The Facebooker Who Friended Obama, a piece published in this morning’s New York Times, paints an extremely flattering picture of Sen. Obama’s Internet presence and strategy. Orchestrated with some help by Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, Sen. Obama’s campaign has treated the Internet “as the connective tissue” between online organizing and offline action.

“Mr. Hughes wanted Mr. Obama’s social network to mirror the off-line world the same way that Facebook seeks to, because supporters would foster more meaningful connections by attending neighborhood meetings and calling on people who were part of their daily lives.”

Sen. Obama’s embrace of the Internet stems from his belief “that real change comes from the bottom up” (beliefs cultivated, of course, when he was a community organizer) — “And there’s no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet.”

While the piece does not highlight how Obama supporters are using Obama’s social network to question the Senator’s policy decisions, it does suggest that a vote for Obama might be a vote for official technological change in the Oval Office: “Mr. Obama has pledged that if he is elected, he will hire a chief technology officer.”

The piece also highlights nicely the way the campaign is trying to connect on and offline efforts on the part of the candidate’s supporters — one of the hardest-to-accomplish tasks with any organizational action that is executed online. They to nicely synthesize these two worlds, and has consciously worked to do so especially after realizing that after the primary by helping their users to more-easily phone bank and go door to door in search of other supporters. While Sen. Obama’s campaign has taken a lot from the world of small grassroots campaigns, that world can now take some cues from his campaign, which has had the luxury of the money and minds necessarily for figuring out how to best integrate communication technologies into setting collective action into motion.

Also in eAction news:

• Collective intelligence doesn’t necessarily make us smarter
• Chinese bloggers’ victory against government

-Filed in News

Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers, a piece written by Peter Dreier and originally published in Dissent Magazine, appeared in The Huffington Post on Tuesday evening. Dreier, a professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College (and also teaches a class on community organizing), details the effect Sen. Obama, a former community organizer, is already having on the Millennial Generation:

• “There has not been a candidate since Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy who has inspired so many young people to become involved in public service and grassroots activism.”
• “The number of young people seeking jobs as organizers has spiked in the past year in the wake of Obama’s candidacy.”
• “Obama, through his own example, has already dramatically increased the visibility of grassroots organizing as a career path, as well as a way to give ordinary people a sense of their own collective power to improve their lives and bring about social change.”

Here, Dreier appears to be correct, and not necessarily over-optimistic. Having been an organizer in the past—becoming one quite by accident as I had no idea the job had existed before I had it—I’ve seen that Sen. Obama’s Presidential candidacy has brought to a greater consciousness that there exists a career centered specifically on personal empowerment and mobilizing social change. My parents and peers are now more familiar with what community organization is and entails than when I was an organizer myself.

Dreier also outlines the history of community organizing in America. Obama openly acknowledges the great Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky as an inspiration, which leads right-wing bloggers to loosely draw parallels between the Chicago organizer, the Illinois Senator, and, of course, Communism [see: "Saul Alinsky - yet another Obama mentor from his Marxist past"]. Dreier, however, illustrates the tradition’s more-substantial, three-dimensional history:

• “The roots of community organizing go back to the nation’s founding, starting with the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party.”
• “Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was impressed by the outpouring of local voluntary organizations that brought Americans together to solve problems, provide a sense of community and public purpose, and tame the hyper-individualism that Tocqueville considered a threat to democracy.”
• “Historians trace modern community organizing to Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800s and inspired the settlement house movement. These activists—upper-class philanthropists, middle-class reformers, and working-class radicals—organized immigrants to clean up sweatshops and tenement slums, improve sanitation and public health, and battle against child labor and crime.”
• “In the 1930s [...] Saul Alinsky, took community organizing to the next level. He sought to create community-based “people’s organizations” to organize residents the way unions organized workers.”

Finally, Dreier imagines the Organizer-In-Chief, and how this role could be leveraged to better leverage a platform and elicit constituent action:

• “Obama can certainly learn valuable lessons from President Franklin Roosevelt, who recognized that his ability to push New Deal legislation through Congress depended on the pressure generated by protesters and organizers.”
• “Roosevelt became more vocal, using his bully pulpit—in speeches and radio addresses—to promote New Deal ideas.”
• “[Obama] understands that his ability to reform health care, tackle global warming, and restore job security and decent wages will depend, in large measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize public opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate interests and members of Congress who resist change.”

And finally, Dreier suggests that Obama’s inspiration can be used to put on pressure to reform – even his own platform:

• “But if it appears that he is veering too far to the political center, they will—inspired in part by Obama’s own example, and perhaps with his covert support—mobilize to push him (and Congress) to live up to his progressive promise.”

