Content submitted by Mary tagged with "moveon"

Is MoveOn Taking the Right Position on Iraq?

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 10/04/2008 at 13:31

One of the reasons I am so excited about digital activism is that it gives a very public voice to people with few financial resources (start a free blog and you instantly have a potential audience of millions). In short, digital activism empowers ordinary citizens to have a significant impact on world affairs

But with this privilege comes responsibility. If the Internet allows ordinary citizens to influence world affairs we have to think very carefully about how we use that influence. Case in point: MoveOn's campaign to get American troops out of Iraq. Above is a video they

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My Afternoon with the Co-Founder of MoveOn

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 25/10/2007 at 19:10

The event poster

Last Friday I helped bring Joan Blades, co-founder of the progressive online organization MoveOn and the feminist organization MomsRising, to speak at the Kennedy School, where I am a grad student. The event was serendipitous. A few weeks ago Lisa Renstrom, former President of the Sierra Club, asked me if I would set up a Kennedy School event with Ms. Blades while she was in Boston to promote MomsRising. I said sure.

I had the privilege of having lunch with Ms. Blades who, despite her impressive accomplishments, is utterly lacking in egotism. She

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Don't Cry for Us, Thomas Friedman

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 12/10/2007 at 1:07

Columnist Thomas Friedman is worried about the politics of the Internet generation. He wrote the following in the New York Times on Wednesday in an editorial entitled "Generation Q."

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges...and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed....

I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad....

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good,

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Why Does Citizen Activism Happen?

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 25/04/2007 at 9:45

The reason why I am interested in digital activism is not because I like tech. Despite the fact that I have been working in the field for two years, I am still intimidated by HTML and the intricacies of the internet. Rather, I am interested in digital activism because it promises a more equitable distribution of political power.

Political change occurs by bringing pressure upon decision-makers. Because of the mass use of the internet and cell phones (ICT), millions of people now have access to the tools of mass communication and message dissemination, mass organizing and microfundraising. No longer

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Politically, We Are Still in Web 1.0

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 20/04/2007 at 16:29

I am a member of MoveOn and its younger siblings Avaaz (global "MoveOn") and Step it Up ("MoveOn" against global warming) and I think they are all great. I can sign a petition or donate to run a political ad or even call my Congressman, and I've done all three actions for these organizations.

Still, I don't think this hub-and-spokes model of political activism shows the full political potential of the net. The promise of Web 2.0 is that we can all be content creators yet, for all its success in involving citizens in politics, MoveOn and its siblings are

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