Micah:
Democracy is changing new tools, new strategies, new ways of thinking
The cost of finding like-minded souls and banding together around a common cause is almost zero
Network means something very different from the days of CBS, NBC, ABC
People want to be heard
Members expect more of a say
Readers want to talk back to journalists/editors
Citizens demanding more transparency and responsiveness from their governments

People are attracted to participation more than writing checks to support a cause also realizing they can be co-creators.

So the session question how can we adapt to this?
Let's admit that we're all newbies it's only been around for a couple of years so we're still all learning, making mistakes and figuring things out together.

Audience questions for the session:
How can we use these tools for democracy around corporate behavior?

How do you gather information from the troops before you engage in the position?

Thoughts about Unity ‘O8?

Immigration rallies in April result of text messaging from kids on MySpace in March. How do we harness this continue the political momentum?

Talk about how we can not only base it on the internet?

RE: online organizing - are we all deluding ourselves? Are the metrics a success?

How do you help your supporters/listeners to connect with each other and take action locally? Not just around federal issues (as MoveOn currently does), but local issues as well.

How does the NSA affect your work?

How do we move from one to many model to many to many model in terms of who's talking to whom?

Joan's quick overview/background talk:
For the last eight years we've been trying to learn how people can engage more successfully in the political process. A lot of this is about listening.

Put together a series of local parties and discuss - what does progressive stand for. MoveOn facilitates the local connections even thought it's not taking them on. [the real impact of using the internet to get people together in physical space, not just virtual space

Joan's background is as a mediator looking for the commonalities brought this into the political arena in terms of addressing the polarization

She's now starting MomsRising

Micah: how much is MoveOn/MomsRising about media strategy?

Joan: The media is a part of it first NY Times ad effort raised $200K instead of projected $25K readers were saying that the media is important to us it helps shape public opinion. So it's a part of the strategy.

Amy's overview/intro:
The way we understand the world is through the media which is mediated through a corporate lens. Democracy Now is about redressing this imbalance.

Democracy Now came out of Pacifica Radio goes to where the silence is. 1996 broadcast a national election show about the election and lack of US voter participation talking to people, finding out why they couldn't/didn't engage in the political process when people all around the world were fighting and dying for the right to vote.

The national scope is really international because the impact of the US on the rest of the world. Story about a South American panelist who insisted on being a guest on a US election program because she believes everyone in the world should get to vote for the US President, since it affects everyone in the world.

Non-profits/NGO's constitute a pro-democracy movement.

Net Neutrality question is also related to public access television and radio. Democracy Now asked how they could bring together the patchwork of local community access radio and tv programming to a national audience.
Local truths and perspectives more significant sources of information and knowledge than the handful of pundits on national news shows who know nothing about

Organizing has to be done across platforms not just the internet to be a part of media landscape you need to use television and radio and internet. Internet tech/open source software has been a significant tool in helping the stories get out. [and the field of discussion expands?]

Joan: Net Neutrality issue you need to pay attention.
Trans-partisan group: http://savetheinternet.com/

Amy: In Timor no access to bandwith/ created cd's of video interviews and would go to the airport and ask strangers who were flying to Australia to take the cd's and leave them at the airport desk. In Australia the owner of an internet café would pick them up and get the broadcasts online

You have to control public access and it's also at risk of being eliminated. Visit http://saveaccess.org/

For a daily hour newscast, they put out the transcripts within a few hours of the broadcast, put it out in mp3 format. And because they do close captioning they have the ability to create quicker transcript. The mp3 is divided into six sessions volunteers from around the world transcribe the show using the rough transcripts of close captioning. Volunteers listen and edit/prep the transcripts.

We do "trickle up journalism" (!) MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour use the transcripts to prep the anchors.

When a politician tells you you're ridiculous, you're probably on the right track.

Micha: it seems like Democracy now is using the technology to push the stories out - but what does it do to engage its audience in participating in/contributing to the stories? How do you decide what stories to pursue?

Amy: our ideas come from our audiences all over the world from their input.

Micha: but a new kind of citizen media distributed reporting. Democracy Now was founded as a result of an environment that existed 10 years ago but what is it doing to evolve with the current environment.

Amy: still I would say that our audience are co-creators. But we are developing a new site, using Ruby on Rails, that will enable more of what you're talking about.

Micha: Joan in your case it's members. (currently over 3 million). How are you addressing the new environment? Why, for instance, doesn't MoveOn have a blog, while MomsRising does?

Joan: In the case of the blog I think for MoveOn it's a case of sheer capacity. (they have a staff of 20 core employees). Do we get out these mailings, do we do these house parties or do we do a blog?

Micah is pushing the questions of how MoveOn constituents can communicate with the organization. Joan says email. Micha's talking about how people respond. MoveOn is relying on volunteers how many emails can you respond to with a base of 3 million people?

[this is turning into a conversation about organizational capacity, mission-based priorities, and the ability to integrate constituent participation. This is something that these new technologies can help facilitate but the obvious challenge is how overtaxed advocacy/non-profits can carve out the human resources to strategically assess, adopt and implement the technologies]

Joan is shifting to MomsRising the stats about mothers and job opportunities and promotions, policies, etc. Flex time, paid maternity leave, The number one cause of poverty is having a baby.
Go to the site for the stories: http://momsrising.org/

Micah: you're preaching to the choir--
Joan: but did you KNOW all that? [bingo she's using this platform to educate about the issues and not just talk about the technologies involved]

Amy asks about what MoveOn/MomsRising plans to do about bringing these issues to the candidates.

Joan: Motherhood issues aren't on the agenda they're at the bottom of the list. When it moves up on the list, MoveOn will deal with it. We all think these are personal issues and we'll deal with them on our own, in isolation but when everyone is dealing with them it's not just a solo concern. It's a huge challenge that affects everyone whether or not they have kids.

MomsRising multi-platform approach the blog, the web site, the book (The Motherhood Manifesto), a video coming out.

Micah is discussing his criticism of the one-way flow of ideas, rather than the ideas. He's pushing publicly to think about developing ways to engage in a dialogue with constituencies.

Audience Question:
How do we make sure we're not all just talking to ourselves?

Amy: thinks conservative and liberal divisions are breaking down issues of privacy, the Iraq war people are sick of the lies - the lies take lives.

We're seeing people who come out from every sector of the society from military, intelligence community, across the political spectrum so I don't think it's as hard as you think. It's happening for the right and wrong reasons.

Audience Question:
Is it irrelevant to talk about all these other things when, with the Diebold systems, the integrity of our election process is in jeopardy?
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/

Amy: I think that's another issue that's breaking down the party divisions......Why aren't the political parties making more of an issue of this?

From an audience member's question - conversation about which tools are appropriate. Not being locked into a technology and how a particular format may affect the nature of the dialogue. Also issues of access/digital divide (Amy continue using radio and tv, linked to the internet and giving people tools to move from offline to online and vice versa simultaneously moving backward and forward)

Micah posits that in the political arena (as opposed to the open source/tech community) people are more afraid of sharing information because of scarcity of resources, as well as the info going to their political opponents.

Joan brings up the idea that the more established you are the more dicey it is to do something different and move toward a more rapid response/shifting structures to adopt new technologies.