I've been writing on Open Source Intelligence and its implications for Progressive activism for the last few weeks. The basic idea is simple - our candidates, elected officials, and their staff are flooded with information. Some of this is purposeful corporate propaganda, but much of it is now our own doing. The problem is not getting enough information, it's getting enough good information. And that means a whole lot more signal while discarding the noise.
Today's thoughts are on the construction of IEDs - Improvised Editorial Desks.
I could have used a less inflammatory title, but let's understand precisely the situation we face: drag the country, kicking and screaming, toward a second New Deal. Or the wingnutosphere coupled with our rotten media and corrupt, dying corporations will drag us into a civil war. Their motivations are simple; religious fanaticism, a low intensity civil war would be good for ratings, and for profit prisons will need a reason to exist after we reform our ridiculous, racist drug laws.
So the very best thing we can do is put our collective shoulder to the wheel and help our candidates and elected officials. A responsive editorial operation can do just that.
Look at DailyKos. What do you see? I see a one dimensional environment - good writers, and those trying to be. There are some round ups, to be sure, but none of these have broadly penetrated to the realm of policy makers. The reputation economics in effect shut out the worst of the trolls, but reactivity, fact checking failures, and deficits in pragmatism abound.
The one dimensional nature is no more apparent in the lack of participation from the open source software community. I write a little code, so does AnotherMassachussetsLiberal, but overall a site with 240,000+ people should have a couple of orders of magnitude more information wranglers. That no one has come to me asking for problems to solve still amazes me at times. I'm so glad Twitter has appeared to both fill this talent gap and to provide a richer environment for finding and connecting with actors.
Helping in this case is all about attention conservation. A House staff has some people in the district, some people in the office, but the reality is that the Representative has to actually vote on legislation with perhaps no more than one or two people looking things over. Conduct yourself in a certain fashion on Twitter and you can easily build a following that gives you the analytical capabilities of a Senate staff, all for no more than saying thank you in the right manner at the appropriate time.
So, some attention to diversity and organizational development will yield an operation that can stand shoulder to shoulder with professional staff, and all that is lacking is a means of communicating your work product.
Such a group could post diaries here, but this presumes the target audience is looking. They mostly aren't, unless someone forwards them a link. Email is another vehicle, but unless you've got access to some fancy lobbying tool how would you know which addresses to use? And then how would you know if anyone were looking unless you were using SalsaLabs to measure link follow rates? Our operation has access to both of those, but without a budget and full time contributors this is a hard act to follow. There are, however, simpler approaches that have merit.
I've already posted about situational awareness using NetVibes, which I described in OSINT: Signals & Noise. Getting into this was a whim, something I noticed while reading Wes Unruh's blogroll and decided to try, but I like it a little more with each passing day. My personal page exhibits my own presence, an outreach effort, a basic view for some of the campaigns I support, and a little bit of experimental noodling in the tabs further to the right.
A couple of people here who are currently frustrated readers, intent on races and poicy but either lacking the writing skills or the desire to participate in this environment could make some sizable waves. Plunging in and supporting a federal House race or one of the state House/Senate races really isn't that hard to do. My feeling is that Senate and Gubernatorial races are so large as to have their own sets of hands for doing such work, but serious players from our ranks may well advance to working for such races.
There are 435 House races and all Progressive PST has seen so far is the tough meat - Connie Saltonstall in MI-01, Ryan Buchianneri in PA-12, and John Bottorff in IN-09. Stupak's resignation, Murtha's death, and Hill's victory haven't discouraged us. Manan Trivedi's primary win against Doug Pike, Lois Herr's effort to remove the other half of Stupak-Pitts, Billy Kennedy's campaign to put an end to Virginia Foxx, and David Cozad trusting us to help him take a shot at Joe Barton are each a joy in their own way. Neither of our Gubernatorial candidates made it past primary but having done the work seems to have positioned us for follow on business in their respective states.
At the risk of cannibalizing future business my take is that a pair of OSINT ronin working in tandem can handle a clutch of House races - perhaps an entire state for those with seat counts in the single digits.
I want to get paid for developing and operating the stuff, but there's little value in winning a handful of races if there are dozens of avoidable failures elsewhere. This being said, I'm going to go pursue the financial and organizational support required to make this happen. All that is needed is a little money and a hundred Progressives possessed with the same cold fury that has filled me these last six years. I know you're out there ... so don't be shy. You can find me on Twitter.