal sub-communities of supporters based on a more specific identity. For example, since I grew up in Oklahoma, I would probably have more success inviting my high school buddies to connect with “Oklahomans Against Domestic Violence” than recruiting them to join the national organization. And those who accepted the Oklahoma connection would be much more likely to spread the word to their fellow Oklahomans.

Continuing with the geographic identity example, once the initial states had been selected, Americans Against Domestic Violence (AADC) could create a Facebook page and online petition site for each state, co-branded with AADC and the state-specific name. Each site would offer members a chance to pledge support for AADC’s goals and to recruit their fellow community members to the cause. AADC could email (and direct mail) its current list in each state to ask supporters to become the charter members for their community and to reach out to people within their state.

Although the recruitment would be state-focused, the goal would be to collect email addresses that could be used for general AADC communication and fundraising. AADC could also post general messages and campaigns on each state-specific Facebook page. In addition, certain volunteers in each state could be given administrative power to post state-specific content for their own communities.

This state-specific strategy offers a great opportunity to concentrate movement-building efforts on those states that are key to passing AADC legislation. Even Congressional districts can be targeted via Facebook ads.

Many people would be motivated to sign up because taking a stand as, for example, an Oklahoman Against Domestic Violence is a powerful way to show pride in the state. A sense of competition can be developed between the states—for example by pointing out that the number of supporters of the Texas fan page has just surpassed Oklahoma’s. The use of Google maps to show the locations of supporters in each state could provide further incentive to join. It could be especially effective to display supporters alongside domestic violence crime locations on the same map.

S.F 49er Fans Against Domestic Violence? Willing to join?

While geographic communities offer the distinct advantages identified above, it would also be wise to test communities based on other aspects of identity, such as colleges (students or alumni), professional sports teams, careers, or specific employers. All of these examples leverage bonds of shared community and opportunities to express pride in one’s group. Because people are more likely to accept an invitation to join an informal community based on shared identity, this approach encourages effective peer-to-peer recruitment and should result in the rapid growth of an organization’s supporters.

Why Sign? Can Online Petitions Create Change?

2011-08-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

Many people deride online petitions as ineffective "Slacktivism" or worse since they might deter someone from taking effective action by giving the false sense that the signer has made an impact. I disagree.

Petitions can be a critical channel of communication that can build awareness for many issues. They challenge individuals to decide whether or not to take a stand, and provide an easy way for people to publicize their opinions and recruit others to lend their support. Facebook can be an extraordinary medium to amplify this process because it can leverage an individual’s personal connections to help a campaign go viral and reach people who would otherwise never be touched. How else will my Oklahoma high school buddies have a chance to consider same-sex civil rights?

At the same time, a petition like the Food Declaration can be an extremely effective way to expand your network of supporters who can help apply pressure on legislators and provide financial contributions. And, in my experience, those who sign up online are much more likely to respond to online requests for action than connections made via face-to-face canvassing.

But some petitions are more effective than others. Ideally they demand something that has a good chance of actually being achieved. For example, here's a petition campaign I drafted in response to a request to improve on an existing petition on Change.org.

First, to set the context, here's my wording of the text that introduces the issue on the campaign page:

Tell Trader Joe’s: Don’t Dump Good Food

Every year in America we throw out 96 billion pounds of food, much of it still good to eat. Grocery stores are dumping food every day that could feed hungry people.

This is where we start to reverse this unacceptable waste of food. Trader Joe’s prides itself as “giving back to our local communities.” But the movie “Dive!” shows huge amounts of good food discarded in their dumpsters.

Send a message to the grocery stores that you care about the environment and hungry people. Sign this petition to tell Trader Joe’s to act on its principles and cut its food waste in half.

The original campaign asks: "Please initiate a Zero Food Waste corporate-wide policy!" I Googled "zero food waste policy" and couldn't find a definition for it. It sounded like a reference to a certification program, but I don't think one exists. Hopefully it will some day. In the mean time, Trader Joe's management hasn't responded to the petition even though it has 78,000 signatures.

However, I doubt they ever will, since it asks for "zero waste" which is impossible. But what if we asked for something that they just might agree to? In my work at Roots of Change, I learned that the first step in reducing environmental impact is just to measure it. So my "demand" would be for Trader Joe's to measure food waste and to cut it in half over the course of three years. Not exactly a slogan that would send people to the barricades, but one to which I can imagine the management responding. Here's the full letter I drafted:

Dear Mr. Bane,

Trader Joe’s has a reputation for being environmentally friendly and supporting local communities. I’m writing to ask you to build on this reputation by acting to help solve an urgent problem: the estimated 96 billion pounds of food that are thrown away in the U.S each year. Reducing this waste would prevent significant damage to the environment and could provide nutrition for millions of hard-pressed citizens.

This statement from Trader Joe’s website is a clear sign of your concern: “We continuously strive to improve our processes in our efforts to reduce food waste and provide hunger relief.” I ask that you establish your reputation as the most socially conscious grocery chain by making this commitment: “to measure the amount of food that Trader Joe’s throws out annually and reduce it by 50% over three years.”

