[Air-l] What ever happened to MoveOn.org?

[James Watt]

I have the feeling I'm being a straight man here, 
but taking the question seriously, MoveOn.org 
reports a current roster of 3.2 million members. 
Here's what they said they did in the most recent 
U.S. election campaign, in which they mainly 
supported Democrat candidates and raised money for close races:

"You made over 7 million calls to voters (and 
millions more to members)­getting people to the 
polls one by one. You gave over $27 million. And 
you raised the issues that powered the 
election­especially Iraq, which some pundits told 
Democrats to steer clear of."--Eli Pariser, 
MoveOn.org Political Action, Oct. 8, 2006

One way they did this was by using e-mail 
recruitments asking members to sign up on-line to 
host "calling parties." Then they e-mailed the 
location of the parties to all members within a 
close driving distance, urging them to bring 
their cell phones and make calls encouraging 
registered Democrat and Independent voters to get 
to the polls (they didn't waste cell phone 
minutes on trying to convert Republicans). Much 
of this was done on a two or three day turn 
around, and there were hundreds (maybe thousands) 
of these parties announced. Very impressive from an IT standpoint.

I doubt the Republican National Committee feels 
that their profile has dropped sufficiently...

>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:14:31 -0500
>From: Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>

Speaking of which, whatever happened to "Move On" and "Meet Up"? They were
highly touted organizing affordances of the Dean campaign in the US just
2-3 years ago. And Dean is chair of the Democratic party in the US.


>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 11:16:56 -0600 (CST)
>From: elw at stderr.org
>
>i still get mail from them.  often.
>
>profile seems to have lowered a bit, though...



========================================================
James H. Watt
Professor of Communication
Director, Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory (http://www.sbrl.rpi.edu)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street, Sage Lab 4518
Troy, NY 12180-3590
email: wattj at rpi.edu
voice: (518) 276-4130 or 276-2784
fax:   (518) 276-3740