TCG National Conference 2006 - Building Future Audience
Transcripts
National Conference 2006
Saturday, June 10
Mini-Plenary: Organizing Online
Molly Smith
I’m really happy to be here with Joan Blades, because she’s a great hero. And what she and her husband have been able to do in the short span of seven years is to end up with MoveOn.org that now has over 3 million members. [Applause] How many in this room get emails from MoveOn? Okay. So you now have probably 80 percent or more in this room. In our last session probably as much as that, as well. She was named Woman of the Year in 2003 by Ms. Magazine and they said, “Call her the Mother of Cyberspace Mobilization, the Joan of Arc of High Tech. Joan Blades has harnessed the power, reach and speed of the Internet to enlist millions in virtual grassroots organizing advocacy.” She’s says, “I have a real sense of optimism that we’re revolutionizing the way we do politics in this country.” I find that interesting because of what Wendy Puriefoy said yesterday about how we’ve been looking at social change in a particular way over the last 30 or 40 years, and how about now morphing into something new, and how can we look at that within our own organizations, and see how we morph and change as well. Through their site, ordinary citizens who once felt powerless are much more involved in the democratic process in a direct and meaningful way.
She was born and raised in Berkeley and in the ’90s she moved into what she laughingly refers to as “high-tech geekdom.” They have a software company called Berkeley Systems most famous for…
Joan Blades
The flying toasters! [laughter]
Smith
Very very creative, that screensaver. And that computer game, “You Don’t Know Jack.” [laughter] You have got a fan base that can’t be beat!
After selling the company in 1997 they focused on developing educational software while raising their two children. But in September of 1998, they became frustrated by one issue—and that was Congress’s obsession with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings. So then they applied the Internet and their programming savvy to political organizing, and created “Censure and Move On,” and in two weeks the number of signers snowballed to 200,000, went up to 500,000, and on and on. It truly is incredible.
Looking at recent successes, MoveOn in 2005 grew by half a million members, raised $9 million for candidates and campaigns and helped tip the balance in critical fights. And I don’t know if you all got the email notices, about a month ago when they wanted to raise money from people giving $15 every month so they could do major advertising? Within 24 hours they had raised $1.5 million on the Internet. They have really helped in terms of putting a new Iraq ad on TV. They did a political action where 100,000 gathered to honor 2,000 fallen soldiers, at a candlelight vigil. So they do programming that’s not just on the Internet, but they get people out there, and out in the world, on a face-to-face basis as well. And she also has moved into something we’ll talk about later, which is MomsRising.org. And she’ll be selling books and all kinds of other really great stuff.
So I’d like to start with a question to kick it all off, which has to do with, tell us how and why you started MoveOn. I mean, we’ve got a taste of what that was, but was it a fierceness of purpose, were you pissed off—what started you?
Blades
“Frustrated” is probably the word. I think we described that point where we sent out this one-sentence petition as a time when there was a vacuum of leadership. No one liked the impeachment thing, but somehow no one knew what to say. So we put together a one-sentence petition: “Congress must immediately censure the President and move on to pressing issues facing the country.” And we sent it to 100 of our friends and family. And within a week we had 100,000 people sign it. In ’98 that was remarkable. And we had a half a million ultimately sign it. Bottom line, everybody knew all about the issue. The vast majority of Americans were not for impeachment. It was a polarizing thing that did not move us forward in any way. And we had a lot of Republicans on that original petition!
So it spanned the whole country. And we really just thought it was going to be a flash campaign. In, out—back to education software! But it so happened that we had the November election and we were learning how to, you know, we had all these people sign up for our petition, and we thought “well we’re going to have to help these people communicate!” And it turned out with just a name and a ZIP code you could let people know who their representative is and what their phone number is, and they can give them a call and say, here’s something you might want to check into, and whatever you might want to say. And write letters to the editor. And people who had never been political before really appreciated this. Because they were frustrated, as were we, because there was real business that need to get done.
