There are people who are saying Occupy Wall Street will not survive the New York winter. They obviously don't know the difference between a political movement and a camping trip. This is no camping trip.
This thing is just getting started. Within a month this movement has gone national, has gone global.
I want to emphasize. This is not about seeking confrontations with the police. The police are part of the 99%. All they want is information. They want to know beforehand if you are going to come out into the streets. Tell them.
The Occupy movement is about finding one public space in every town, every city, and then filling it up to capacity - in New York I believe that number is 1,000 - and maintaining that number by having people camp out in rotation. You are looking for volunteers who will show up for one 24 hour period and then will stay on stand by after that. The more people you can thus "process" the better. Because all such "processed" people will join the online army. People who have been there, done that will be more enthusiastic.
If the number is 1,000 in New York City, in a small town that number might be 50, or even 20. That would work.
The important thing is for all such occupations to stay connected to each other. Create a Twitter account. Create a Facebook page. Create a YouTube channel. Create a LiveStream page.
The ultimate idea is to occupy the first 100 days of the Obama administration in 2013. And then we can go home.
Stay at capacity. If the capacity in Zuccotti Park is 1,000 people, stick to 1,000 people. Have people sign up online. There likely will be a core group of about 30 people, but even that core group can rotate.
Do march. It is important to come out into the street. But inform the NYPD beforehand. One march a month would work. And one big march next summer. Summer of 2012. A million strong march into Central Park from all parts of the city, into one big convergence.
The number one agenda item is to take money out of politics and to turn America into a one person, one vote democracy that it is not today. Total campaign finance reform. The rest follow from that.
Keep the White House. Take back the House. Acquire a super majority of 60 plus in the Senate. And demand that Obama and Pelosi carry out the agenda during the first 100 days of 2013.
Occupy Wall Street also is to do with the global spread of democracy. We have to uproot one dictator after another. We can do it.
Stay connected. Stay communicated. The conversation is the revolution.
(6) End the Bush tax cuts.
(7) A wealth equity tax. The American people, represented by the US federal government, own 10% of every company that has a market value over a billion dollars.
(8) Put up 20 satellites at a cost of $400 million each to ensure universally global broadband, ad supported. As long as people anywhere can buy/borrow/share/receive hardware - laptop/tablet/smartphone - and are willing to watch ads, they have broadband. This 20 billion will be recouped. This is an investment, not an expense.
Image via WikipediaNovember 2005: Barackface: Pentagon, Hexagon: The Pentagon masterminds the physical wars the US wages. .... I propose a Hexagon, a physical building, perhaps not as large, as an appendage to the US State Department structure, preferably in New York City somewhere, perhaps in Queens. ..... This is about waging a war with communications technology. This is about spreading democracy the grassroots way. This is about the immigrants in New York City taking the lead for their respective countries.
March 2006: Barackface: Long War: This Long War might give an opportunity to instead master a war with communications technology. Because if you don't, you are practically gearing for a hot war with China. I would think that is a total no no.
New York Times: U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors: The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks. ...... The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.” ......... Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet. ....... liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe. ...... stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya ....... $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will. ........ has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler ....... operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls ...... a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil ....... disempowers central authorities from infringing on people’s fundamental human right to communicate ...... “No matter how much circumvention the protesters use, if the government slows the network down to a crawl, you can’t upload YouTube videos or Facebook postings,” Mr. Anderson said. “They need alternative ways of sharing information or alternative ways of getting it out of the country.” ........ a project that would modify Bluetooth so that a file containing, say, a video of a protester being beaten, could automatically jump from phone to phone within a “trusted network” of citizens. ....... By the end of 2011, the State Department will have spent some $70 million on circumvention efforts and related technologies ...... “The Afghans wanted the Cadillac plan, which is pretty expensive” ...... From the activist geeks on L Street in Washington to the military engineers in Afghanistan, the global appeal of the technology hints at the craving for open communication. ..... “I don’t think this revolution could have taken place without the existence of the World Wide Web.”
The military action in Libya was necessary - to prevent a Rwanda, to send a signal to dictators elsewhere - but it is not scalable. You could not take it to Saudi Arabia, not Iran, not Russia, not certainly China. But you can take these stealth communication tools everywhere. The phone is mightier than the sword.
