My experience of art is often the way I experience activism.  My goal is to engage and then let myself be guided.  This engenders trust of my unconscious and of the times.

In art it is often the case that I am the observer of what emerges from my fingers.  Theory formation, for me, is art.  I expose myself to information, often feeling led to read the books that I absorb in the same way that I feel led to play with or explore various idea avenues.  When I’m scooping up ideas and information, the concepts realign to reappear as art, in this case, a story or theory.

I was a watercolor artist when I was in my 20s, a comic artist when I was in my late 30s and 40s.  When I was involved with watercolors, I was usually inclined to express internal feelings characterized by distress, shame, frustration, remorse, yearning and feeling alone.  Performing comic strips and panels, I trended toward bitterness, disappointment, frustration, annoyance and anger.

When writing, I feel drawn toward melancholy, reverence, respect, delight, disappointment and awe.  I’m feeling more rounded in my expressions using words.  And, I more often feel the role of the…

Last December, workers from the Republic Windows and Doors factory on Chicago’s West Side staged a factory takeover when denied over one million dollars in benefits when the factory closed its doors.  This was the first union factory takeover in over fifty years, the beginning of an imminent reformation of American unions, an old song rearranged.

This shutdown was preceded in November by the proliferation of spontaneous Facebook demonstrations across the country.  The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual (GLBT) community and sympathetic activists protested the passage of Proposition 8 in California by taking to the streets.  Crowds were created with online social networking tools, mostly Facebook.

The old Left and new Left are finding that old and new tactics are both appropriate in the current deteriorating economic environment.  The Obama campaign guided 14 million people on the use of online tools.  Many of these people are feeling empowered.  Many others, like the unions, GLBT communities and countless other communities, are feeling angry.

Collapsing economy, meet new tech.

Over the next few months, observe the oldest community in the Left, the unions, learning to use the newest tactic, online and cell phone technology social networking intervention.  At first, unions will view…

The Obama Administration seems to have a feel for part of what our society and our economy has to achieve when it seeks to fund a transition to a “Green” economy.  Decentralizing the electrical grid by creating a distribution infrastructure that encourages solar and wind offers economic health without greenhouse gas production.  Still, the Obama Administration is not exactly displaying a lack of imagination but is exhibiting a failure to understand that the economic crash is signaling the end of the consumer economy.

Three generations of Americans have grown used to this giddy consumer amphetamine high accompanied by a reverence for products and the institutions that bring us all these choices.  Imagining an economy without the constant churn of natural resource conversion into disposable commodities, at this point, is a challenge.  Engaging imagination in this direction would be a useful challenge for the new administration.

My website design and development firm serves over 400 businesses.  One of those clients is down the street and around the corner.  Monica sells used children’s clothing and toys.  This Christmas she saw her business boom.

Monica told me the story of one of her customers giving the younger of her two daughters a used…

Consider that the American and world economy are beginning to work their way into a depression.  This is not too farfetched considering that in the blogs and mainstream media, the 1930s are becoming a common theme.  It is becoming conventional wisdom that we’re headed for depression.  Just as dust bowl winds destroyed our farmlands, this hurricane of financial abuse is deconstructing the modern economy.  It is not unreasonable to expect that the federal government cannot manufacture jobs quickly enough to breathe life into a dying consumer economy gasping for breath.

It’s time for the American Left to start exercising some imagination.

Let’s assume that eighteen months from now it will have become clear that Federal interventions displayed only moderate success.  Big box and specialty chains will be closing doors.  Flea markets and street vendors will spring up like mushrooms around an old tree trunk as the abandoned old structures house numerous spontaneous eruptions of minicommerce.  Deep resentments will emerge, focusing on those perceived as wealthy.  Demands will be made that resources be redistributed that allow the disadvantaged to have access to health, education and a job.

The American Left has been split for years between those that concentrate on heinous…

At a fairly fast clip, the American Left is splitting into pieces, in no small part due to a failure of imagination.

Two splits are happening at once.  First, to whatever degree African-Americans were integrated into the Left community, they have gone.  With the election of Obama, the Democratic Party has moved left in its willingness to empower minorities of color.  Having deeply satisfied a large constituency, that constituency is not at this time willing to push Obama on social justice issues, trusting that he will not disappoint.  There was always a disconnect between social justice and foreign policy in the Black community.  African-Americans for the most part did not heavily protest the Iraq War.  The disconnect has grown wider as they see evidence that they’re being heard.