And when the election came along, most folks that, when we announced it, the impeachment was a losing issue for the Republican party. Nonetheless, two weeks later, the House voted to impeach. It didn’t feel right to walk away at that point, when people had just gotten engaged for the first time and did such a fine job speaking out. So we did the “We Will Remember” campaign. Which meant that we stayed engaged until 2000 and helped people get people elected in 2000 that better reflected their values. Which we did.
And the fact is, at this point we had this awesome group of about 16 people. Eli, the executive director—who’s 25, by the way, and so smart and so caring that he is a wonderful leader. And our job the way we see it is to help our members participate in the political dialogue in a meaningful way. And we tried very hard to be listening to what their priorities are, and looking for opportunities to connect that to actions that are meaningful.
Smith
It’s interesting to me that it was you and your husband who started this. My mind just goes to the kitchen table, and, you know, all these great things usually happen from one sparks or two sparks. What were those conversations about as it just kept growing and growing and growing? Because you kept thinking, we’re going to stop now, we’re going to stop now.
Blades
Well, in the initial stage, it was wonderful to see that energy. We’d get all sorts of emails. And we knew that were a huge number of people who hadn’t participated. And sent us a note and said, “You know, I don’t do stuff political, I’m too busy, but this is something I can do.” You know, it’s very simple. You can just sign the petition. Enough people signed the petition and said well, I can make a phone call. So it’s coming to people where they are. It was actually a huge disappointment that it wasn’t concluded after that November. Because I’m a mediator by training, and what I really liked about the initial MoveOn was bringing the vast majority of opinion to the forefront and giving it voice. Since that time the polarization has continued in such a way, you know, there’s certain values that our members represent, that you have to fight for. And elections are, by their nature, an adversarial process. So you get to elections, that’s what you have to do values. But at other times, you have to focus on the issues.
Smith
Were you one of the first companies that started to do interactive work on the Internet, so that people could interact with you? Because there’s something about this wonderful feedback loop that they have on MoveOn that gets people more entrenched.
Blades
I can’t say for a fact. I can tell you we try to model good behavior. And good behavior is listening. The opportunity of working online is you can have a two-way dialogue. So many people have looked at the Internet and said, this is a form of advertising and a form of broadcast. But if you only use it as broadcast, you’re only using a fraction. What people value, I think, is getting that information back.
I think the biggest opportunity we have is in the talent of the membership. You remember “Bush in 30 Seconds”? We had MoveOn members submitting ads prior to 2004 that were just fantastic. I still like reading them when I can—I don’t get to do it much anymore. And they also chose the top ad and they were ready to run it for the Superbowl in 2000. And it was just a kid working and talking about the deficit. And what that says to me, you had this explicit ad of children working at different jobs, and like, “Who’s going to pay for the trillion-dollar deficit?” And of course it was much larger at the time. But this just communicates to me that MoveOn members want to move across party lines too. It’s very universal, we have to take care of our kids, the deficit is something they’re going to have to pay. The intelligence of the MoveOn membership is so deep, and if you can leverage that, I think you’re doing the best possible job.
Smith
Someone gave me the newspaper yesterday that had a fascinating ad, in the New York Times. I don’t know how many people saw this. It reads, “When it comes to protecting Internet freedom, the Christian Coalition and MoveOn respectfully agree.” And this is about the Christian Coalition and MoveOn joining together to keep AT&T from controlling what you see and do online. [applause.] And I think it’s fascinating that as a mediator one of the areas they’ve been able to move into with their partner organizations, was their ability to bring in what you would think are really disparate people, disparate organizations, and find commonalities. Will you talk about how you do that do that organizationally, how MoveOn does that with different organizations?
