Hello, DailyKos community members.
I’m Anna Galland, the new executive director of MoveOn.org. Given the important role the DailyKos community plays in the progressive netroots and broader progressive movement, I wanted to introduce myself here, to give you an update on what’s happening at MoveOn, and to open up a conversation on how we can best work together to create progressive change.
I've been at MoveOn since 2007; my most recent project here (prior to this new role) was leading the launch of our SignOn.org petition tool. Before MoveOn, I organized with the Oregon Bus Project and the American Friends Service Committee, and was proud to serve as a trainer for Wellstone Action.
I think MoveOn and DailyKos have a lot in common. We were both early innovators at the intersection of politics and the internet, we’re fueled by progressive people power, and we’ve made big impacts on elections and policy debates over the course of the last decade. We also have a lot of unfinished work -- to advance economic fairness, reduce gun violence, reform our nation’s immigration system, tackle big challenges including money in politics and the existential threat of climate change, and a million other issues from the local to national levels.
We need a stronger movement to win on all those fronts. So MoveOn is diving into a new strategy that’s intended to dramatically boost the progressive movement’s power. We’re equipping progressives across the country step up as leaders of their own campaigns, with ever-more access to MoveOn's tech tools and the ability to tap into the collective people power of MoveOn’s community of more than 7 million members.
What this means is that we’ll double down on the success of our SignOn.org petition tool -- taking more of our technological toolset and putting it directly in the hands of grassroots progressives, both individuals and organizations. And then our staff of campaigners will layer on an array of tactics to turbocharge the most promising campaigns and score big wins. It’s a strategy to expand our power in the most prominent national debates, while spurring a surge of progressive activism at the state and local levels too.
I share more info about our new strategy in this video:
We’re pretty excited about this new direction and the change that it has the potential to unleash -- and hope you’ll consider using SignOn.org and the other resources we provide to run your own campaigns.
On a personal note, I’m also looking forward to the opportunity to engage more with the DailyKos community -- this site is an important source of information, forum for debate, and inspirer of action -- and I’m a firm believer that when progressives work together, our collective power, as a netroots and movement, is much larger than the sum of its parts. I’m eager to hear your ideas about how we can collaborate.
To that end, I’ll be hanging out for a while down below in the comments, so I’d love your reactions and thoughts, as well as questions about MoveOn’s new direction.