A second split has increased the chasm between the hard Left and the center Left.  There has always been the disagreement between strategy, tactics and perspective.  The disagreement is growing wider.  The far Left focuses more on U.S. behavior overseas, where differences between the parties have been relatively small.  The center Left places more attention on domestic issues, where Democrats show growing differences from Republicans, with increasing large differences such as positions…

I am a web developer by profession, trained in fine arts.  My specialty in web design is creating websites and website features that enhance communication, eliminate barriers to cooperation, empowering individuals to accomplish social and political-change goals.  I work with more than 1,000 organizations across the United States, teaching leaders of organizations how to use these new tools to break down barriers to change.

I also run a firm that serves over 400 businesses by building, maintaining and marketing their websites.  Trained in the art of online organizing by Moveon, I advanced to the position of volunteer national coordinator.  There I learned firsthand how to combine a focused, goal-based business frame of reference with a deep desire to encourage societal transformation.

My background is fine arts.  As an artist, I specialize in brush and ink.  The way that I have exercised my art also involves the breaking down of barriers.  First, I seek to let go of conscious control of subject and process and allow my unconscious to determine the path and content of my productions.  Second, the content itself, when successful, creates bridges between separated concepts, connections between not-obviously-related ideas.

I am not suggesting this qualifies me to be…

Passion for exploring underlying presuppositions is useful when offering attention to how things work.

My father is a Republican.  His affiliation is based upon what he determines is best for him, personally.  Issues are not important in the context of his allegiance.  He views himself as a person with something to protect.  He estimates that Democrats don’t really care about people that are well off and he wants to make sure that he stays well off.  An underlying presupposition of my father’s political leanings is that he makes his decisions based on what’s best for him.

This is not just a Republican assumption.  Many people that vote Democrat support the party they believe is best for them, personally.  A person with few resources will often estimate that Democrats will more likely make it possible for him or her to have access to resources.  The difference may often be incremental, but a real difference exists.  Whether it’s my father voting Republican or a person with few resources voting Democrat, an underlying presupposition is that both people are voting based on what is best for him or her at his or her economic level.

Republicans and Democrats can share underlying assumptions.  The…

I attended the Peace Island Conference (PIC) that took place in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention.  Marcia, Laurel and I, as co-directors of the Peace, Justice and Environment Project, attend several conferences over the course of the year.  We are usually tabling, sometimes conducting workshops, occasionally speaking.

The usual format is speakers and workshops.  Workshops are usually constituency-based with topics designed to appeal to the folks attending the event.  Often there are eight or more workshops running concurrently, resulting in several with 2 or 3 people attending.  It is not uncommon that workshops are created to encourage a particular group or interest to attend the event.  Far more workshops are created than is reasonable to beef up the attendance numbers at a conference.  For example, 40 workshops can mean at least 40 more conference attendees conducting workshops.

At the Peace Island Conference, there were no workshops.  Instead there were breakouts.

The unique way (in my experience) that the PIC was designed was that a speaker’s section with four speakers was followed by breakout sessions with each speaker assigned a room.  In the speaker’s session, one person was assigned about 45 minutes to talk, followed by three additional speakers…

Way back before the election, I was a marshal for the protest march that occurred on September 1, the first day of the hurricane-impacted Republican National Convention.  I was assigned to follow the 45-minute long stretch of several thousand people with several other blue-shirted organizers.  From where we were, things were peaceful.  On TV that night, I watched video of pepper-spraying police, anarchist confrontations, unlawful arrests and varying degrees of chaos.  This conflict was all happening at other places in or near the march, which from the back end seemed characterized by calm.

In one mildly surreal moment during the march, I looked up to read the news ticker trailing across the side of a skyscraper.  In the blinking lights of the ticker I read that seven had been arrested in the march.

As an organizer, a lot of attention is devoted to designing events and preparing advisories that will draw cameras.  At the RNC, I observed more media in one place than I was aware was even possible.  Anybody that wanted to be interviewed could find one several times.  I read that there were 15,000 reporters, producers, camera people, lighting specialists and talking heads at the RNC.  That was…

As a Left organizer, it’s not about making things happen but about appraising conditions in order to be in the right place in the right time, with the right tools, with the right allies, with robust contact lists, a powerful message and a unique presentation. Listening to the changing of the times, one becomes a specialist in currents and waves.

Sitting on the beach, with an eye always on the ocean, you see a wave, run out into the water, position yourself and let it carry you toward your goal. Rarely are waves so big that you can see them from far away. Usually, you need to linger at least waist deep in the surf.

We are in a unique situation, what with the slow-motion toppling of our hierarchical society, to be observing a tidal wave of change approach the beach. The usual activist interventions don’t apply. To catch this wave requires an understanding of the change in societal currents, the shift from patrifocal to matrifocal paradigms and the profound effect that communication technologies are having upon this changing seascape.