Blades
This is something that’s going to hurt all of us, when you have just two, you have a duopoly, essentially, two service providers that will make it either possible to open things quickly or more slowly. And if your website and email is suddenly moving slowly, you’re not going to be able to build a group, MoveOn couldn’t happen, the Christian coalition couldn’t do the work they’re doing, and all the private enterprises are going to have trouble too unless they can pay for good connectivity. There was a huge problem up until earlier this year, there was a judicial piece that came down that said, actually there isn’t net neutrality, “neutrality” is the term that was used. So we need the Congress to pass that. And the Internet has been something the phone companies would like ownership of very much and they’ve greased the wheels very well. And so our only opportunity is really by working together across party lines to say, no, this is not acceptable. It’s going to have to be a grassroots system of engagement. We don’t have that long-term investment in our leaders. It’s a machine that for now we need for elections, but that’s another story. For now we need to work together.
Now, I’m working with a group called Reuniting America that’s really trying to find the areas of commonality in America because that is where I would prefer to focus, and depolarize, because we have so much more in common than we do that divides us. You wouldn’t know it looking at the media, and you wouldn’t know it from political leadership, but we have a huge amount of common interest. And we’re going to make a lot better decisions for ourselves when we find we can work together on those areas of common interest. This is one of them. I’m really pleased to see that kind of thing coming out. And actually MomsRising is another.
Smith
Why don’t you talk about how MomsRising came about, because this is a brand-new organization for you just in the past year.
Blades
You were reading from the Ms. article. And I haven’t been paying much attention to feminism. I’ve been very engaged with some of the MoveOn piece. And I learned, feminism isn’t cool for twentysomethings. These days it’s not cool. And I thought, what happened? It was really good for me! My coauthor who is absolutely fabulous, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, who I didn’t know at the time, had sent me a manuscript for a book called, The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy. I said, “I think I’ll read that.” I don’t read all the manuscripts I get. This one I read, in one day. And I said, “Oh, I get it.” That viewpoint is that women, now, working women make maybe 10 percent less than a man. But mothers, they’re going to make 27 percent less, and single mothers are going to make 34 to 44 percent less. Now, let me see. Why are so many women and children in poverty? And why are there so few woman leaders working in the board room, working in the Senate?
Well, we have a problem because 82 percent of women become mothers. And just to succeed in the job market, you’re not going to have many women making it into the top leadership positions. Likewise, women who need to support their families—and most women work because they need to support their families—are going to have a much harder time. Can you imagine, if you just raised minimum wage that would bring a lot of families out of poverty. Because there are a lot of moms working at minimum wage jobs. And this is an issue that crosses partisan lines. We all have moms! You may not be a mom, but you’ve got a mom.
My jaw just dropped. I hadn’t been thinking, we’re discriminating against mothers. Why would you want to discriminate against your mother? [laughter] We do. There’s a study that came out last year. Once a woman has children, 44 percent less likely to get a job offer. Forty-four percent! That’s huge. The opening story in The Motherhood Manifesto—and it’s told first because first you’ve got to go for the heart—it’s about Kiki, who moved from New Jersey from Pennsylvania with her kids, because her mom died and she’s a single mom. And she couldn’t afford to live in New Jersey anymore. She finds a nice little town, she goes out for the job interviews. And they ask at the interviews, “Are you married? Do you have children?” And she answers honestly. And the interviews are very short. Somewhere around interview number 11 she says, “I’m a very hard worker, I’m very well qualified.” And the potential employer says, “We’re going to pay you less if you have children and you’re not married, I mean, we have to pay your benefits.” And says, “This is not legal!” She calls the human resources. It’s legal, and frankly it’s legal in a majority of states in the union. Here’s a hard-working woman, trying to do the right thing for her kids, she could not get a job. And she did, after a long period of time, but she had to live on welfare. And then some people wouldn’t employ her because they didn’t hire “that type of person.” It’s just unfortunate. And I know there’ve been a lot of Americans out there struggling, and particularly moms, and it’s not working.
So here is a place where there’s a huge opportunity to do the right thing. But it’s going to be hard to do them. Because MoveOn takes on front page issues. And moms are on the front page maybe once a year for Mother’s Day. There’s a reason this book came out just before Mother’s Day. We have a website. But it’s not enough, and we’ve got to make that connection.
Smith
Talk about how you organize in terms of your grassroots organization either with MoveOn or with MomsRising. How do you work the Internet? How do you work it in terms of getting in contact with members, having a feedback loop, how does that work?
