> Moveon collected massive lists because they targetted issues that people
> were excited about and would therefore join their email list for updates and
> to contribute money. What's got to be frustrating to some folks is that
> some of their key issues-- fighting Bush's impeachment, defeating Bush--
> don't fit your idea of a "mass issue", yet it mobilized a lot of people.
> But there are a mass number of people who are both antiwar AND for electing
> Democrats, far more than the third party fundamentalists.
>
> The sad fact is that MoveOn is proving that there's plenty of activist
> energy out there. The traditional left just was pushing unpopular dog food.
If your goal is just to replace the Republicans with Democrats, Moveon is the group for you. If you are concerned about the future of the planet and the fate of our grandchildren, you better be interested in focusing more on radical social change instead of electing another rich liberal into office.
The promising fact is that Moveon will be peddling unpalatable dog food once President Kerry takes office. The traditional ideas of the Left will become more popular because the situation will push us in that direction. And the anti-war movement will be left with a bitter aftertaste as soon as the liberals in the movement line up behind President Kerry, his draft, and whatever wars he puts into action.
Doug Henwood wrote:
> I know that. I used to pay for this list, and I still pay for a website.
> Still, the costs are minimal compared to direct mail, and not beyond our
> means at all.
They are minimal, but not trivial.
What really burns me up is how lousy the left is in supporting its websites, magazines, and other projects. The stats for Infoshop show that around 160,000 unique visitors visited Infoshop.org last month, yet only around 50 of these people have donated any amount at all to the website this year. If half of these people donated $5 this year to the website, that would give us an operating budget of $400,000. Even a fraction of that amount would allow us to pay writers and artists and implement more organzing projects. A fraction of that money would allow Infoshop to put together speaking tours that could visit small towns. For the cost of one dinner at Taco Bell, the huge number of leftists out there could make a difference when it comes to supporting lefty projects that would love to become the more radical version of Moveon.
But the big hurdle here is that people think that because something looks free, that it is free.
Chuck0