It’s as if the moon had not risen for 6,000 years and only now has appeared above the clouds. Currents…

Among evolutionary biologists, there is an ongoing argument revolving around the specific location or levels among hierarchies of animals (gene, individual, group, species, multispecies community, etc.) where evolution most powerfully occurs. Richard Dawkins and the reductionist sociobiologists focus on the gene as the central station where selection has its greatest impact. Dawkins advocates suggest that no train leaves the station, no gene lives to procreate, that hasn’t first been provided clearance by an environment. Good genes can carry many passengers, many individuals that profit by owning them, and it is the genes that decide how individuals evolve.

Stephen J. Gould was Dawkins’ opposite. Instead of suggesting that evolution occurs at a single location, Gould argued that evolution was influenced by selection at multiple levels at the same time. Biologists often have a favorite scale of selective influence. Classically, evolution was believed to occur at the scale of the individual.

This argument is not an arcane argument. Recent discussions in evolutionary developmental biology focus on the influence of the environment on the individual before and after birth. A consensus is emerging that the environment does not just influence evolution by killing individuals that can’t compete, but that the environment helps install…

There is a thought experiment I engage in on occasion. I imagine trying to suggest to two fundamentalists of two different religions, for example, a Christian and a Muslim, that what connects the two true believers has more weight than what divides them. In my thought experiment, I ask that each imagine two sets of parents, a Christian couple and a Muslim couple, and each couple has a child with no hearing and no sight. Each child is to be raised believing in his or her parents’ religion while only touch can be used to communicate the central tenets of their belief. I then ask how the two children, grown older, could differentiate the two beliefs. How would they know one religion from the other?

Remove the words from religion and truth remains.

I observe the American Left and Right for differences in behavior that would suggest deeper truths than the words that I hear them say.

“You have something to protect. We will help you protect what is important to you. In our community, we protect ourselves from outside threats.” This argument is what I hear the Right say. These words encourage people to experience what is valuable to…

Integrally entwined in a political movement are the specific ways the movement’s practitioners engage in process and issue execution or how things get done and what gets focused on. The degree of congruency between processes used and issues emphasized has everything to do with political success.

The contemporary Right has a process characterized by an allegiance to the belief that the ends justify the means. Though this belief would seem to suggest that the issues are so important that any action justifies the goal, the opposite is true. What is occurring is that an emphasis is being placed upon process over the goal. Right Wing process, as it is mediated through its most heralded practitioners Lee, Atwater and Rove, is about success by any means that work. Being on top is the core principle of the Right Wing. Right Wing ideology has less to do with its various issues. The Right Wing is about winning. And so, the Right has been deeply process-oriented, a process congruent with its behavior, though we’ve often believed that it was the specific issues that were central to Right Wing core values. The issues, supporting corporations, supporting male control of the female body, supporting wealth…

On the autism rights and neurodiversity blogs in July, fury erupted around the radio show host Michael Savage’s comments that autistic kids were brats.

Savage said that autism was a “fraud, a racket.” He went on to say, “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.”

The rage of autism advocates communicated quickly. Home Depot, Aflac, Sears, Budweiser, Direct Buy, Cisco and Radio Shack withdrew sponsorship before the end of the month. Radio stations dropped the show.

As an activist and organizer, I feel like what I observed was a social change miracle. Society likes to keep its anomalies and minorities invisible. Savage’s words have revealed the power of a group that will not hide.

Deep into this great transition from a capitalist, hierarchical, patrifocal society to the horizontal, aesthetic-based, partnership society, events occur that provide a window into the future. Neurodiversity is almost invisible at present. It is becoming a central focus of society very quickly. This last July was a coming out party.

Autism and Asperger’s rights represent the third wave of genetic justice. Civil rights, the first…

Designing and building websites that seek to encourage social change is more than a little bit like designing playgrounds for children with slides, ladders, jungle gyms and swings.  A difference is that when I am designing web applications about social transformation, I pay close attention to the principles of change; I seed the software with features that play upon the nature of biological, social, ontological and personal evolution.

When I was maybe nine years old, I went with my youngest sister, Gale, to the playground at the corner of the block.  Gale was four years old and had pink glasses with bluebirds at the temple.  New playground features had been added to the park.  One of them was a hefty plastic animal with a sort of saddle, embedded in a large, powerful, grounded spring that allowed for slow rocking back and forth.  Gale said she wanted to show me something and had me straddle a hippopotamus while standing on my feet instead of sitting on the hippo.  She stood in front of me and then slowly drew the plastic hippo to the ground, yanking the wooden handle coming out of its head.  She managed to draw it all the way…

Earlier this year at the Green Convention where I was tabling/exhibiting, I made a pitch of our networking web application to Cynthia McKinney’s campaign manager.  She seemed to understand a little about what we had to offer and said I would have to talk to her web person.

