2009 10 11
Comments Off on National Equality March: some highlights via Twitter
#p2 and prioritizing diversity: background reading for Thursday’s tweeting
#p2 tweeting* Thursday April 30
7-8PM Pacific/10-11PM Eastern
Draft agenda and discussion here
Please join us!
Twitter is an opportunity to engage with communities currently marginalized by the “progressive blogosphere”
— Tracy Viselli and Jon Pincus, The #p2 Hashtag and Strategies for Progressives on Twitter on The Exception
#p2 is a resource for progressives who prioritize diversity and empowerment
— #p2’s wiki and Twitter profile
Because #p2 (aka “progressives 2.0”) is the closest thing to a broad communication mechanism for progressives on Twitter so far, I’m not sure how many people realize that the primary focus is on diversity. So here’s some background reading about #p2 for Thursday’s tweeting on how progressives can organize more effectively on Twitter.
Let’s start with a question that I think doesn’t get asked enough.
Do progressives care about diversity?
#amazonfail and we’re not done yet: links and perspectives (UPDATED with new links)
Update, April 21: added some additional links here
Amazon’s stock has recovered, bouyed by Friday’s report that Kindle sales have exceeded expectations. Traffic on the #amazonfail hashtag is much lighter. The auction for AmazonFail.com is over, at least for the time being.
But I don’t think this issue’s going away quite that quickly.
Right now it feels like everybody’s taking a step back and reflecting. There’s general agreement on the narrative described in the National Coalition Against Censorship’s #amazonfail explained in a flowchart and there’s a theme starting to emerge in the tweets on #amazonfail and blog posts:
It’s not over.
Tweet the silence! #dayofsilence Twitter chat today at 3:30 PM Eastern/12:30 Pacific
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The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Each year the event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.
11-year-old Carl Walker-Hoover took his own life last week after constant bullying, including daily taunts of being gay. yet another reminder of how important this issue is to kids and anybody who cares about them. This year, the National Day of Silence is Friday, April 17. Tweet the silence is a way for everybody to support the students standing up against anti-LGBT bullying … and to help create more awareness of the issue.
#digg it!: initial experimental results — and let’s try it again!
please digg, retweet, and follow on twitter
Update, 2:30 PM: please also digg and retweet the Nordstrom action alert
Update 4:30 PM: Jen Nedeau’s Can social media save the day? has more
Last Friday’s #Digg it! A proposal for women of color, feminists, and progressives on Twitter experiment went remarkably well for a first attempt. Here’s the data.
Two of the for posts sent to Twitter with a #digg tag got significant retweeting. While it’s hard to know for sure, looking at the names of the diggers it seems that we were also getting some additional diggs via Twitter. The table below also includes the total number of diggs as of 3 PM Pacific time on Friday
| Post | tweets | total diggs | from Twitter (estimate) |
| Don’t Divorce Me | 8 | 30 | 6-10 |
| #digg it | 5 | 28 | 5-8 |
| Lilly Ledbetter | 1 | 22 | 1-3 |
| NO on Collins-Nelson | 2 | 6 | 1-3 |
Eight retweets may not sound like a lot, But looking at it differently, those 8 retweets reached over 700 followers plus however many people are following the #topprog, #lgbt, and #jti* channels — and had a measurable impact on digg results. According to retweetist popular URLs get retweeted by over 100 people in a 24 hour period so there’s clearly significant upside here. And of course there are lessons about how to do it better.
Like I say, great results for a first attempt.
So let’s try it again! Please digg and retweet.
And please also digg at least one of the first posts (1, 2, 3, 4). While it’s too late to get any of them on to digg’s front page, this is still a very useful way of tracking how far this discussion has spread. Thanks!
To follow along on Twitter, using the new improved magic incantation.*
Additional discussion, and a little more data, below the fold.
Neocons’ worst nightmare: net movements intersecting in Ideas for Change in America
DREAM Activists and undocumented youth, the Stonewall 2.0 LGBTQ movement, Get FISA Right and civil libertarians, peace activists — together again for the first time, along with a demand for accountability for the last 8 years.  Scary stuff. 🙂
Read on for more … and please digg it!