The Atlantic : North Korea’s Digital Underground: the very archetype of a “closed society.” It ranks dead last—196th out of 196 countries—in Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press index. Unlike the citizens of, say, Tunisia or Egypt, to name two countries whose populations recently tapped the power of social media to help upend the existing political order, few North Koreans have access to Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. In fact, except for a tiny elite, the DPRK’s 25 million inhabitants are not connected to the Internet. Televisions are set to receive only government stations. International radio signals are routinely jammed, and electricity is unreliable. Freestanding radios are illegal. But every North Korean household and business is outfitted with a government-controlled radio hardwired to a central station. The speaker comes with a volume control, but no off switch. ........ media insurgents have a two-pronged strategy, integrating Cold War methods (Voice of America–like shortwave broadcasts in; samizdat-like info out) and 21st-century hardware: SD chips, thumb drives, CDs, e-books, miniature recording devices, and cell phones. ....... these new media organizations are helping to create something remarkable: a corps of North Korean citizen-journalists practicing real journalism inside the country. ....... This past December, Open Radio North Korea, a broadcast-news organization, broke the story that a train headed for Pyongyang with gifts from China for Kim Jong Un, the heir apparent, was reportedly sabotaged and derailed, in one of several sporadic and mostly unreported acts of resistance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. ....... in January 2010, a North Korean factory worker was publicly executed by firing squad for phoning news about the price of rice to someone in South Korea ...... Like most of the other independent news organizations, it receives funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as other NGOs and private donors. ...... The footage Ahn brought out was shocking: filthy, barefoot children scavenging for food, picking kernels of corn from cow manure. Glassy-eyed, the children told the interviewer that their parents had died and they were homeless and alone. ...... Once these North Korean defectors made it across the Yalu or Tumen River, they were startled to discover that even the poorest Chinese had higher living standards than they did ....... (A 2009 survey found that 58 percent of North Koreans had regular access to a cassette recorder with radio, and 21 percent watched videos on video-compact-disc players.) The confluence of these developments created a remarkable journalistic opening: just as defectors in unprecedented numbers were bringing more information out of North Korea, the spread of markets and secondhand technology was creating a conduit for getting more information in. ....... Until the late 1990s, all international phone calls were routed through Beijing or Moscow. ..... Cell phones, both legal and illegal, have become a fact of life only during the past five years. ..... NK Reform Radio interviews defectors now living in South Korea. Some are unable to fit into South Korean society ...... The subject that most interests North Koreans is the country’s ruling dynasty: founder Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and his presumed heir, Kim Jong Un. Most of their subjects know little more than the idealized history of the Kims churned out by the state’s propaganda mill. They are shocked to learn that Kim Jong Il was born in Russia, and not on the mythic Mount Paektu; Koreans are quite socially conservative and are aghast that he has fathered several children with women other than his wives. ...... d a clear correlation between the “consumption of foreign media” and “more negative assessments of the regime and its intentions.” ....... One night he heard a South Korean program that contradicted a number of the myths surrounding the Kim family. After a little research, he discovered that the broadcasts were true. Was everything he’d been taught a lie, he wondered? It wasn’t long before he defected. ..... had several e-books, which I got from China. The national security force arrested me for possessing them,” he tells me. The books were pretty innocuous fare, mostly motivational titles like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
There are three departments - money, message, organization - and Reshma Saujani is excellent at all three. Reshma 2010 was an amazing operation. I marveled at all the details that Reshma 2010 worked on day in and day out. I marveled at the long hours the Reshma 2010 team put in and still stayed in good spirits. It was an amazing effort.
Maloney won because there is power in incumbency, there is power in raising three million dollars for a primary, there is power in getting endorsed by a former president and two sitting Senators. And a sitting president. And the entire congressional delegation in the state. Maloney is mediocre, not exactly headed for greatness, but she has consistently voted the party line. Party leaders like that. She has been reliable.
But I felt victory was possible. And getting 6,000 votes when you could have won at 16,000, I am calling it close.
Now that the race is over, I am in a small mood to do a slight post mortem. Could we have done a few things differently? I hope this does not come across as Monday morning quarterbacking, that is why I started with words of heartfelt praise.