This issue is so important to me that if you’ll take this critical step, I’ll pledge to help publicize your good work and urge my friends to support you.

I look forward to learning about your response through Change.org. With your cooperation, we can work together to maintain a healthier planet and feed more people by reducing food waste.

Sincerely,

In addition to the specific demand, the overall tone is changed to one of collaboration to solve the problem. And it offers a carrot if they are willing to agree.

The next draft is the email alert sent to supporters to trigger signatures.
Even though the petition itself sets a collaborative tone, the letter to supporters is more urgent and dramatic. Note that it also clarifies where this particular action fits into the overall effort to reduce grocery store waste. I especially like the subject line - designed to maximize the open rate.

Subject Line – Stop Trashy Behavior at Trader Joe’s

Dear ________,

Every year in America we throw out 96 billion pounds of food -- much of it is still OK to eat. Meanwhile, people across the country are going to bed hungry. This is unacceptable.

Join the voices that say that tossing out good food is terrible, and take the first step to reverse course. Call on Trader Joe’s to drastically reduce its waste—specifically, to measure the amount of food it throws away each year and cut it in half.

This petition was started by dumpster-diving Jeremy Seifert. In his movie “Dive!” Jeremy shows Trader Joe’s dumpsters full of food—a dozen eggs thrown away because one is cracked, a crate of bananas tossed because of a few brown spots, intact packages of fresh spinach stacked in the trash—and says, “it’s about more than not wasting food. It’s about making sure everyone has enough to eat.”

This campaign is completely winnable. Jeremy selected Trader Joe’s because the management is sensitive to its reputation for being socially conscious. They will act when they understand the depth of consumers’ concerns.

And Trader Joe’s is just the first step. Once it sets a standard for waste reduction, Change.org will pressure other grocery chains to publicly meet or exceed those standards. That way we can destroy the assumption that it’s OK to toss healthy food.

Here’s your chance to cause real, measurable change with a simple action. But it can only work if people like you act, and if you ask your friends to join in. Be the spark that changes the world.

http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-trader-joes-dont-dump-good-food

Thank you for taking action.

Even campaigns that ask for the moon can effectively communicate messages and gather support. But whenever possible, as in this case, why not step it up and demand something that could actually happen? That way the campaign gains credibility--and more support. And it greatly increases the chance of a campaign victory. By referencing that victory, we can undercut the "what difference does it make?" argument and set up even more credible, more powerful follow-up campaigns.

How to Leverage Networks and Change the World - with only $5,000

2011-07-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

I majored in Communications a long ago. My senior thesis was a film portrait of a United Farm Worker boycott organizer. I was also volunteering to help picket Safeways and liquor stores selling Gallo wine. Later on, I joined up with a well-known documentary filmmaker, Peter Adair, and served as producer for several works he directed under the Adair and Armstrong banner. Until last year, with the exception of a 40^th birthday surprise for my wife, I hadn’t directed a video since my college days.

A couple of years ago, the Ohana Foundation, funded by musician Jack Johnson, awarded Roots of Change a grant of $5,000 to help create a more sustainable food system in the U.S. After thinking long and hard about how to use the money to create a significant impact, we came up with the idea of a call-to-action video, presenting some of the sharpest sustainable food issues and offering a brief review of some of the efforts to change course. ROC's key mission, in my mind, is to support the work of other organizations from many issue areas connected with food and farming: social justice groups including labor and healthy food access, environment, and production agriculture. That’s why we decided the video should also serve as a showcase for key food and farming groups and offer viewers a chance to connect with them and support their efforts.

I woke up with a vision for the video a little over a year ago: just text and still images over a Bo Diddly drum beat. We hired Adam Goldstein to search for and edit the images. At first we tried combining the images and text but Adam convinced me of the wisdom of separating them so that the viewer could focus on one thing at time. Daniela Aceves and Shoshona Bochner dug for dozens more photos until we were satisfied. Daniela cleared the rights, contacted all the organizations, and set up the webpages. Michael Becker, our composer from the old Adair and Armstrong days, created the sound track pretty much as a favor. ROC President Michael Dimock provided the food system expertise and editorial guidance. The title “Food Movement Rising” was inspired by Michael Pollan’s article in the New York Times book review section. He generously allowed us to use the name and Tweeted his support.

Many people find the video too fast to absorb. My hope is that the speed and power of the images trigger an emotional engagement so that they’ll watch multiple times and spread the word to their friends.

To me, the most critical and compelling aspect of this campaign is what happens after the video. ROC offers a web page with logos and descriptions of 26 organizations and the chance to simply check a box to connect with as many of them as you choose. We did this without requiring any of the organizations to promise to publicize the campaign. At the same time we hope these groups and many other people see its value and lend their support: by publicizing this one video and connection page, you are really supporting the overall movement. This fits well with ROC’s role to encourage a wide variety of organizations to work together to change the food system. And it communicates our message that all the issues need to be dealt with simultaneously to create very basic, system-level change.