Blades
The most important thing about MoveOn, MomsRising, and I think theatre groups too, if you’re trying to grow your base, is friends telling friends. When a friend recommends something they care about, it really makes a difference. It’s a trust relationship. We’ve really built a trust relationship at MoveOn with our members, and they give us input. And we try to be fairly transparent about how we get to where we get. We’re getting thousands of emails, we’re getting information from our action forum, which is a place where people can post comments about what they think is most important and others can rate it. You’ve got 3 million people, so we can’t do this personally. I’d like to. But this gives us a sense of what tens of thousands of people care most about. And then when we’re getting the flow of things, when we have a question, we do surveys. And when we do them, we’re trying to figure out what is it that we can do that would best facilitate our members participating in this in an effective way.
Smith
How can you relate that to theatre? One of the conversations we’ve been having is, how many of us here have websites. Everybody has a website. And just call out—what are you using your website for? Brochure, what else? Ticketing, good. How many people are using it for ticketing? Everybody is. Have you seen it go up by 10, 15 percent a year? More. Almost 100 percent from last year? Are you finding that it’s, say, 30 percent of your tickets are now being sold online? Anyone higher? So more like 40 percent of your tickets? Anybody 50 percent yet? OK.
So you’re using it for ticketing, for brochure? What else? Okay, so you’re using it for fundraising, like when you’ve got a fundraising drive, or there’s something on your website all the time that’s about fundraising, give to… okay. So you’ve got that going.
You’re starting to do surveys? Okay, all right, this is interesting because that’s part of what we’ve been talking about, is to find ways for us to be interactive, looking at the kind of modeling MoveOn has done. Will you talk a little about how some of the surveying works and you get the feedback loop. You get the information and you funnel that into some of the issues you take on. Will you talk about that?
Blades
Well, one of the things that happened very recently: MoveOn members want to engage in the upcoming 2006 November election. Generally we don’t get involved in primaries. We got a lot of input from people in Lieberman’s district that there’s this candidate that they like, that they’d like to support. So we heard that person, we also saw it happening on the action forum in some places. We went out and did surveys and created an online primary. The people that give you input aren’t necessary reflective of the whole. But sometimes they’re very reflective of the whole. So we wanted to make sure it was something that spoke broadly to the membership. We said, okay, we’ll do an online primary. And if the challenger has over two-thirds of the vote we will endorse. That’s what we did. And we’re now endorsing Lamont against Lieberman. Which is unusual, but members also want their representatives to represent their values, and they didn’t feel like Lieberman was doing that. For a lot of our members, the Iraq war is one of their primary issues, and Lieberman is very supportive of it, and they don’t feel good getting behind him.
So there are going to be other members who don’t think we should get involved in primaries, but they will also understand that we have a process. And some of them will be unhappy enough to go away, but must of them understand how this came about. You can’t satisfy everyone in a group this size, but you can be transparent and honorable and do it with integrity, and by and large it works. It grows more than anything. For those it doesn’t satisfy, there’s more it satisfies, and that’s what we’re trying very hard to do.
Smith
One of the things we’ve been talking about is, your organization is strongly online. Our organizations are bringing people together as community in rooms and theatres. Will you talk about the ways you’ve used your work online to bring people together in a room, human-to-human interaction?
Blades
That’s actually one of the fun things. Just two weeks ago, we’d been getting input from members that they want basically to ask, what is “progressive”? MoveOn is a progressive organization, and too often progressive Democrats are seen as being against everything and not for, so what is our agenda? The objective was to get to the issues. So we had house parties all across the nation where people got together. And we also do surveys after things like this, to make sure, and we tried to make sure they were good events. But people loved the house parties. It probably took us nine months to a year to design a house party that was right. So it’s a real investment. You’d think we’d just send these emails out. But we had to really invest in trying to make this a good experience. Because you know, someone comes to the theatre and it’s not a good experience, they’re not going to come back. We need them to come back, that’s how change is going to happen.
