The Power of Inclusion to Create Change

Today blogger Andy Towle on his blog Towleroad put together a call to action for his readers to join a “blog swarm” to put pressure on President Obama by putting pressure on the Human Rights Campaign:

If the President is serious about keeping his promises to our community, now is his chance to prove it.

Publicly demand that President Obama take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.

1) That means the President needs to state publicly that he wants Congress to repeal DADT this year; and
2) The President needs to take the lead in working with Congress to make sure the repeal happens.

Call now: HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
TTY: (202) 216-1572
Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723

And right after that, he’s put a very short list of blogs sponsoring the “blog swarm.”

Although we think it’s a great idea to leverage the power of new media to put pressure on politicians and political organizations, I’m left wondering why the list is so small.

Why not put together a page where all the participating blogs can be listed? Why make it exclusive instead of inclusive ?

As Cleve Jones told us in an interview, in the past, activists had a phone tree and called each other. It would be fun to see blogs take this time-spreading the word on this action and have their names included.

What this appears like to some is just another attempt to separate the haves from the have-nots. How about it? Open the action to everyone. A list of “official” blogs is exclusionary and counterproductive. Harness the true power of social media: inclusiveness.

As Ariana Huffington loves to say “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity” so why not spread it around? Plan ahead and get it everywhere.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 2:48 am and is filed under Politics & Activism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.