I’ve now moved on from ROC but I'm still supporting their efforts. So far, the video has almost 4,000 hits on YouTube. I’d appreciate any feedback and, of course, any promotion of the video and campaign that you feel you can muster. Here's the link to the ROC - http://rootsofchange.org/campaign/food-movement-rising After the video, click on Connect. Thank you.

The Hero’s Journey – The Story of How We Reverse Climate Change

2011-07-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

What’s the story? Do you feel the dramatic tension in this point in history? Despite years of high-level political struggle against climate change, the rate of carbon emissions worldwide increased 5.8 percent from 2009 to 2010. Even Obama seems unable to make reduction of carbon use a priority and instead calls for the expansion of oil drilling in the Arctic and deep offshore. How will we reverse climate change? The ending of this story is still being written.

Long ago, and, it feels, far away, I worked in interactive storytelling and learned about the Hero’s Journey, a dramatic structure identified by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero With a Thousand Faces.” This type of story forms the backbone of countless myths and quite a few movie scripts. In a common plot point, the main character refuses a challenge to act heroically. There’s a problem, but the path to action is not clear or perhaps others take responsibility. In Star Wars, Luke initially refuses Obi Wan’s request to join the rebel effort, saying he must tend the farm instead.

I’m not sure when I first heard about global warming, but Al Gore’s PowerPoint-turned-video “Inconvenient Truth” was a clear call to action. And in response I recycled more. I drove less. I put in more twisted light bulbs. But I didn’t feel like a hero. The threat was clear but my deeper role was not.

And I guess I assumed someone else was going to solve the problem. I’ve lost that sense now. Climate change is not being reversed, it’s getting worse.

Last month I heard about a brand new organization, Solar Mosaic, which created a way to for individuals to take matters into their own hands. You can directly reduce carbon emissions by lending money to others to install solar panels. Typically, the panels are installed in community institutions – your local school for example. You and other community members can lend $100 or more to fund an installation. And everyone wins. The school or other project host gets interest-free financing for solar panels. Their reduced energy bill pays back your investment over time. And meanwhile, you’ve directly slowed climate change.

This breakthrough presents a whole new opportunity, a path so clear that it embodies a call to action: “ If not you, who? If not now, when?”

Essentially, Solar Mosaic offers you the role of the hero. But in order to fully assume the role, and to reverse the momentum of climate change, mere participation is not enough. Today the hero must also reach out and make the call to others and lead them to act, so that they too can be a hero.

Solar Mosaic supports two paths of leadership. They’ll make it simple for you to recruit your friends and family to join you as investors. And Solar Mosaic staff will guide you through the process of identifying a new installation site and organizing a new cluster of community supporters.

In this way, by acting and leading, you can be a spark that ignites and expands the struggle against climate change, from hero to hero. You can help create an overwhelming force like this summer’s Texas wildfires, and cause installations to sprout up around the world, supported by tens of millions of heroes.

But how will this movie play out? In Star Wars, Luke only accepts the hero’s role after the murder of his aunt and uncle. Will we leave it to others and wait until climate change has caused terrible damage and the task of reversing the effects is overwhelming? Or will we now accept the Solar Mosaic challenge and embrace the role of the hero? The next chapter is up to you.

Consider taking the first step of the Hero’s Journey: Watch this 1-minute video and link to Solar Mosaic.

Online Community Conference - YouTube's Hong Qu

2007-11-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

YouTube sent Hong Qu to OCS2007 to talk about their special program for non-profit organizations. (That's me on the left.)

According to the the promotion on the home page of http://youtube.com/nonprofits

"Your Nonprofit channel includes:

* Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
* Rotation of your videos in the "Promoted Videos" areas throughout the site
* The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout "Donate" button"

Apparently approved non-profits aren't limited to 10 minute videos.

Among the participating partners is one of the organizations that Omidyar Network supports:
http://youtube.com/youthnoise Check it out and you'll get some sense of the possibilities.

I really liked Hong Qu because he was so humble - the opposite of a public relations person. He's an interface designer. Just like Google/YouTube to send a UI person. For example - when someone predicted YouTube's downfall, he didn’t get defensive, he just said “we’ll have to wait and see.” When asked how non-profits were selected for special promotion he admitted that he didn't know. He shed some light about the management process at YouTube - he said they got a memo that a human had to review all the non-profits before they are allowed to use it – and the memo asked for volunteers.

Small world: Hong Qu works with Hunter Walk at YouTube. Hunter and I worked together at Linden Lab in the very early days of Second Life.

At this point organizations must have 501c3 nonprofit status - that means sorry to Canandians and others living outside the USA. But it's a nice start.

Why Second Life Could Help Improve the World

2007-06-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a recap and page of resources from the "MacArthur Foundation Enters Second Life" meeting last week - transcripts, video, photos, etc.

I went through the transcript and pulled out some key concepts that made the most meaning for me. Please check the previous post for more context.

- ROSEDALE: is Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life.
- FANTON: is MacArthur Foundation President, Jonathan Fanton.

