> That was massively successful. If that's "all" they're doing, it could
> have formidable long-term effects.
>
> The right has beaten us on at least two important fronts - one, the sort
> of database building that Weyrich did, and two, getting radical ideas
> taken more seriously by the less radical. I was a right-winger in 1971,
> and you have no idea how marginal we were. Now, it's CW.
The right is indeed organized and some of their techniques should be emulated, but if I my reading of the news is correct this week, George W. has reached the nadir of his popularity. Conservatives are calling for neo-conservative heads to roll. And various members of the religious right have confessed that they've lost the culture war. Shit, gay people are getting married in Massachusetts right now as we speak.
The right wing is good at getting their ideas out there, but we should be thankful that their ideas, for the most part, haven't caught on with the majority of the population. We can reverse their gains, as you correctly point out, by becoming more organized.
Frankly, I think the Left's chief problem is its lack of ambition. It has the mentality of a loser. "We can't do that now because the historical conditions aren't right." "We can't do this because of the possibility of government repression." We sell ourselves short.
> But MoveOn doesn't take that many resources. The Internet is massively
> cheaper than direct mail, and quicker and easier to automate. I'm
> surprised that you, given your role with the Infoshop website, would
> take this position.
LOL. Yes, the Internet is massively "cheaper" than direct mail, but it isn't as "free" as everybody thinks. As publishers say in response to people who think that magazines could be done for free on the web: publishing costs more than just paper, ink, and distro costs.
Infoshop.org reaches hundreds of thousand of people each month at a cost which is pretty low. The Internet *has* enabled activists and ordinary people to publish content online that reaches millions of people for low cost. But if the left wants to compete against the right using the Internet, we have to be frank about the costs.
Infoshop does not sit on some kind of free connection to the web. All that bandwidth has to be paid by someone--Infoshop is lucky that there are geeks who provide the bandwidth gratis. The content has been mostly created by volunteers, but much of it has been organized by myself over the years. Infoshop is a full time project for me. If I found a full time job the website would suffer unless we found a way to pay some folks to work on the website. Now, if Infoshop wanted to do something like Moveon, we'd have to find money to pay staff to write stuff, staff to do data entry and keep up the database, and tech staff to keep everything humming. Sure, we could do more using volunteers, but organizing volunteers always takes time. Even when you are working with highly motivated volunteers who have lots of autonomy, you still have to spend time communicating with them.
So, even a "free" project run by volunteers can quickly start incurring costs as the project grows. There are no easy shortcuts. The Internet has made greatly amplified the power of activists, but it ain't totally free.
Chuck0