Basically, I was telling a story, an abbreviated version.  The story focused on winning elections by empowering people, doing what Obama has learned to do.

McKinney’s web person was her web designer.  They had no one making web policy decisions other than the person actually designing her website/online communications system.  Not a good thing.

I talked to the web person.  Though seemingly impressed by what he described as our web 2.0, social networking political action integration, he said that personally he had been unable to convince Cynthia and her staff to move in that direction.  It seemed to me that a subtext of the conversation was that if he recommended to McKinney our application, he’d be recommending himself out of this area of his responsibilities.

This two-conversation communication is a microcosm of a difficulty of social change on a larger scale.  Good-intentioned people make decisions in their best interest, the kind of…

Laurel, Marcia and I continue to discuss the most effective way to build the PJEP 50-state network of networks.  There are about 15 of us working hard to research and facilitate the state networks as they go up.  At this point, almost 1,000 local organizations and chapters of national organizations are working through 33 states within 26 networks.  (There are several two-state networks and one three-state network.)

Visit PJEP.org to investigate the central site where state and local actions, calendar items and online campaigns (petitions, boycotts, eletters and fundraisers) are collected and collated so that grassroots activity across the country can be explored in detail.

Two logistical issues come up fairly frequently.  Programmer David fixes bugs and enhances features that already exist, or Dave creates new features.  David, Marcia, Laurel and I talk frequently about which of these three areas should be emphasized at any given time.  All three of us feel that for us to achieve our mission, it is vital to empower individuals and local organizations by providing them access to resources and connections to other individuals and organizations so that they are able to accomplish their social-change and political-change goals.  Decisions are made daily…

As an activist with an evolutionary focus, there is a particular way I go about engaging in intervention.  Evolution is all about connection.  Experiencing unfolding at multiple levels (personally, societally, biologically), I don’t feel a compulsion to make something happen, to cause change, to struggle for an equality.  I am not wrestling with opponents.  What I feel is an attraction to contribute to those places where my efforts can have an effect.  I experience relationship in the places where I intervene.  Like engaging in art or writing, there is an experience that I’m part of a process larger than myself.  An idea, an action, a strategic arc with related tactics draws me in as if it were seeking my attention.  Just as there is that ongoing conversation between my conscious and unconscious mind, there is an identical conversation between my conscious/unconscious and my environment that murmurs to me, like an always present river, about what it would be fun to do.

I’ve spent much of my life unconsciously sensitizing myself to these river whisperings as I’ve sought ways to transcend conventional barriers.  If in college I could convince two professors to allow me to keep a journal as part of…

Lee Goodman has a talent for being present when my life takes a radical shift.  In high school, as we became close friends, Lee introduced me to the hippie protest movement.  In 2002, Lee brought me back into the protest movement when he invited me to a peace march in Northbrook.

Four days after returning from the United States Social Forum, Lee and I were in my living room discussing the commercial possibilities of an application my firm was developing when that underground aquifer of inspiration offered me a taste and then complete emersion of an idea.  Yet, it was more than an idea.  If felt like I was looking into a window of how the future would unfold.  Directly connected to the revelation in the convertible with Marcia earlier in the week, the idea was about interconnection, the neotenization of society, with an outline of specific features of the next step in the transformation of our species.  It hit me as Lee stood to leave to head back home.  I rose, my tongue between silence and stuttering as I watched him depart.  Later in the week, I called Lee to share the vision.

Integrated into the online campaigns being…

Early in July of last year, Marcia and I were driving back from the United States Social Forum (USSF) in a rented convertible, top down, at night.  Stars out, wind whizzing by, Marcia sitting beside me, an integration hit me as if in a desert landscape it started pouring and isolated lakes were linked by river flows.  Connections between different sections of my life were made.

USSF was a powerful, positive, difficult experience.  Over the period of its several days, we made numerous presentations from our booth and conducted a workshop.  We talked about the Actions Options Tool (AOT) web application and the network of networks using the AOT for free that was quickly growing across the country.  I thought we were about three months away from being ready to introduce the unique new features we were presenting at the conference, such as SNAPAP (see previous entry).

A number of organizations and individuals expressed interest in either the programming or the statewide networks going up that were using the programming.  We met and talked with national organizations, international organizations and local activists.  It was exciting, interesting and exhausting.  It had been a long time since I’d felt that immersed.

