Liminal states

Round two of change.gov’s Open for Questions is up.  Not a lot of details … last time, it was open for about three days, and there were brief answers to the top five questions, and a more detailed post and video on at least one topic (bailout transparency).

Dan McSwain, on the change.gov blog, describes one change:

In this round, you can still view all of the questions that have been submitted—or you can break down the questions by category for easier navigation. For instance, you can read the top-ranking question regarding Energy and the Environment and browse through other questions on the same topic by clicking on that issue.

Also it seems that there’s a subtle difference in how URLs are handled that makes it harder to send out a link to an individual question.  This change cuts down people’s ability to promote their ideas in email and blog posts, which fits in well with Open for Questions’ role of routing around different kinds of “gatekeepers”: making it harder to link to a question cuts down the influence of bloggers and organizations with large email lists.

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Executive summary

• things are still in flux in the change.org/MySpace Ideas for Change in America as we head into the last week of the first round
• civil liberties (six ideas), drug reform (five ideas), and education (five ideas) dominate the top 30
• my idea, Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties, hanging tough at #5 overall, #2 in Criminal Justice
• there are a lot of duplicate ideas, for example multiple variants of legalization.  How will change.org deal with this going forward?

The current top 10 is in the first comment for those who don’t care about the analysis.

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Get FISA Right’s cable TV ad for the inauguration has been approved by Comcast — almost two weeks sooner than we had estimated!  So now it’s time for grassroots fundraising to put it on the air – in Washington DC, and potentially all around the country.

The ad addresses President Obama directly, congratulating him on his victory and letting him know that we want to work with him to restore the Constitution and the rule of law.  The ad’s also for a couple of other audiences: our 23,000 members, most of whom we’ve lost touch with; and the media and politicians in Washington DC.  The underlying message is the same: this issue isn’t going away, and neither are we.

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Were you one of the 23,000 Obama supporters who got together on my.barackobama.com last July to protest his stance on FISA?  If so, we’d like to include your photo in a cable TV ad we’re working on with SaysMe.tv that we’ll be broadcasting in Washington DC for the inauguration.  Here’s the script:

Even though we disagreed with your position on FISA last July, we worked for your election victory and are excited to be part of the change you’re bringing to Washington.  We’re ready to help, and look forward to working with you to restore our Constitution and the rule of law.

Congratulations, President Obama.  Please … get FISA right.

If you’d like to have your photo in the ad, please email it to matt { at } saysme { dot } tv by 4 PM (Pacific time) on Thursday, December 18.

Please understand that by submitting your picture you agree to have yourself represented on TV — and please do NOT submit a photo if you don’t want to have it used in the TV ad.

Thanks!

jon

Update:, December 23: we took the rough cut video down from YouTube so I removed it from this post

The Obama transition team’s Open for Questions pilot last week went extremely well for a first attempt.  Combined with all the other promising things Micah Sifry discusses in Kudos to the Change.gov New Media Team, it seems to me that the Obama administration is on track for some effective ways of leveraging cognitive diversity and “wisdom of the crowds” effects, cutting past the gatekeepers in the media, and getting Obama direct feedback from Americans.

At least for those Americans who are willing to give away their privacy as the price for interacting with their government.

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I’ve got a post Turning the Page on FISA on change.org’s Criminal Justice blog today. Here’s the beginning:

The coming year will present a unique opportunity for a broad-based activism campaign to restore our civil liberties and begin rolling back key pillars of the national surveillance state institutionalized by the Bush Administration and Congress over the last eight years. By first pressuring President Obama to follow through in the first 100 days on his campaign promises to uphold the rule of law and protect Americans’ rights and privacy, and then gearing up for a 50-state strategy to pressure the House and Senate to repeal the PATRIOT Act and reform FISA, we can turn the page on this shameful chapter in our country’s history.

It’s an unusually succinct post for me (500 words!) and describes the overall situation, including the progress the anti-FISA forces made in 2008 and the value of a partnership with change.org and MySpace.  And of course it encourages people to vote for the civil liberties ideas in the Ideas for Change competition:

So please consider voting for Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties and the similar ideas such Donovan Caesar’s End the Patriot Act and Dave Warden’s stop all warrantless wiretapping (in Government Reform) and Pierre Loiselle’s Repeal the Patriot Act in Other.