It’s been surprising to me how little attention change.org’s Ideas for Change in America competition has gotten. David Herbert mentioned it in the National Journal and Nancy Scola on techPresident; of course the competitors have blogging a lot (for example me, at Liminal States, Get FISA Right, and Pam’s House Blend, promoting my idea Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties and the others I’ve endorsed). But in the broader political, progressive or technology-in-politics blogospheres? Very little.
Here’s my attempt to describe its importance.
Stonewall 2.0: Repeal DOMA!
The vibe under the sunshine at the corner of Castro and Market was positive and determined — a few hundred people maybe (I’m horrible at estimating), just the right size for the location. The immediate purpose was to organize for signature-gathering for the Open Letter to President Obama, with people fanning out afterwards to BART stops, busy street-corners, the Gaza protest … in the broader context, it’s another building block in the “Stonewall 2.0” wave of activism catalyzed by groups like Join the Impact and Courage Campaign that I’ve blogged about in Petitions are soooooo 20th century and Taking social network activism (and LGBTQ rights) to the next level.
One way to take action now: gather signatures for the open letter. There’s a very short deadline of Monday but that’s still plenty of time to help — even “just” hitting the friends-and-family circuit the way we are can make a big difference. And of course help get the word out about the effort.
| Another way you can help: vote in change.org’s Idea for Change in America competition. Jen Nedeau’s idea Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT Couples Nationwide is in fifth place so far. The top 10 ideas when voting ends on January 15 will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and some great non-profit partners. There are a lot of other great ideas there being promoted very effectively* so any assistance here would be greatly appreciated. |
Join the Impact: taking social network activism (and LGBTQ rights) to the next level
By Monday morning,* a plan had emerged: Cities around the country would organize their own efforts to coordinate a synchronized protest for Sat., Nov. 15, 10:30 a.m. PST. The movement became officially global with hits from the UK and France, and by Nov. 11, over one million visitors had come to the site.
Across the country, posts on Craigslist, bulletins on MySpace, and emails on ListServs with titles like “Meet at City Hall next weekend!†and “Upset about Prop 8? Here’s what YOU can do about it,†began to buzz with notice of the upcoming national protest.
Nancy Scola’s Once a Local Legal Battle, Is Prop 8 On Its Way to ‘Net-Fueled Cultural Moment? on techPresident puts Join the Impact in context: “Its success is reminiscent of Columbia’s anti-FARC movement launched on Facebook that spawned protests all over the world.” Yeah, really.
Online activism in response to anti-LGBTQ propositions
There’s a huge amount of activism going on in response to Prop 8 in California and the other anti-LGBTQ state propositions that passed. A few I know about:
- Join the Impact is focused on a national day of protest on November 15. Their Google Group and Patrick’s post on Pam’s House Blend have more.
- The Courage Campaign’s Repeal Prop 8 has a Facebook group and an online petition here.
- The Repeal Prop 8 TV ad group on Facebook is discussing how to use
- Mormons Stole our Rights also have a petition and are up on Facebook and MySpace
I have no idea whether these groups are working together yet, at least at the level of coordinating strategy and avoiding duplication of effort … hopefully they will be soon.
Please get involved with the ones you find most promising — and invite your friends!
Also, I’m sure there are a ton of other efforts out there … if you know of others, please add them in comments.
Petitions are soooooo 20th century
I set up a petition here, and I’ll be sending the comments onward to John Podesta and Michael Strautmanis of the Obama transition team.
— Matt Stoller, Larry Summers At Treasury: A Fox in the Henhouse, OpenLeft
The first two replies to Matt’s post were
JoelN: Is it still possible to start new ‘MyBO’ groups?
Oly: I would like to see the netroots take up the anti-Summers cause as we took up the anti-Bayh cause.
When I made a similar suggestion later on Thursday in another thread, Matt responded by banning me.  Continue Reading »