So we came up with a list of ten things that were priorities. Then we sent that out to our whole list. Now we’re going to millions of people and we get hundreds of thousands of responses. And we have health care for all, energy policy, global warming, and reclaiming democracy which has to do with voting integrity and the overreaching this administration has done. There’s some things you can’t do online the same way as in person. And relationships are forming in communities because of MoveOn.
Smith
So the relationships that get formed, because this is so national and international, do you find that people who are going to house parties then form other relationships and friendships that gone beyond that?
Blades
Yes. I can’t say a lot about that, because… Actually there’s a book out there, Fifty Ways to Love Your Country, and that’s 50 stories from MoveOn members about ways they’ve engaged. We have the first section, is online ways people participate. And there are lot of great ideas here, they’re great stories too.
Smith
Do we have questions?
Audience
With the information overload, especially in terms of email, how does MoveOn.org cut through the clutter to get people engaged and not just deleting email?
Blades
That’s very hard. We do our best, by having a trust relationship. Most of our members value our messages in particular. That said, I know for a fact that a lot of them never get opened, because people are too busy and never see them. And you have to watch out for the spam filters. That’s something you always have to constantly be on the alert for. All of us have to be checking ISPs to take things out. They never know about that message, and we never know they didn’t get it. The reason I mention that is because it’s something you should be checking on. It happens to small and large groups.
It’s about trying to make those messages that they do open simple. Generally one idea per email will express what’s we’re talking about, an opportunity to act, and then we’ll have more information below for people who want to do it. All I can say is, good luck!
Audience
You’re a mom yourself with a time-intensive job. How do you handle the work/life balance?
Blades
So glad you asked me that. Actually it’s been a totally insane year, because writing a book, starting an organization, and doing MoveOn. It’s been truly unreasonable [laughter]. And I did the book with Kristen, and she has two kids younger than mine. Mine are 9 and 15, so it’s much more manageable now. But you know when you talk about tradition, we both work at home, and it’s hugely productive. We work before the kids get up, we have the going to school period, we work while they’re at school, and afternoons sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t, and actually when they go to bed is a productive time also. And I share childcare with a friend, so there’s lots going on there. It works really well to work at home as a mom, because when a kid gets sick, you’re there. And you don’t get as much done but you still get a heck of a lot done. You can handle sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.
If you have an eight-hour job and you do the commute time, you don’t have any time! It’s crazy. So the idea of balancing is one I talk about a lot. We were talking about theatre and the challenges. Do you know Americans are working 10 hours or more a week than 20 years ago. That takes away time for everything. Having a life has become more and more challenging. It’s time for us to push back against that. Joan Williams is this wonderful, she teaches at Hastings Law School, the center for WorkLife Law. She says that there used to be: God, Family, Work. And that these priorities get mixed up really resonates for a substantial part of the population. Work has taken over much more than it should. And the sad thing is, you’ve got parents working two jobs. You’re making the choice between feeding your kids and taking care of your kids, and it’s not a reasonable choice.
I’ll say a little more about that because it drives me crazy. Having a child is one of the top reasons for having a poverty belt in this country. And of 168 nations, there are 4 that don’t have a national form of paid maternity leave. And that’s us, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and Livonia. It doesn’t seem right. One of the stories in the book is about this mother who goes back to work days after she had a baby, because she figured out she could take a month off, and the baby was premature, and there was no way she was going to give her month of time with her newborn child up. The poor woman was working for two weeks before she could come home. She then got to stay home for a month, which was wonderful, but then what could she do? Fortunately she was working for a wonderful organization that let her take her baby to work. How many women get to bring to baby to work with her? Now, she learned how to type while breastfeeding, which is a wonderful accomplishment, but should women have to learn how to type while breastfeeding? I don’t think so! I don’t.
MomsRising has a site where we’re starting to get stories from women. One story came in, this woman had a baby, she needed to be back at work, she must be back at work. She goes back to work and she has to use a breast pump. And there’s no place to do it except a public restroom. So she’s using the luxury of the restroom and someone says, “Is there is a bomb in there?” She has people afraid of bombs, because this is Washington and she’s using the breast pump in the bathroom.