The idea that SL makes it possible to quickly build trust -

FANTON: When you first started Second Life, did the notion of the public good effect any of your design? Do virtual worlds like Second Life help groups get together, discuss issues, and advance collective vision of the public good? Talk to us a little bit about those issues and activities.

ROSEDALE: Well, you know, I think that when we started, I know I, and a lot of us working on the technology, were very focused on the technology of creating a sort of a virtual world. But as we got it working in around 2003, people really started coming into it, we started to see the effect that being in this kind of very, very empowered, enabled, communicative environment had an effect on people. It made them close very rapidly, and it made them work together in certain ways.

That the transparency of SL makes the most of “People are Basically Good” -

YOWELL: Here’s a question for both of you from the Teen Grid. How can Linden Lab and residents, especially teen grid residents, work together to make sure this power is used morally, apart from cooperation with MacArthur? And that’s for either Jonathan or Philip.

ROSEDALE: I bet Jonathan has perspective on this that’s probably quite unique from mine. I think what I would say is that we have a deep belief that with the high degree of transparency that exists in the virtual world, I believe that the virtual world is different in an important way, in that it is typically more transparent, more accessible, more communicative, it’s easier to see what’s going on, easier to travel within it than the real world. It is therefore more transparent than the world that we all live physically in today, and I believe, you know Pierre Omidyar, when he started eBay, he made the famous statement that he believed that eBay would work because people were basically good, that the majority of stuff that happened on eBay would be good and legitimate attempts by people to sell things to other people.

ROSEDALE: I think the same thing can be said here, that with the additional transparency we have, we won’t need to do anything, from a central perspective, to make people good and just in their actions here. I think they will be, the only think I hope I’ll be able to look back and say we did, was that we simply enabled, using the technology, a very, very, very transparent environment, and that that transparency was beneficial.

MacArthur’s hopes to have civil rights groups operate in SL -

FANTON: MacArthur supports about 1,000 local civil society groups all over the world: Action Health in Nigeria, working on sexuality education, Resources Himalaya in Nepal, working on protecting some of the most beautiful landscape in the world, the Nizhny Novgorod Committee Against Torture in Russia working against police abuse, or Fundar in Mexico, helping to strengthen the system of human rights ombudsmen. I’m hoping the MacArthur can encourage many of the civil rights organizations that it supports to operate in Second Life and other virtual worlds as well, so that there will be a civil society in virtual worlds that mirrors the civil society in the physical world.

SL as an empowering environment -

ROSEDALE: …So the most common type of content, if you will, in Second Life, is an individual building something that they are giving or showing or selling to the people in Second Life. It’s not a company. We’re just at the very beginning of that phase where larger organizations are starting to see Second Life as being of value, and I think, when they come, they’ll add a lot to Second Life, as they come. But I think profoundly, at its core, Second Life is an empowering platform, an open environment, for individuals. Historically and statistically, it’s much more individuals and that corporate ownership of Second Life is probably in the low, single digit percentages, in terms of looking at the land.

SL as a reputation system or network of trust -

ROSEDALE: …I think Second Life is already demonstrating an ability to let people build systems for reputation and trust that are effective, fast, and lightweight, and can go beyond what can be done in the real world. It’s a rich topic, I see somebody in the audience saying say more about that. It’s a really rich topic, and one where I think technology will, in the virtual environment, empower us. If you look at things like Grameen and how microlending is enabled in the real world by a network of trust, I think that the virtual world allows that sort of network to be potentially expanded in ways broader and faster than it is in the real world.

MacArthur Foundation to push the possibilities of Second Life

2007-06-22T12:25:00.001-07:00

It's hard to tell from this picture but about 200 people packed a sim to hear MacArthur Foundation President, Jonathan Fanton, and Founder and CEO of Linden Lab (makers of Second Life), Philip Rosedale launch MacArthur's experiment to use a virtual world to help create a better real world.

The discussion came across as quite groundbreaking with these two from quite different backgrounds recognizing the potential of working together and introducing a major philanthropic effort in a expanding virtual platform. It was especially encouraging to hear Philip quoting Pierre Omidyar and referencing Muhammad Yunus in describing how SL is transparent environment that empowers individuals.

Over at omidyar.net, we've talked a lot about the possibilities of non-profit efforts in SL. Despite the great success of Relay for Life, the population of Second Life may be still too small for most efforts to efficiently raise funds or recruit from the existing population.

I think non-profits efforts can get the most benefit from SL by using it to create virtual conferences and ongoing meetings so that people around the world who are already interested in a effort can connect, exchange information and work on real-world tasks together.

This morning about 25 people from around the world - primarily speaking French along with some English and Spanish - met at the Camp Darfur exhibit in Better World Island to organize anti-genocide efforts.

Jonathan Fanton suggested the possibility of supporting the use of SL to lobby the US to join the International Criminal Court. This might be a great test case to see how SL could be used as an organizing tool - connecting international members with those in the US and connecting organizers within all 50 states to coordinate their efforts to recruit members in the real world and activate them to put pressure on their representatives.

(Disclosure: my employer Omidyar Network, is an investor in Linden Lab - and as a former employee I own stock options.)