Again, Dreier is not over-optimistic or too-simplistic in his assessment. Community organizers and anyone generally excited or inspired by seeing a collective of people make something happen have reason to be excited, as their craft is being highlighted by a presidential candidate – specially one that has already inspired a young generation. Throughout my elementary school life, there always seemed to be ploys to make reading look cool via posters featuring endorsements by Spider-Man, Tom Hanks, Patrick Ewing, and others. It seems that now, however, considering how empowered different communities feel resulting from Obama’s candidacy, his is the best enforcement that community organization will get.

It it especially interesting to think of the president-organizational community role Dreier outlines, patented after Franklin Roosevelt and some of his constituents. After nearly three decades of presidencies that have celebrated individualism, imagining the constituent, or organized collectives of constituents as players rather than passive bystanders is exciting. Further, I very much appreciate the suggested interchangeable role of the constituent as an agent for platform change (using the “bully-pulpit” to mobilize collective action in response to climate change issues, war attitudes, gas prices, etc) and keeping the President’s (and Congress’s) platforms in check with reality (as we’re presently seeing Sen. Obama’s netroots supporters do with regard to his stance on FISA).

-Filed in Ideas

On this day, July 3nd, 2008, the news brings to our attention a generation of community organizer aspirants, the Chinese finding their way around the Great Firewall, backlash against Rogers, the Canadian iPhone provider, and much, much more.

• Ukrainians are becoming “increasingly involved in grassroots activism.”
• A short profile of Carrotmob and the Carrotmobsters who make it work.
• Canadian iPhone customers going about their outrage the wrong way?
• Living and dying by social networks.
• Chinese finding a way around the firewall.
• And finally, I want to be an organizer when I grow up.

-Filed in News

On this day, June 16th, 2008, the news brings to our attention more word on this newfangled election (and Sen. Obama as a web warrior), crowd-sourced movie-making, mobility and environmental activism and much, much more.

• Sen. Obama: Web Warrior
• In actual warfare news, more on the cyber front.
• Hey! Let’s crowd-source a movie!
• Some governments are more pointedly targeting bloggers.
• The Internet and the 2008 election.
• And more…
• And finally, a look at mobility and environmental activism.

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On this day, June 12th, 2008, the news brings to our attention today’s goings on in mobile activism, the online efforts of young McCain supporters, the Grand Net War of 2025, incarcerated net and civil rights activists, and more.

• Improv Everywhere begins documenting attacks of fun.
• Net and civil rights activist Jailed for “longer than most dangerous criminals.”
• It’s party time at South Korea’s protest 2.0!
• In 2025, there will be a grand net-war.
• In a 2.0 world, what’s an Internet populist to do?
• While we’re asking questions, how is mobile technology is facilitating development work?
• And finally, Rasiej and Sifry: We told you so!

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On this day, June 5th, 2008, the news brings to our attention the offering of a manifesto to political guerrilla warriors, the triumph of activism over sexism in Sen. Obama’s win, a look at this year’s National Conference for Media reform, the syndication of computer hackers, Twitter tools, and more.

• Bibi van der Zee explains how to campaign effectively.
• A look at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform.
• Computer Hackers syndicate!
• Egyptian jail Twitter guy tries to Tweet his translator to freedom.
• A transcript of a talk with David Sirota on The Uprising, his book on eActivism.
• Open Left: Activism, not sexism elevated Sen. Obama.
• Gerry Nicholls offers a manifesto on how to wage political guerrilla warfare.
• Apparently green advocates are more likely to be tech savvy.
• Micah L. Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, discusses the upcoming conference.
• Having trouble putting Twitter to work for you (when it’s actually up and running)?
• Post-quake, China re-tightens media limits.
• Lincoln, Obama, and Rove: Organization matters
• And finally, LA Times readers respond to the Guerrilla Gardener.

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On this day, May 27th, 2008, the news brings to our attention the ascent of the youth vote, Roger Cohen on Obama’s knack of leveraging networks, writing as a bomb, a short list of Arab political bloggers, organizers getting “Konnected,” and more.

• The anti-Ayan Hirsi Ali blogger.
• Roger Cohen on Obama, Generation Y, and networking.
• An interesting short list of interesting Arab bloggers.
• The Internet makes the youth vote relevant.
• Internet protestors decend on Ottawa for “Internet freedom.”
• And finally, organizers Get Konnected.

-Filed in News

On this day, April 28th, 2008, the news brings to our attention the death of print, blogger-mom anger, hacktivism, and sex-for-action:

• In Madison, Wisconsin, declining print and increasing online revenues lead to one of the first deaths in print journalism.
• Blogger-moms unleash their wrath upon Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus.
• Hacktivists show Obama that the Chinese aren’t their only targets.
• And finally, if you’re doing any work in the name of defending net neutrality – if you have some sort of e-action rolling or you’re organizing any lobbying in the name of this issue or maybe you have a table outside of a Wal Mart and you’re selling brownies to raise awareness about it in any way, or whatever, and if you’re above the age of 18 and you still haven’t gotten around to losing that pesky [Virgin]ity, go. get. laid. now.

-Filed in Uncategorized