The stories you get are just remarkable. And to suggest you have to get right back to work within a month of having a baby, that’s really asking a lot. But not feeding your kids is a problem, too.
Audience
Is there a place for blogging in our theatres? And a related question, why are there no major theatre blogs, at least none nationally?
Blades
I think you guys can answer that better than me. I would certainly say yes.
Smith
How many people here use blogs in their theatres? And are the blogs being used in such a way—is it actors writing them, directors, designers—who writes them?
Audience
We have a blog so people can track through the playwright’s process, we have the director’s blog, and starting in December we have five members of the audience who will be our online blogging reviewers.
Blades
So I have a question for bloggers. Is it doing good things for your theatre, for your community?
Audience
I think so. I think people are fascinated by what goes on behind the scenes. I think the giving the artist a chance to talk about everything that leads up to the visible moments I think is good for our audience.
Smith
Other blogging stories? Yes.
Audience
I’m with Northlight Theatre out by Chicago and our artistic Peter Jones directed at Intiman in Seattle. He started a blog there about the new work-in-process, came back to Northlight, and started a blog at our theatre that linked back to the blog at Intiman. And we talked to the Intiman and they said they were getting hits every time Peter put a new blog at Northlight. Even though regionally our theatres are far apart it’s interesting we have this web connection between our theatres.
Smith
For people who have blogs, do you talk to your artists, did they have free reign, how does it work? How does it work for you, Susan?
Audience
I think that’s counterintuitive. We say tell us what your experience is. We’re not putting it out there as fact, we’re putting it out there as an artist’s experience in the process. And if we stepped in and edited that, we’d be working against the form.
Blades
Last time around, someone said something worth repeating here. Someone in theatre pretended to be a member of the public said very nice things about himself. It’s very dangerous to do that. The meters for truth-telling online are actually very high.
Smith
Yeah, they were pissed.
Audience
[inaudible]
Smith
Well, you can’t stop somebody from starting a blog. If they want to do a blog, they can do a blog.
I’m also curious about what you said about surveys, that you’re starting surveys with your theatre. How does that work?
Audience
Uh, well, the playwright now is just doing general information gathering. However, we generate original material, we’re an ensemble generative company. We’ve been working on the model to have the collection of stories and ideas and data come from our audience so the development of our shows is actually interactive with our audience. And we’ll take or leave whatever it is they give to us.
Smith
So you write about what you’re doing in terms of your own process, then take in feedback from people about what their thoughts and ideas are? Interesting.
Blades
I have a question. Does anyone here—my son is online a lot. They have little vignettes, little podcasts up all the time. Is anyone using those? Is anyone doing that with a theatre company?
Audience
We just got a large grant to create a new interactive website that will introduce podcasts and blogs. It’s starting in the fall.
Audience
We have vignettes but we haven’t done the podcast -
Blades
Is it getting used much?
Audience
People are looking at it but people are looking at other sites more frequently. We’re telling people about it, we’re just in the beginning stages.
Blades
I think it’s got a lot of potential.
Audience
It’s a tricky thing because we’re planning to do it with the 365 Plays/365 Days Festival. We’re just beginning today. We have to negotiate with Equity because actors’ images are protected by Equity. So we would have to negotiate with Equity. There’s that little bug to work out too.
Smith
And how will you use it for 365 Days?
Audience
We’re asking each theatre, we have 12 networks around the country, we ask each theatre who performs a week of these plays to video their show. Then we’ll put it on our website, which is going to be sponsored by Yale. And at any particular time anyone around the world can see what someone’s doing on that given day with the play. But first we have to negotiate with Equity. And Equity is thinking they’ll make it a national contract instead of going from theatre to theatre, so we’re hoping.
Smith
That’s great. That would be a major breakthrough.