US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs - and global warming effects

2007-06-20T12:42:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Strange Maps - for publishing and to Mark Grimes and Josh Friedman at omidyar.net for pointing to it.

I love this map – and find it shocking. How can my home state of Oklahoma – which I remember as cows and oil wells – have the same GNP as Phillipines?

“Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year.”

How can Rhode Island equal Vietnam? Especially considering what half of Vietnam was able to do to France and the US.

Illinois and Mexico?

I imagine that to a large degree GDP reflects carbon footprint. Don’t you imagine this angers people in other countries? That one state, Texas, contributes as much to global warming as Canada? Alabama (!) as much as Iran. Arksansas and Pakistan. New Jersey and Russia?

The US is in real danger of being further isolated as the effects and the need to address global warming become clearer.

omidyar.net community member conference kicks off in Gulu, Uganda

2007-02-19T16:22:00.000-08:00

Over 100 omidyar.net community members came together today in war-torn northern Uganda to for a historic conference titled: Globalizing Local Change Through Online Communities.

This is an extraordinary conference in many ways. How often do the attendees convene on the front lines of a struggle rather than in a air-conditioned windowless room that could be anywhere in the world?

Heres the top news story that came up when I Googled "Gulu". "Starting today, some 560,000 internally displaced persons who are currently living in camps, returning to their homes or resettling after years of displacement will be receiving aid worth US $3.2 million from the ICRC." (Red Cross)

Here's another story that comes up: Teen resumes her education after two years in captivity in northern Uganda. The Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have resumed talks in Juba, Southern Sudan, to end the 20-year insurgency that has left over 1 million displaced.

Here's the invitation that describes the event - much open space meeting time coordinated by long-time omidyar.net community leader Ted Ernst. "Open space" takes on a new meaning when the meeting takes place in a room with no walls. It will interesting to see how they pull it off.

Here's list of the people attending - most of them from Uganda and Kenya - including 45 from the local Gulu community.

Keep an eye on this discussion for the latest reports from the conference.

(Disclosure: Omidyar Nework, my employer, is the host of the omidyar.net online community and has provided some support for Life in Africa and this conference.)

Preview of the film The Devil Came on Horseback

2007-02-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

Last week I got a chance to preview – The Devil Came on Horseback – a feature documentary about the genocide in Darfur.

Here’s a blurb - “THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK will expose the violence and tragedy of the genocide in Darfur as seen through the eyes of a lone American witness. Using thousands of uncompromising and exclusive photographs taken by former US Marine Captain Brian Steidle during his role as a military observer with the African Union, THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK leads you through the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens.”

(Disclosure: The film is supported by Humanity Unity, a group that is closely associated with Omidyar Network, my employer.)

It’s a very powerful and well-made film. It would be so easy to really screw up a documentary dealing with genocide. This is why it works so well.

In many fictional character-driven plots, the hero faces a dilemma, a call to action, resists it at first and later makes a heroic choice. For Brian the choice was not whether or not to go to Sudan. He was compelled by the financial reward. Brian’s challenge came after he returned to the US: He had the photos and the first hand account but going public with the story would cut him off from the possibility of similar contract work. The State Department also urged him not to rock the diplomatic boat – not to mount a campaign to expose the genocide that he witnessed first hand.

Brian is not a slick speaker which is good. He comes across as an ordinary Jimmy Steward kind of character -- reluctantly drawn into a complicated, evil plot. But he really does find his voice when speaking at a rally in Washington last spring. It’s really fun to see someone who you feel like you know getting nervous about addressing the crowd. Then he did such a great job that it sent chills down my back.

It sounds like the filmmakers are planning a theatrical release and a grassroots organizing campaign in conjunction. I’m not sure how well the film will do commercially since you’d expect many will lean toward lighter entertainment when facing the choice at the multiplex or the channel changer. Perhaps Al Gore paved the way for some success. Like “An Inconvenient Truth” the filmmakers have made a smart choice to focus on a character. Brian works well as a vehicle for audience members to imagine themselves on the same journey. Hopefully the promotion of the film can focus on this angle, and attract a wide audience.

Keep your eyes open for a chance to see it later this year.

In the mean time – you can take a look at the anti-genocide organizing going on at omidyar.net.

Can virtual world protests work?

2007-01-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

Second Life still has only 25,000 people at a time so one might think that protesting there might have the effect as staging a rally in my hometown of Ada, OK. Yet many of the people in SL are very connected with circles within and without that virtual world and the press has often taken an event in SL and amplified it because of its novelty.

Thanks to Rik and Beth for the heads up on a anti-escalation protest scheduled tomorrow - Monday at 2 pm PST in Second Life - Avatars Against the War! Actions for peace in the Metaverse Jan 27-29.

Iraq: More lessons from the Vietnam war

2007-01-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

Peter Beinart in Time magazine 1-29 edition re: the fear of Iran taking over Iraq:

"Americans worried during the Vietnam War that if we left, Hanoi would become a puppet of its wartime patron, Bejing. Instead, four years after the U.S. evacuated Saigon, Vietnam and China were at war. When American troops on your doorstep it's easy to make common cause."

