This is from an article posted by NTEN. It's a distillation of the panel I led at the NTC this year. Attending the NTC was loads of fun and well worth it - see you there next year, I hope!

See full version here:

http://nten.org/blog/2008/04/22/mission-over-membership-in-online-advocacy

Online advocacy at its best is about giving more citizens more power to act together in creating social change. At its worst, online advocacy is a fundraising technique and promotional strategy that can work, while generating some very negative inadvertent outcomes. Organizers working for the common good should do a better job of articulating good online advocacy strategies and resisting demands that our work be measured in dollars raised or a higher public profile.

What we have at stake is not (just) the integrity of our cause or organization, but the effectiveness of our mission. Good organizing is like voting: it always has power, even after the 20th time. Bad organizing is like spam: today’s Viagra message is far less likely to get you to buy some, even though there is more of it out there than ever before.

The conflict between the different ends of the online advocacy spectrum can be captured in a phrase: Mission over Membership.

Quite a few days have passed since my last blog entry. You may conclude that as the Forum heated up, Kip and I got totally engrossed and could no longer focus properly on sharing our experiences with our loyal readers.

On Friday afternoon I attended a workshop by the Progressive Technology Project (PTP)  in which various people presented on how they organized with technology. The presenters were mostly female and people of color – African-American, Native-American, and Latino. It was amazing to see how in this workshop intersection of technology and organizing wasn’t ‘owned’ by a bunch of white dudes with laptops, as is often the case.
The nice folks at PTP allowed me to present as well, so I got a chance to showcase DIA in the best possible light. The other stories were amazing though. Example: an organizer
from Oakland  talked about women learning to use radio and sound production facilities to create CD’s for local distribution, so as to reach local young people where they are: on the
other side of the earphones. An organizer working with migrant
workers in Oregon told us about how they established a low power FM radio station. A group of utterly charming teens reported on the training they received in video production, and how they used their skills to teach others skills, as well as values and political education. Wow.

From my posting yesterday until today so much has been going on! I almost don't know where to begin.

More people are around, so the hallways of the civic center, and the streets of downtown Atlanta are quite full. The plenary sessions that begin and end each day have more people, although that's more true for the 6:30 pm sessions than the 8:30 am sessions. Could it be that folks are tired after a long night of carousing?

Kip has been connecting with his communities and friends – the radical queer community, Indyvoter folk, his old friends from the Southeast, and friends (like Dave at Radical Designs) from the Bay Area.

I was able to attend a session on the Israel/Palestine issue, but missed another one that sounded really good. A lot of my time is spent distributing the newsletter with information about online organizing that the tech folks put out. One strategy is to stand facing the crowd and pass it out. Unfortunately, this is the technique pioneered by political parties of the communist variety, and many folks instinctively recoiled from me. Could it be my breath?

The US Social Forum kicked off yesterday with DIA literally in the house. The locals here call it the 'Civic Center' and it’s where an estimated 10,000 activists, organizers and revolutionary tourists will be spending part of the next few days. Among them yours truly and Kip Williams, on a mission to spread the gospel of online organizing as a powerful agent of change.

Kip spent the morning helping with registration, a process that could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t! Key members of the Information & Communication Technology team, including Ana Willem, made sure that all went well. Here and there he still had a chance to make beautiful music ...

Most of my day was spent sitting at the DIA table and talking to folks about technology. I’ve been able to meet some great folks: a Hawai'i native scholar and activist, AFSC folks who work on Africa issues, and one of April's old teachers the Friends World College. (Kathleen says hello!)

Charles holding up the Technology for Another World, the publication of the tech committee at the USSF.