I never understood why there was no prominent, direct link from the main Reshma2010.com page to the Reshma For Congress YouTube channel, and why the Reshma bio video was not prominently displayed on the front page itself. Perhaps on the sidebar. We did want TV debates and we were not too happy we got a radio debate, but we did not make enough use of YouTube in the same spirit. I put in a request. Give me YouTube versions of all of Reshma's HuffPo articles. I did not go anywhere with that request. We should have attempted to go viral on Facebook with those videos. Forget Maloney, we should have debated the voters.
Volunteers
Reshma 2010 stayed staff centric. It burned the midnight oil like a tech startup, but it also stayed staff centric like a tech startup. It might have hired perhaps two fewer people and had a much larger budget for volunteer barbecues.
Barack Obama did not talk much about race. Reshma Saujani did not talk much about gender. But perhaps she should have. There was a South Asian push, but there was not a similar New Woman push.
Four major newspaper endorsements and I was still waiting - breath abated - for this NY1 appearance by Reshma. This is that big moment. The tidal wave of victory begins now. We are on.
I am sure this video will be put on YouTube by the staff, because I would really like to embed the clip. I am sure the campaign will email out the link to the clip to everyone.
This is the best of all of Reshma's TV appearances this election season.
This Elizabeth person puts Chris Matthews to shame. Her questions were probing but not demonizing.
Curiously Jesse Jackson showed up at the studio to greet Reshma right before her appearance on TV. That would make my mood for sure. I am calling this a Chicago conspiracy.
Reshma Saujani is the most amazing politician I ever met. It is good to finally see her on TV. Otherwise Carolyn Baloney had decided the hottest primary race in America was going to suffer a TV blackout. Her CNBC appearance I thought was pretty cool too. But this NY1 appearance is it. This is the ultimate cool.
This is the moment I have been waiting for. The victory march begins now in earnest. I am getting ready for the victory party on Tuesday. What about you? All the labor leaders are invited. I know you are kind of slow, but that's okay. Show up for the victory party on Tuesday.
If FDR were around today, he would NOT be doing radio chats. He would disapprove of these two East Side politicians doing a radio chat. FDR would be doing YouTube, like Barack Obama is. I don't understand Maloney's love for radio technology. Or maybe I do.
New York Times: Debate In House Race Stirs Big Passions For A Small Audience: a long-awaited radio debate .... abruptly hit Ms. Maloney with a tough question about her ethics..... when Ms. Saujani chimed in that “Carolyn Maloney just lied,” Mr. Louis left the accusation hanging ..... WWRL-AM (1600), which ranks about 50th among stations in the metropolitan area ....... The primary contest has grown increasingly heated as election day draws near, with each woman calling the other dishonest and desperate. ..... refused several invitations to debate her rival on television ..... Saujani had raised $1.36 million ..... Saujani pounded her again and again, belittling her recent legislative record by calling her a “member of Congress emeritus” and denigrating her intellect by questioning Ms. Maloney’s mastery of Wall Street jargon. ..... “If I were to ask Carolyn Maloney what a basis point is, she probably doesn’t know,” Ms. Saujani said. ..... “People are sick and tired of the corruption and lack of ethics and integrity,” Ms. Saujani said. ...... Ms. Maloney seemed to stumble here, saying, “I was not involved in fund-raising,” though she did not deny having attended the two events or that her campaign team, in which she presumably has some role, had arranged them. ......Saujani kept on the attack until the end, accusing Ms. Maloney of doing too little for Queens and of taking sole credit for achievements that were not hers alone, from the Second Avenue subway line to the establishment of a new bank in Queensbridge. And she tried to deflate Ms. Maloney’s passage of credit card reform legislation last year by noting that a delay in its implementation allowed card issuers to raise interest rates.
after the event, as the incumbent literally fled from reporters .... Saujani hit Maloney out of the gate for two fundraisers that Maloney held on one of the days during which she served on the conference committee for the financial services reform bill..... Maloney insisted, as she has before, that she had nothing to do with the fundraisers, a claim Saujani immediately seized on, saying, "She lied." ..... telling reporters that Maloney had done a "mediocre" job over the past 18 years. "I've learned a lot about Carolyn Maloney in this process, and it breaks my heart ... she has not served this community well, and she is not doing a good job," she said...... "A lot of people are going through a lot of pain for her lack of service," she said. .... "I plan on [Nov. 2] voting for myself."