In the New Yorker 1-22 reviewing Bush's announcement of escalation:

"In a sincere tone of voice, the President also announced a door-to-door campaign "to gain the trust of the Baghdad residents."

and later

"This was the advice given by McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson in a memo dated Feburary 7, 1965, concerning an escalation plan for Vietnam that Bundy thought might have as little as twenty-five-per-cent change of success:

"Even if it fails, the policy will be worth it. At a minimum it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.""

This advice coming almost ten years before the end of the Vietnam War. Don't tell me there is a chance we will still be fighting in Iraq in ten years.

Various thoughts about Iraq

2007-01-15T15:20:00.000-08:00

Two of Saddam's associates were hung recently. One of them was beheaded, perhaps accidently. A spokesperson from the Iraqi qoverment said that this execution showed that they were making great progress in terms of exectutions. This may be true considering that Saddam's had elements of being lynched by Shiites.

Bush apparently thinks that anything Congress tries to do to cut funding of the increase in troops won't have any effect for at least a couple of month's. He is hoping that he will have some positive results to show by then. If he is right about the timing then the possible upside is that when the lawmakers do get around to cutting funding (and if Bush doesn't have any positive results) that they will be so pissed off at him that they will be talking about forcing an overall withdrawl rather than simply blocking the escalation.

In Bush's speech he blamed Iran and Syria for much of the trouble in Iraq. This tactic flies in the face of the independent report that called for us to negotiate with Iran and Syria to help figure a solution. One analyst said that the recent raid on an Iranian embassy was designed to provoke Iran into doing something that the US could use an excuse to retaliate. The scary thing is that if Bush is determined to go his own way despite the lack of public and expert support, then why wouldn't he go ahead and bomb Iran and Syria?

Apparently one unit of the Iraqi army that the Iraqi goverment is promising to send to Bagdad is Kurdish. I've long admired the Kurds since they seemed like such underdogs and don't have their own country. But sending them into this mess - where as I understand it they don't speak Arabic and they are hated by both the Shiites and Sunnis - seems like a huge mistake. In a way it's a microcosm of sending US troops in. Both sides will stop shooting at each other and turn their guns on the Kurds and the US troops as soon as we show up.

Dean wants you to write a letter to the editor

2007-01-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

In a mass email from the Democratic party, Howard Dean says "The most effective thing you can do right now is send a letter to the editor of your local paper about escalation, and let them know that you demand a vote on any troop increase. Writing your letter to the editor is simple using our PartyBuilder advocacy tools. Just click here to get started"

I did it and it's easy. I sent a email letter to the SF Chronicle and the NY Times in one stroke. Afterwards the site prompted me to email the link to ten friends.

This feels more productive than writing representatives somehow. Perhaps because it seems that it's a new thing and the newspapers might respond to hundreds of thousands of letters even if they don't print the one you send.

Feinstein needs a call?

2007-01-11T12:55:00.001-08:00

My wife went to the anti-escalation rally at San Francisco City Hall at noon today and the word there is that Diane Feinstein has not yet come out against Bush's proposed increase in troops for Iraq. On her site it lists: Phone: (202) 224-3841 Or in California - (415) 393-0707.

What's the best way to bring the troops home?

2007-01-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

Bush announced an escalation of the war in Iraq on Wednesday night.

For the first time in a long time it feels like history is hanging in balance and that an expression of popular opinion might tip it in positive direction.

I'm ready to email my friends and ask them to join in effort to counter Bush's plan for more troops and email their friends as well. But it's not clear to me what's the best action to suggest.

(Edit on 1-9 - One thing seems clear to me. One person acting won't make any difference. The only way to defeat this is if you contact your friends as well.)

There is Moveon.org's petition . It automatically sends the petition to your particular representative. You can also make a contribution there to pay for advertising. I signed a personalized note and contributed $25.

(Edit on 1-9 - I also found Care2's petition and signed it. Very easy. The plus is that you get to see the comments from the people who preceeded you. Plus you can see that there is a new one every 15 sec. That helps.

These efforts are important because I can imagine someone saying "well, we never saw that many signatures so quickly from that group, there must be something going on."

I encourage you to take advantage of these petitions since they are set up to do this sort of thing at the moment. But I realize that that any message filtered through these groups is suspect from the POV of many recipients of the message. So...)

I'm looking for additional actions to take and to recommend to others. What would best get the attention of the people who might stand up and vote down the escalation? I appreciate your ideas.

(Edit 1-9 - My smart, connected friend (who shall go nameless since she terminated our IM session to take a call) says to focus on Kennedy's effort and use phone calls, faxes, and letters to key representatives, especially those other than Pelosi and the California Senators. So, here's a site of the contact info for Senators. And another for Congress.)

Here and here are earlier thoughts about getting out of Iraq.

(Edit 1-9 - if you act based on this post, please add a short comment - that helps move the thing along.)

2007-01-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

Another great way to push commuters out of their cars and onto trains would be to provide a wifi signal.

