shouting loudly

For a number of (really good) reasons, I’ve not been able to spend much time following the endless, ever-forthcoming details about the US government’s decision to vacuum up as much of our communication data as possible. Even from such a less-than-ideal base of knowledge, and even though it will take months or years for everything [...]

Change.org is in the business of distributed citizen politics, and business is good. News broke today that Change.org has raised $15 million in outside funding, mostly from Pierre Omidyar.   From Liz Gannes, who broke the news: Omidyar Network is taking a minority and non-controlling stake with the explicit disavowal of a future payday from [...]

I’ve just gotten around to reading Nicholas Lehmann’s New Yorker piece, “When the Earth Moved.”  Lehmann compares today’s environmental movement to the 1970 Earth Day-era environmental movement and, of course, finds it wanting.  It’s an easy critical piece to write, and the prose is well-constructed.  But I found the whole thing pretty underwhelming. Lehmann is trafficking [...]

On Monday evening, the Hunter College Roosevelt House is hosting an event on media policy and reform, featuring former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Sadly, it’s in the middle of my Monday class, so I will be unable to attend — and it’s oversubscribed, so I can’t urge you to attend either. Still, I’m really excited [...]

“Not funny. Not clever.  Not your girlfriend.” When Rupert Murdoch was forced to testify before the UK Parliament, a lone protester named Jonnie Marbles decided to engage in some “direct action,” interrupting the proceedings while delivering a pie to Murdoch’s face. Moments before the act, Marbles tweeted “It is a far better thing that I [...]

I spent this afternoon at a protest CREDO organized outside the NRA’s DC office.  It seemed only appropriate. As the protest ended, a woman with a Flipcam approached me, hastily identified herself as being with Breitbart TV, and then launched into a few interview questions designed to provoke an outraged-liberal reaction (“do you really believe [...]

Change is afoot at Change.org.* Following up on this summer’s dilemma of success, (when controversy emerged around their sponsored petition contract with the anti-union education reform group, Stand For Children) Ryan Grim reports that the organization has adopted a new advertising policy “to allow for corporate advertising, Republican Party solicitations, astroturf campaigns, anti-abortion or anti-union ads [...]

Today is the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.  It has inspired reflective posts around the web, inquiring about the impacts, successes, setbacks, and future of the Occupy movement.  Rebecca Solnit’s post at Alternet is particularly good.  She argues that Occupy has already succeeded in changing the national conversation about economic justice.  She also [...]

Going around on Facebook now is a post by musician David Lowery (of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker) in which he politely but condescendingly assails young people for copyright infringement. It’s in response to this post by NPR intern Emily White, in which she discusses how she has a hard drive full of [...]

At Personal Democracy Forum last week, I saw a very interesting panel titled “The Lean Startup Model for Politics” (check out Jackie Mahandra’s cool visual notes here).  I was a little amused that the whole panel was premised on an article I’d read in last month’s Wired magazine, “Upstart Eric Ries Has the Stage and [...]