I am still trying to locate the audio of the radio non debate. I mean, come on. A radio debate at 11 AM on a Tuesday on a station no one has heard of?
But when I look at these two video clips, looks to me like Maloney is tired and "maxed out," as noted in the New York Daily News endorsement of my candidate. Reshma looks fresh and ready to go get things done. Her sharps stand out. She is whip smart, she is ready. She is prepared. She is reading the pulse of the nation right.
I demand a TV debate one evening before September 14. I think the two candidates owe that to this city.
I have not gotten my TV debate yet. But based on these two YouTube clips, I am declaring this a no contest. Maloney is nowhere in the picture.
The "debate" I am really waiting for is when Reshma is going to appear on NY1 for half an hour all by herself because Maloney has refused to show up. That is when the tidal wave of victory will begin. If you think the New York Daily News endorsement was a big deal, wait until Reshma shows up on NY1 for 30 minutes. You will be blown away. She will be talking about her vision for the future, about creating jobs.
So I guess the debate is happening after all. The clock on the Reshma 2010 site has been pulled down. After 100 days Carolyn Maloney has finally agreed to a debate. That is one mean record to have for 100 days.
It is going to be a radio debate, but I think TV cameras will be allowed. And I really hope the whole debate ends up on YouTube. In this day and age, I mean. I am opposed to the idea of physically carrying Maloney to weekly debates as a matter of principle, (How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time) otherwise what I would really have liked is weekly debates. But looks like we are getting just that one debate. Maloney is not going to be creating jobs for those two hours. What a loss!
And this entire time I have been giving Carolyn Maloney too much credit, I have been suggesting Carolyn Maloney is too scared of Reshma's smarts to show up for weekly debates. Well, Carolyn Maloney has just showed to be the most sexist of women. Apparently what she is scared of is Reshma's looks, or so Maloney would have you believe.
Maloney lied in suggesting she negotiated the details with Reshma and they together decided on debating each other on September 7 on a radio program I have never heard of in the middle of a work day when noone is expected to tune in. And I think the time allotted is 10 minutes, commercials included.
Carolyn Maloney is the most sexist of women. We just found out. Although this should not be news. I know enough about prejudice and internalized prejudice, I know enough about racism and internalized racism, I know plenty about sexism and internalized sexism.
To say the September 14 primary is about which candidate is the most beautiful is absolutely the most sexist suggestion to make. Carolyn Maloney is suggesting that if the debate is held on TV when people are actually watching, people might find out Reshma Saujani is actually a good looking woman, and they might vote for her. How sexist is that thought!
Are you telling me people have been voting for Carolyn Maloney for the past nine elections because they think she is beautiful? I find that hard to believe.
Debating is about ideas and policies. Debating is not a beauty contest. All media forms have to be invited. It should be a TV debate, but radio stations should also be invited. The debate should also end up on YouTube. There should be a feedback mechanism. People should have the option to chime in. As many people as possible should have the option to participate.
We are fooling ourselves if we are thinking this debate is only about District 14. There is national interest in this debate.
Image via WikipediaThere are all sorts of news stories saying Carolyn Maloney has finally agreed to a debate with Reshma Saujani. I will believe it once I see it. Until then I have my fingers crossed. Maloney has danced this dance before. She will say yes to a debate, and then a few days later she will say she did not say it, never.
A radio debate in the middle of a work day? I say even TV is not good enough. What we need is a YouTube debate. People will have the option to watch whenever they want, and they will have the option to comment. I say a YouTube debate sponsored by a few TV stations. So it's on TV at night, and it's on YouTube as well.
FDR was a while ago. Granted Maloney is from a different era, but trust me, YouTube is just like being on TV. It is not like you have to put on extra makeup or anything.
NY Daily News: Reshma Saujani Vs. Carolyn Maloney On Debating... Again: As you can see here in this clip by Melissa Russo of NBC, when (twice) asked if she'd debate her NY-14 Democratic primary challenger, Reshma Saujani, Rep. Carolyn Maloney first dodged, and then said their staffs were talking and she would "consider it." .... Of course, we've blogged about this issue about a million times -- Saujani trying to invite, push, cajole, whatever you want to call it -- Maloney into debating.... The same arguments stand now as stood then -- Saujani would want to get Maloney into a forum where she could a) show her stuff against the congresswoman, b) get more public attention, and c) expose Maloney to a possible gaffe... which, from a strategic standpoint are all the reasons why the incumbent might not want to do it.