I read yesterday that Autonet Mobile is offering a wifi signal for cars for $50 a month and it supports multiple users. Other orgs offer similar services.

Apparently Google already offers a wified van to pool it’s employees who live in SF.

And here is someone in Seattle offering guerilla wifi on a commuter train.

It sounds good to me especially on the newer trains that are smooth running and have lots of tables for laptop use. I can imagine current car drivers thinking through the possibility of getting a headstart on their workday rather than listening to the radio whle stuck in another traffic jam.

I’m writing this on the train in fact but no way to post it until I get home.

Empty trains due to lack of secure parking at 22nd Street Station

2006-12-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

I live in San Francisco and drive a couple of miles to the 22nd Street train station to ride to Redwood City. It's the first stop going south out of SF. The train is great but really underused. Sometimes there are only a couple of other people in the front car.

Parking at the downtown station costs about $10 a day. Parking here is free.

Some of the people at work tell me they decided to take the train but drive by and can't find a parking space so they just hop on 280 and drive the 30 miles to work.

Actually there are always parking spaces but unless you get there really early then they are often sketchy. The station is built underneath 280 which is great in the rain but makes the area seem scarier after dark. My car has never been broken into but you can occasionally see the broken glass created by other break-ins.

What we need is some secure parking. I think many would be willing to pay for it. There are three people in my company of 30 who say they would take the train from here if there were secure parking. Lots of youngish people do get on the train here, lots of laptops, Yahoo! backpacks. My brother-in-law at eBay boards here a couple of times a week. I'm pretty sure that the popularity of this station started with the rise of Silicion Valley and it's easy to imagine that the same people who moved into the Mission, Potrero, and Noe Valley because it was the Valley side of SF are the same people taking the train from here.

I think that the authorities who are in charge of such things as parking and security and cleaning out around stations haven't really noticed how popular the station is. It could be much more popular.

One of the guys at work who boards here suggests that a multi-level lot be built over the bus depot next door. There is also a huge nearly vacant parking lot nearby at a company called Trayer that would work well.

Anyway, my sense is there are hundreds of people driving to the Valley who would switch to the train if we could figure out how to provide the parking for them. That translates into a quite a few tons of carbon that doesn't go into the air.

Bush asks for bigger army

2006-12-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

Bush announced he wants to increase the number of troops in the army and marines over the long term. This is a smart move on his part and clearly paves the way for his surge proposal.

I think it's a very bad idea because more troops allow the president to get us into more situations like Iraq when we should at least be relying on UN actions. It does somewhat address the problem of troops having to extend their stay in Iraq so it will have public support.

The bright side is that this gives the Democrats a way to prove they are in support of the troops if they should decide to cut funding for Iraq. In that case I think the trade off would be worth it and the "more troops in the long term" decision will backfire on Bush.

Exiting Iraq - My Vietnam experience - 35 years ago

2006-12-17T16:45:00.000-08:00

I was visiting my parents in my home town of Ada, Oklahoma last summer and ran across this clipping from the Stanford Daily, November 1971.

What I find interesting about this photo:

1. Where are the women? I don't remember it that way and certainly when things heated up in spring of 1972 that had shifted.

2. It's also strange how these two police trusted us enough to mix in with our little crowd. We even lent one of them our bullhorn according to the caption.

I was part of the group in the photo, a freshman, protesting the war in Vietnam. I'm in the upper left. The year before I played on the state champion football team. But by 1971, even a football player from Ada, Oklahoma knew that we should be out of Vietnam. I got a bad (low) draft lottery number in the summer of 1971 but luckily the draft was winding down and I barely missed that experience. I had no idea of what I would have done.

Iraq makes me very anxious. I protested before we went in, and when we went in. But I haven't done much since. At first it wasn't totally clear that that getting out immediately was the best thing. After all, we brought the war to them and we should stick around to make it right.

Now it's clear that we are just digging a deeper hole. It feels very much like Vietnam where there was a very strong argument that we had to stay to prevent more bloodshed. It's an awful situation but prolonging won't help.

I even remember that we introduced more troops into Vietnam even after the policy of slowly reducing our involvment was announced. As today the justification was that we have to improve the situation to make it possible to withdraw.

I was so glad when the Democrats won the House and Senate. The recent report also lowered my anxiety about the war, feeling that there's no way Bush is going to stay the course when so many are against him. I even imagined Bush asking the Iraqis to vote on whether or not we should stay, and justifying the pull out in that way.

But now the news suggests that Bush is considering a surge of more troops. Even as public opinion surges against having any there at all. I've read some Democrat say that they won't cut funding, that they will wait until the next presidential election. That's too long to wait.

My memory of the end of the Vietnam war came when Congress cut funding. This is confirmed by Wikipedia -

"In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon. Nixon, threatened with impeachment because of Watergate, had resigned his office. Gerald R. Ford, Nixon's vice-president stepped in to finish his term. The new president vetoed the Foreign Assistance Act, but his veto was overridden by Congress."