Ten…

We’re two and a half years into a project that should have its first stage completed by about July1, 2009.  The Peace, Justice and Environment Project (PJEP) began with a single network of organizations in Illinois. Sixty-six organizations voted to participate in the Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice (later to become the Illinois Coalition for Justice, Peace and the Environment) on April 1, 2006.  It was at that event that the Actions Options Tool (actionsoptions.org) web application was introduced.  At that time, it was just the Actions Grid (see http://icjpe.org/actions), a petition function and a communications message center.

Over the last two years, four online actions centers have been enhanced or added.  Participating organizations can now create online petitions, boycotts, eletters and fundraisers.  A robust resources library holds hundreds of documents.  The calendar reveals actions, events, meetings and projects across a state.

At this time, 32 states have been integrated into a national network of networks, with almost 1,000 participating organizations.  The national site, http://www.pjep.org, is being developed to present an overview of actions, petitions, boycotts, eletters and fundraisers across the country that are searchable by speed, depth, breadth and…

Until now politics has been separated from our personal lives.  On the day we vote, there is an intersection that feels empowering to many people.  For most, that intersection has been enough.  Many people do not vote.  Many that do vote do not feel empowered or part of the process.  Activists engage in a process to achieve social and political change.  Many activists feel they are not empowered.

In this country, for many, there has been a deep disconnect between the management of government, the economy and society on one hand and an individual experience that he or she can influence those institutions.  The media make a clear and lasting contribution to an experience that the individual cannot make a difference.  It does so in several ways.  The media make few attempts to present root causes of situations, which would provide an opportunity for observers to hypothesize solutions.  The media emphasize the priorities of advertisers and their mission to sell products over the need of an educated electorate that can make informed decisions.  The media and politicians flatter the status quo rather than suggest that with knowledge and understanding, informed individuals can have the leverage to create change.

Observing that…

Friendster appeared and evolved into My Space and another variation, Facebook. Other forms are emerging and filling different niches. Linkses serves the business community. Change.org enhances the nonprofit world and empowers the individual seeking change. Google is seeking to create universal social networking software. Social networking variations are appearing overseas.

It is one of those unique moments not unlike when dinosaurs evolved feathers or when humans began to sing. Social networking has the potential to transform culture in several complementing ways, quickly, in a fashion that allows for deft adjustments to a changing environment.

First, it’s cheap. Second, it’s easy. Third, it encourages participation by those with time, rather than by those with money or resources. Entry level facility can be developed in minutes.

Anyone with specific interests can find others of similar inclination, empowering both by their being members of a group. Human hubs with many connections can thrive in an environment that exhibits this characteristic and offers ways to exercise the gift. The creative can share their creations. The shy can reveal the inner self. The curious can explore. Leaders can lead. The technologists can construct and modify.

Where is this networking headed?

Prepare for a cascade.

Power…

As an activist, I experience a kind of love/hate relationship with the news.  I am both attracted and repulsed by what appears through the various avenues of information distribution.

The news drives protesters into the street.  Protests draw cameras.  What cameras see affect public opinion.  Public opinion can change an elected official’s vote.

I am attracted to the news because it offers organizers leverage to frame debates and compel the population to get involved.  Modern organizing is partially about lists and relationships.  Email lists provide access to many people at one time.  Social networking–real time and online–drives friends and colleagues to respond to a single event at once.  A news story can be the beginning of a chain of powerful connections over time that, when strung together, create a movement of people creating change.

A news story is not just about the response it causes and the change that it can help bring about.  The story is also about the relationships created between activists that will form the foundation for future action around future items in the news.

An organizer watches and listens closely to the news, observing the response of media and allies to the news, intuiting what will…

This last week we observed repercussions of a clash between a quickly integrating world and a financial elite seeking to enhance its wealth and power by legislating minimal regulation with no transparency. Corporations wished to experience no accountability by their behavior. The result, in this new integrated world, is the beginning of the end of American Capitalism.

What happened between Monday and Friday of last week happened over many months earlier in this century. On Monday, the elites realized that by creating financial vehicles whose sole purpose was to generate exponential wealth, they had manufactured a mythology that had crashed. By Friday a run on 3.4 trillion dollars of money market funds had begun, the equivalent to the savings deposits withdrawal dynamic that occurred in the 1930s. The Government decided to do what governments do – shield the interests of private institutions – to protect the corporations whose behaviors were destroying savings.

The integration of the financial world has exponentially decreased the time that the crises of confidence had spread across the planet. It is now understood that with no transparency, regulation or accountability the elites had created fictitious wealth and hid the location of fiction in the system.

It…