Audience
We’ll see. [laughter]
Audience
One of our goals at this time is reaching people who are our non-customers. With your email list, you’re reaching people who are already in the conversation with you. My question is, with theatres is we’re trying to reach those non-customers. Are you doing anything to try to reach beyond your current email base? And if you are, what are you doing to get out there, to get new people to sign up for the emails?
Blades
Well, in terms of trying to grow the list, because that’s something that’s always, that’s how we become more effective. We’re always using tell a friend. That’s the number way we grow because someone tells someone about something they care a lot about. For MomsRising, that’s the challenge I have this year, is how can I grow this list to be substantial enough that we can give real support to leaders and policies that would in fact support the core issues of the Motherhood Manifesto? And it’s going to be a really hard thing to do.
When you talk about viral marketing—the viral time for MoveOn was the impeachment and the lead-up to the Iraq War. Those were times when it was front page for months and everybody had strong feelings, and there was huge, overwhelming energy. We actually did the first MoveOn petition because we were sitting in a Chinese restaurant hearing another conversation at the table. There was so much energy about this and nobody doing anything. So stepping into a vacuum of leadership when everybody is an expert on the issue or really has strong opinions is not something you’re going to walk into. That said, MoveOn continued to grow incrementally around issues where there’s a lot of passion. And it is about our trust relationship with our members, and their trust relationship with the friends they tell. Saying, “This is a group that has been good.” So with the MomsRising, we are doing the blogs, we are doing other kinds of online community building. If you look at places like MySpace…you never know what it is, what it is that made this happen. So you try the little podcast—I wanted a podcast. I got the T-Shirts, MomsRising T-Shirts, on the website too I might add. We have the song “M-O-T-H-E-R”: “M is for maternity leave, O is for open flexible work, T is for TV we choose and after-school programs, H for health care, E for excellent childcare, and R for realistic and fair wages.” We’re doing every marketing thing we can think of. Because—you know—it’s very hard to create a community, keep that community energized and grow that community. And for this one, to succeed, it’s going to require—also, you know, sharing the challenge. For MomsRising we also have dozens of aligned organizations, women’s organizations, mother’s organizations—and they’re different—child advocacy, health care, union…and others still. Because all those issues are so interrelated and connected that you can’t take just one piece. You need to deal with the totality, the holistic approach to it.
Audience
Do you ever find that the goals and desires of the MoveOn members conflict with one another? How does the organization move forward on those issues?
Blades
Definitely. But we are a somewhat democratic organization. The Lieberman issue is a perfect example of that. There was a portion of the MoveOn membership that said we should not get engaged in primaries. First goal is reclaiming leadership in the House, and then in the Senate, and they didn’t feel that was consistent with the first goal. On the other hand, there’s another portion that feels like standing for certain issues supersedes that in this case. And we just tried to do an open process that was transparently designed, given our capabilities, to give the majority what they wanted. And that’s all we can do. We try to satisfy—and satisfy in an open way—so that if it’s not the choice you would have made, you at least know why. And that our relationship to that member of MoveOn continues to be an open and honest one.
Audience
What online fundraising advice do you have, especially when targeting those under 35?
Blades
Online fundraising, well… Probably the best advice I have which is I think applicable across the board is that MoveOn has specific things we fundraise for. The Christian Coalition ad. We said, “Here’s an opportunity, we can do this ad.” And people funded it. And people funded having on-the-ground organizers going forward for November. They said, “This is something we think is important. We want to be building now so we are in a newly strong position going forward toward the election.” So, just really being specific. And the vast majority of money we raise goes for this, or this. We only have 16 staff, so the administrative costs are minimal on that scale.
Audience
How did the petition work – did they get an email that they responded to?
Blades
Yes, generally speaking, people signed a petition, which they mostly got from friends. When they signed the petition they got an email about what the petition is, we tried to keep it brief. There’s an opportunity for people to add their personal comment, because that gives it more depth. When we do deliver them to representatives and senators, they can see these are real people. But the next thing you get is a thank-you, and a request to send it on to your friends, because that is the best way to persuade people is friend-to-friend, along with on-line. Though I must say I’m happy with the last group. Everyone raise their hands here, but there were a bunch of people who weren’t MoveOn members. But now they are going to be! And MomsRising! [Laughter] Very happy speaker!