Check it out! And thanks to Matt Kelley for the invitation!

jon

First-draft scripts for a few different options for our next round of ads are up on the wiki:

• Better watch those nuns — and their friends too
• Obama’s cell-phone records breached
• Congratulations. Now, get FISA right.

Feedback welcome!  Discussion thread here …

jon

PS: in case you missed it, I posted a Get FISA Right update earlier today.

Executive Summary

• Ideas for Change competition: currently #6; please vote for and help promote our idea.
• Cable TV ads: notes from last conference call are up; next call Saturday; script frozen by Monday.  Update, 9:30 pm: draft scripts including “Better watch those nuns — and their friends too” posted.  Feedback please!
• 2009 strategy planning: please discuss!  Also, great writeup on Irregular Times
• There’s a FISA question on change.gov’s new Open for Questions, as well as other civil liberties questions.
• Proposed 2009 communications channels: feedback, please!

Details

Even though it’s the holiday season, it seems like the group’s energy is really starting to ramp up after the election, so I just wanted to take a moment to update people on what’s happening.  I realize that our communications are very, um, challenging right now and appreciate everybody’s forbearance.  One of the important things going on is a plan for improved communications in 2009; please have a look and see what you think!

Our short-term priorities are the Ideas for Change competition, working with SaysMe.tv on our next round of cable TV ads, and continuing our 2009 strategy planning.   And there a bunch of civil liberties questions on change.gov’s new Open for Questions, including a FISA-related idea with a great backstory.

Read on for more …

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After discussions with people in Get FISA Right as well as others (including EFF, ACLU, privacy advocates, and journalists), I’ve put together a proposal for a 2009 Strategy.  There’s also a Strategy Backgrounder, with a brief history, and a discussion of our strengths and challenges — as well as challenges for the anti-FISA forces in general.

This is the first published draft, so it’s far from final.  Feedback, suggestions, criticisms, all very welcome!  There’s a thread on the wiki here; replies to to this post are welcome too.

A quick overview:

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techPresident continues its recent roll, with three very worthwhile posts.

Micah Sifry’s The Other Transition: Whither Obama’s Movement? contrasts the transparency of change.gov and the transition in DC with the top-down and relatively closed nature (so far) of the discussions about the future for the organizers network and my.barackobama.com.  Excellent comments from folks like Wade Hudson and Jennifer Just are worth reading as well … I’ll probably weigh in too once I think about it a little more.  Micah also briefly mentions Get FISA Right, including us in his (short) list of groups continuing to do MyBO activism.

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In response to the consistent feedback that we need to simplify our communications mechanisms, there’s a proposal up on the wiki.  A summary:

• to stay informed:
  • check the website/blog at getfisaright.net
  • OR get action alerts and daily(ish) newsletters on any one of the channels listed in the “Broadcasts” section below (email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• for discussions: use the discussion forum on the wiki — anonymous participation okay (until we get overrun by trolls)
• for more active organizing and collaboration: join the wiki

More details on the wiki page.

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Updated info available at the top ideas list on the change.org site

Ideas for Change in America is a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and 111th Congress can turn the broad call for “change” across the country into specific policies….

The top 10 rated ideas will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009 as the “Top 10 Ideas for America.” We will then launch a national campaign behind each idea and mobilize the collective energy of the millions of members of Change.org, MySpace, and partner organizations to ensure that each winning idea gets the full consideration of the Obama Administration and Members of Congress….

— The Ideas for Change in America FAQ

A week after the official launch of the site, and with a month to go until the first round of voting ends, it’s still early days for the contest … but as any sports fan knows, you don’t have to the wait until the playoffs to start watching the standings!

The top three ideas in each category advance to the second round, and the site makes it easy to see who’s leading in each category — for example, the Criminal Justice page currently has Jose Torres’ Legalise the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana in the #1 position,* followed by my Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties and Paul Lange’s Fair Investigations of Bush Administration, with change.org blogger Matt Kelley’s Provide Alternatives to Incarceration only a few votes out of the top 3.

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