The Blog Workers Industrial Union is pleased to announce that we're (mostly) going to stop horsing around and actually start doing things a real union would do for political candidates and ballot initiatives.
A bit of history, the details on what's next, and a vision for the future are below the fold ...
The Blog Workers Industrial Union & Benevolent Society was first discussed as a then nameless prank on Bill O'Reilly the Saturday night of the Netroots Nation 2009 convention. Spedwybabs, Donnamarie, Floja Roja, and Stranded Wind all sat around a table in the bar at the Westin. Stranded Wind has the only clear memories of this, but sadly his ever present camera was not active that night and neither pictoral nor video records of this exist.
The next day those of us awaiting Amtrak or flights hung around in the hotel room, scooted off to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, and that evening after Ben Masel gave the organization its name Chacounne posted the first diary.
We've screwed around a bit – the BWIU is the only multispecies union, having promptly merged with the International Brotherhood Of Shop Pooties right after its formation, and we have an off and on labor dispute with George Soros over our pay and benefits.
That's all been fun, but it wasn't too long before Spedwybabs and Stranded Wind got together and actually started doing things with Twitter that campaigns could actually use. This evolved into a for profit operation named Progressive PST, which was introduced in the December 1st Cheers & Jeers. Along the way the operation drew in AndSarahToo, redstatesblueworld, and picked bonddad (who is a tax attorney) to handle the incorporation. Several other Kossacks have popped up and done various things, most notably Timroff provided the fine BWIU & BS typewriter /w lounging pootie logo. The rest will make themselves known here if they choose to do so.
A real union would have a predictive dialer phone bank, mailing lists, and organizers tasked with various duties. Progressive PST is providing the needed servers, hosting arrangements, and technical support to bring that level of discipline to the BWIU with a 21st century freelancer's twist.
Twitter is going to be huge. You want to organize people, creating flash mobs to shout down a few wingnuts worrying a letter to the editor in its comments section, or maybe lock up a Congressman's phone for a solid day with a stream of constituent calls on a specific issue? What about sending one tweet and having literally thousands of activists Twitter accounts repeating the message? Some of this will be done with Twitter's native features and for the candidates coupling PPST's consulting services with the BWIU volunteer pool the results should really be dynamite.
As we said above, the relationship between PPST and the union is not a one way street. The next big thing the union is getting is a Request Tracker help desk, courtesy of PPST. Any Democratic campaign or ballot initiate like No On 1 In Maine can show up and make a request for support. There will be a ticket opened for them, a couple of people trained to run the system will try to dispatch the task, and the workflow will be tracked. If PPST's revenues go the way they appear to be headed those union member help desk coordinators are actually going to be paid positions ...
Some campaigns have made the mistake of treating the Netroots like a big, squishy ATM. This is less than effective – they're in a political life and death battle, they come across a bunch of easily provoked men and women sitting in the online equivalent of a column of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and the best strategy they can come up with is to go from one armored door to the next, begging for spare change? We want to see campaigns using everything this community can do, and writing checks is just a small portion of those capabilities.
Union members are already doing things that will benefit campaigns. If you want to know about House, Senate, or Gubernatorial presence on Twitter for both the incumbent and challengers the lists maintained by the BWIU are the only place we know of that consolidates that information. The incumbent lists were pretty good until ActBlue rolled out their donate via Twitter feature. We suspect a lot of new Democrats have signed up for the service. No one other than the BWIU is tracking challengers as far as we know. This will become an invaluable competitive information source as more and more campaigns start nesting on Twitter.
Starting December 14th union members are going to host a five day a week diary series in which candidates will answer the same list of 20 questions that Spedwybabs developed. It's nothing policy related, it's just a fun way to draw them into contact with DailyKos so we can know them better, and they can get acquainted with the idea that we'll watch their backs if they're adhering to Progressive principles.
Some other stuff has happened but we can't really say much about those who received assistance. Union members have written things, created logos and web sites, answered questions about campaign team building, helped navigate ActBlue registration, and facilitated many of the other little tasks a grassroots campaign faces.
We'll send you away with a few closing thoughts. There's another Mark Foley out there. We're going to make sure he has an opponent ready for the day the news breaks. There's another Barry Welsh out there, fighting an entrenched Republican who outspent him fifty to one. There's another soldier out there, a captain with three tours in Iraq behind her, and she isn't going to run the way Tammy Duckworth did unless one of us helps her write speeches. And if you join today you won't have to wait too long to hear the phrase "blue dog obedience school" said right out loud without the slightest concern as to who might hear it.
You can join today. The Blog Workers Industrial Union congregates on Facebook. If you want to nose around first, following the BWIUBS account on Twitter is the way to go. You can also follow Stranded Wind and Spedwybabs... please do. And finally to contact BWIUBS directly, shoot an email to bwiubs at gmail dot com.