I keep asking my friends what they think will happen in Iraq. I haven't heard anything that makes me feel confident about a good solution.While I haven't actively pushed against our involvement since we went in, this feels like a historic moment that offers possibilities.

I'm hoping very much that Congress will cut funding and I'll be trying to figure out what the best way to encourage them to do that.

An interesting coincidence is that my son is 18 and a freshman in college - the color photo below. I know Bush is resisting starting the draft but if another war starts before we get out of Iraq then he might do it. There is nothing that gets me more angry than the thought of him getting drafted into a war like this.

Perla Ni at the Online Community Summit

2006-12-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

Thomas Kriese and I were at the Online Community Summit on Oct 5 and 6 where about 75 professionals gather in very cute Sonoma to swap stories of online communities .

I was very lucky to have Perla Ni riding shotgun on the rainy trip up. Perla was founder and former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review among many other famous things. She was also one of the presenters at the non-profit pre-conference Thursday morning.

She feels that most non-profit websites aren’t emotionally engaging – offering stock photos and cold information and a “donate here” button. She offers a cure: make it possible for the people that the group serves to put up content on the site – either text, video or podcasts. She showed a very cool Canadian site - homelessnation.org - that puts up new videos portraits of homeless made by volunteers. It turns out that most homeless people have very interesting stories to tell. New videos appear each week and Perla returns regularly to see what's new.

Of course nonprofits might fear losing control of the message. But direct communication gives the site an authenticity that should more than make up for any uneasiness. And it makes it possible for visitors to feel like they are in contact with the real people who they would like to help.

Perla has also software that allows non-profits transform their websites via the collection and display of user created content. She passed on the chance to toot her own horn in her presentation.

She is also the CEO of a nonprofit called GreatNonprofits – taking advantage of the grassroots democratization of the web to aggregate and share information about nonprofits.

Here's a pic from the summit: Perla on the left and Gail Ann Williams is the Director of Communities at Salon.com.

Being a refugee

2006-12-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

This post presumes familiarity with the 3D online world Second Life. Disclosures: I work at Omidyar Network which is an investor in Linden Lab the company that runs Second Life. I used to work at Linden Lab and have stock options in the company.

Years ago, a friend of mine returned from a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and described a very powerful interactive exhibit. Visitors are issued an ID card for a real person who suffered in the Holocaust and was the same sex and age as the visitor in 1940. Here’s a description I found via Google.

"I entered the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, I received Identification Card #2855. For the next four hours I became Malvin Katz Fried, a real Hungarian Jewish woman about my own age during the Holocaust.The industrial steel elevator I took to start my tour on the fourth floor immediately seemed as confining as the railroad boxcars that carried so many Jews to their deaths. Then as I threaded my way inexorably downward, through the history the displays recount, I lived Malvin's times and her personal story."

Two years ago, a group of Second Life residents created “Neverland,” which recreated Londonin 1900. A wonderful part of the environment was the fact that free avatars were available to visitors. You could choose not just a costume but also a set of body characteristics that turned you into a pirate, policeman, or various Victorian characters. So you were essentially transformed and the sense of belonging, of being immersed in the environment, was much richer. Eventually Neverland made the New World Notes, was Slashdotted and written up in the New York Times.

Consider if these ideas were combined in Second Life as a way to encourage people to empathize with refugees in Darfur .We could take the stories of real life refugees, combine elements into ten different lives and create ten avatars to represent them. Visitors could select a character that reflects their own sex and age and transform their regular avatar into that of the refugee.

After the visitor assumes their appearance, he or she can be directed on a journey through the camp to learn about the refugees’ history – why they came to the camp, their family, and even their personality. At the same time the visitor can learn about the issues camp-dwellers face over the course of a day: food, water, shelter, hygiene, etc. as well as information about what needs to be done to improve the situation.

The key to Neverland’s success was attracting the volunteer efforts of the best avatar creators, builders and coders in Second Life. I think this is the sort of idea that would excite them and it would be easy to recruit them to our cause.

I feel like if the idea succeeds like I think it can, it will be extremely popular inside Second Life. It also has the potential to create a much wider impact through publicity, attract more people to omidyar.net and spark more activism.

Seeing Yourself in Africa

2006-11-26T16:51:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about how to encourage citizens of the United States to feel more of a connection with people around the world.

I’ve always loved maps.

I’d like to see a map of the United States morphed into the shape of Africa so that each state was overlaid onto outlines of the African countries. And vice versa – how do the countries of African fit over the states of the US.

Animations of these would make cool videos for YouTube.

And further – how about a data base so that:

According to Wikipedia, there are 61 territories in Africa so it would be interesting to see how these match up with the 50 states in the US. Which is most similar in population, type of industry, geography, etc. That way if I lived in, say, Oklahoma, I could see what countries had the most in common with my state.

And take it even further – what towns have the most in common with the town I live in.

And further – within a given country – show a profile of someone who has a similar place in society in terms of sex, age, class, education, line of work, etc.

Does anyone know if anything like this is out there? Or who might be interested in creating such items? And what groups would be interested in using them and help publicize them?