Posted on 04/13/2004 10:09:38 AM PDT by ahadams2
it's a place called 'everyvoice' and it pretty much has to be seen to be believed - but only if you have a strong stoumach and no problems with your bloodpressure!
http://www.everyvoice.net/
Just google on Louie Crew and there's no doubt what he's looking for in a rector (sp?).
You've got it! There were several ways to present this link; I tried to make it low key.
"What you can do:
Sign the Congregational Covenant of Interfaith Power and Light. Participating churches receive packages with samples of environmentally oriented sermons and prayers that draw on various faith traditions; a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists on global warming; as well as the EPA's Energy Star documents on the same subject.
"Interfaith Power and Light"...? "samples of environmentally oriented sermons and prayers"...?? LOL.
e-Israel v. e-Palestine
In December of 1992, a shopper at Rainbow Groceries, a popular San Francisco natural foods store, couldn't find Chanukah gelt in the store's otherwise well-stocked bulk foods section. Instead, Mrs. Zimmerman found a sign stating that the store wasn't carrying the gelt due to "political reasons." Zimmerman consulted a store employee -- where was the gelt? It turned out that some of Rainbow's employees, a liberal, left-leaning lot, were informally boycotting Israeli products as a form of protest against their treatment of Palestinians.
Working the Net
When Mrs. Zimmerman returned home and told her husband, he was enraged, and determined to let people know about it. He fired off a furious email to hundreds of acquaintances, many in the conservative Jewish Bay Area community. The email was forwarded on endlessly. Within hours, Rainbow had received hundreds of angry calls, emails and faxes from those spurred to action by Zimmerman's single email. Within days, pro-Israel supporters were picketing outside of Rainbow and the store issued a statement backing away from a formal Israeli product boycott. Within weeks Israeli products were back on Rainbow's shelves.
Ian Zimmerman did it all with one email. But he couldn't have done it without one crucial ingredient: a network. Within Zimmerman's email address book were hundreds of contact addresses for people who share his political views, people ready and willing to mobilize for an issue they found important. Anyone could do that same thing, if they had a similar network that makes it easy to communicate news or ideas to hundreds or thousands of people instantaneously.
What Zimmerman did was incredibly effective, fast, easy and almost totally free. Zimmerman used his network to advance a pro-Israel cause, but the quickly evolving techniques used by right-leaning political groups to gain support and attention can be easily adapted for groups of any political stripe, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian or otherwise. These techniques cost almost nothing, yet provide big political payoff.
The Blog Revolution
One prime example is weblogs...
And in the meantime, Israel-leaning blogs are becoming expert at disseminating news. One prime example -- in May, 2002, a group of pro-Palestinian activists attacked a group of Hillel students during a speak-out at San Francisco State University. The San Francisco Chronicle gave the story a tiny mention, while other media outlets ignored the story entirely. Enraged, one blogger, Joe Katzman of Winds of Change, decided to give the story some attention. He covered the story on his own blog and wrote to other blogger friends, exhorting them to cover the story on their blogs as well.
Within a few days, the SFSU incident had been covered in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
Katzman says that "Before, the mainstream media would just shrug and the story would disappear. Now their hegemony over discourse is being deconstructed and challenged. What's different now is that alternative media like blogs and talk radio pick these things up quickly, and make their own judgments about newsworthiness."
Alternative media sources like blogs could have any political slant under the sun, providing access to mainstream media coverage for even cash-poor groups. Blogger.com software is free and Web space is cheap -- the only thing required is a blog administrator ready to pick up the reins and start blogging.
Mind the Astroturf
Another tool pro-Israel activists have learned to use to their advantage is letter-writing. Of course, both sides of the Palestine-Israel conflict use letter-writing to their advantage, writing letters to the editor intended for publication in newspapers and magazines as well as writing to influential political figures. But recently an interesting strain of letter-writing activism has popped up online, a strain known as Astroturfing.
Astroturfing, something of a pejorative term, originated during the Microsoft antitrust case in the late 1990s. Microsoft began paying private "concerned citizens" to write opinion pieces, letters to the editor and more, all stating their concerns that Microsoft was getting a raw deal. The Microsoft campaign created a false image of a grassroots movement, thereby earning their tactics the name of Astroturf, or fake grass. Microsoft's Astroturf campaign didn't work well for them -- in fact, all the fake support angered a number of state attorneys general enough to join the suit against the company -- but it gave other activists ideas.
As reported in the New York Times January 27, 2003, groups like the Republican National Committee are using Web sites and email lists to share form letters with their supporters. The supporters are then encouraged to send these form letters to publications and politicians using their own name. One letter, which originally appeared at www.gopteamleader.com, supporting President Bush's control over the economy ended up in the letters to the editor pages at The Boston Globe, The Cincinnati Post and other regional papers.
...
Summing it Up
With all this information in mind, what can politically active groups learn from pro-Israel groups who are successfully using internet techniques to attract support and attention?
Most importantly, activists groups should be focused now on building out their network of supporters. Few sites can boast 20,000 registered members as can AIPAC. Having contact information for tens of thousands of sympathetic parties is unbelievably advantageous -- when important news breaks, AIPAC can have information out to its members within minutes rather than having to wait for news to spread by word-of-mouth. And those members can be swiftly mobilized to act when there is a need.
It's easy enough to collect email addresses of supporters -- simply asking visitors to give their contact information (while assuring them they won't be contacted for marketing purposes) works very well. Site administrators can also send out regular email news bulletins, gathering the contact information for subscribers along the way.
Secondly, activist groups should be taking a leaf from Ahmed Bouzid's book and making it very easy for their supporters to broadcast their opinions to the media and political figures. Email "mail-to" forms, news alerts with email addresses attached and pre-written email forms are extremely easy to create and put up on a Web site, and vastly useful. If you want your supporters to contact someone with an opinion, making it as easy as possible ensures the best possible chance that they will.
Political conflicts are fought on many levels, and some political groups are disadvantaged -- they may be younger, smaller and less well-funded than political rivals. But online, where activism is inexpensive, easy and remarkably effective, and where a small group of people can create a big effect, disadvantages fade away to almost nothing. Wise political activist groups will be using online activism more and more in coming years, making their message heard with increasing savvy. And learning the lesson of the missing gelt is a fine start.
If I were not in a happy marriage to which I made my commitment a quarter-century ago, and not so old & fat that (despite my -ahem- delightfully intelligent though shy personality) I'd be clearly out of the running, I *might* volunteer -- given that a longlife-term committment were involved.
As it is, I have the best of it, and I leave the opportunity to someone else.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.