Smith
There’s another question back there.
Audience
Yeah, and I address this to everyone. Speaking of MySpace—how many people are using MySpace?
Smith
Would you describe what MySpace is?
Audience
It’s a networking page where you can list your organization, or your hobbies and interests. You log on and you can connect with other MySpace members. Kind of like a Friendster.
Smith
Okay, great. So are there people using that? How many people? Did you have something to say about it?
Audience
We are not using it but we are looking into it. And there’s a museum in Seattle that has had just enormous success with it.
Smith
By enormous success what do you mean?
Audience
They’ve built new members, and you know, you can see who it goes to, it’s a visible network. So the thing is getting more and more and more new people that they’ve never had before.
Smith
Any other thoughts on MySpace?
Audience
Another group having enormous success with that is Virginia Stage, check out their MySpace page. They’re bringing in lots of new people. People can go on their MySpace and see videos.
Audience
It’s hugely popular with teens and young audiences. An untapped resource.
Laurie Baskin
I’m Laurie Baskin, director of government and education programs at TCG. And I just wanted to remind us all, we are organized and we do advocate on issues that are of importance and interest to our theatres in Washington, we really travel on several levels, if course there are other level state level as well. Use the action alerts, respond. This activity cannot really be delegated to me. I need your voices and your participation, members of Congress need to hear from their constituents. And we have this wonderful network of 440 theatres across the country in all kinds of important legislative districts. When you receive the action alert, if you’ll send in the letter, we’ve also tried to make it as easy as possible - it is now automated in terms of going directly to your own member of Congress. And please hit that “forward” button. Send it to your board, send to your staff, and get everyone to participate so we can really speak with a loud collective voice.
Audience
In terms of the house parties…Is there a way we could use that model even for a specifically progressive theatre - where the house parties could help promote communities of theatre?
Blades
Well for us, it was a huge mobilizing force. The theatre is…you know, when I first got the invitation to come I thought, talk to a theatre group? And then I thought, this is good, talk to a theatre group! They talk to a lot of people that have a huge influence. I mean, having a house party is a huge opportunity. People like getting together. And at the end of the house party. The first party we did it, we didn’t have anything planned for people to do. People wanted something to do. And now we know, you give people a way to meaningfully engage ion that issue again. I think the theatre also, when you have issues that are brought up, if you give people…You know, you’re talking to someone who’s been issue-organizing for a while, so I may have a bias there - I put that out there. but I think that would be mobilizing and not everyone would engage but for some percentage it would be an asset and the connection might be born in certain ways and that would be for you to get into that back-and-forth dialogue.
Audience
I was just going to say we had a house party in March and I would say 700 people, under 40 basically, all who’d never been to our theatre before. It was in no way related to our programming. It was simply about getting young people into theatre. It was completely done online. Everything was donated, the wine, the food. We did have a performance but it was not the theatrical. It was very successful. We don’t know how it will turn around into getting people inspired. But they know what the building is.
Smith
What was the mechanics of that?
Audience
It started with junior members of our staff coming together and being empowered by the management to do this. It was the 25 to 35 year old people on staff, who are not management, who don’t have a budget, who said, we can do this but we don’t have the money. So we got creative and we did it.
Smith
But how did you do it? Just send out notes to all your email and your own listserv?
Audience
Yeah. From our telemarketing, we had the age demographic, we created a graphic identity. It wasn’t our larger institutional graphic identity. We had a separate website. It was a pretty much party, but it had dance, a fashion show, it was a wine tasting, we had an art gallery. It had nothing to do with a play.
Smith
I’d just like to thank Joan and thank all of you. It’s really a tremendous pleasure to have someone who has made happen what you and your husband and everyone else with MoveOn and MomsRising. And she’ll be autographing books.
Blades
Thank you. It’s an honor to be here. [applause]
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