Reshma Saujani On Radio Debate: Apparently, That's Not Good Enough: Remember yesterday, when I wondered if maybe my days (weeks, months?) of blogging about the debate-scheduling squabbles between Reshma Saujani and incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney were over? ..... WWRL debate is scheduled to occur in the middle of a weekday on a radio station with no television cameras, at a time when most New Yorkers are at work
Capital Tonight: Maloney Agrees To Debate Saujani: woman-to-woman face-off on Sept. 7
OurTownNY: Maloney Agrees To Debate: The debate will also be on a Tuesday on a radio show most Upper East Side voters probably don’t tune in to regularly. (Perhaps WNYC’s Brian Lehrer would have been more suitable for this race.) .... Previously, Baruch College on the East Side sent out a letter asking the two to debate on its campus Aug. 26, but Maloney would not agree..... The decision to debate came after an interview with NBCNewYork, in which Maloney told a reporter, “My campaign staff is talking to her campaign staff and I’m sure that the issues and the records will be put forward.” .... Saujani’s campaign manager, Kevin Lawler, released a statement saying, “We must have missed those calls and emails—because that’s news to us,” adding, “There has been no effort from her staff to even contact our campaign to discuss the issue.” .... James Allen, Saujani’s spokesperson, said that the campaign has not accepted the Errol Louis debate and wants to hash out mutually agreeable terms
The Lo-Down NY: Maloney/Saujani Schedule Debate, Bike Lane Wars, Pies ‘n’ Thighs for Breakfast
Keep bugging Carolyn to engage in weekly debates. Every time she says no, cash that for media attention. In NYC, local and national media are not two things. Make it lose lose for Carolyn.
Don't concede Labor to Carolyn. Maloney lives in a mansion, a-l-l labor issues are abstract to her.
One politician more than any other in this town is on excellent terms with Labor: John Liu. We need to go talk to John. I will come along if I have to. "John, you are going to be Mayor, sooner than most people realize. Reshma is going to be president. Right now she needs your help. She attended public schools all her life. Labor issues are not abstract to her like they are for Maloney. You were on Wall Street before you were in politics. Help now and we will remember when it is time for you to run for Mayor."
Landlines are only one part of the pie. Then there are cellphones, largely out of reach. And there is social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
The core of the organization needs to retweet everything tweeted by @reshma2010. We have to press that Like button on the Reshma 2010 Facebook page. We need to comment vigorously on articles shared by Reshma.
Raise as much money possible from the workers of Wall Street. Workers of Wall Street, unite! Unite behind Reshma. You need someone on the Hill who actually understands how Wall Street works. I happen to think Reshma's leadership - she is the national leader to the tech sector - to the tech sector and her leadership to Wall Street go hand in hand. You are trying to build a meritocracy in both those sectors.
Carolyn Maloney has decided she is not going to debate Reshma. (Debating Is "Stunt" In A Maloney Democracy) I wish Maloney all the false confidence in the world. She is relying on a poll her campaign conducted before Reshma did her months of field work.
The most talked about race in the state of New York is not going to have any debates if Maloney will have her way.
Of all the races in all the state, why does this one have people so passionate?
Obama won Iowa. The polls did not show that he will win, and they did not show his eventual margin. Why? Because the pollsters kept calling up "likely voters," their name for people who voted four years ago. But what Obama had done was build an army of new, first time voters on the ground. And so the pollsters were left in the dust. And, mind you, these were not pollsters hired by the Edwards campaign.
And you have Maloney basking in the glory of early, internal polling. I wish her a ton of false self confidence. If this race were such a shoo-in for Maloney, why is it the most talked about race in the state? It is such a talked about race because it is a competitive race.
But asking Maloney to do two debates a month to election day is like asking the mullahs in Iran to hold a reelection: not gonna happen. (Iran: The World Has Wasted A Year)
So what do you do? While at the Reshma 2010 party last night, I thought about this a whole lot, at the party and after the party. (Reshma 2010 Party Tonight)
I think the answer is social media. The answer is new media.
There were about 100 people at the party, in and out. Victory lies at the 1,000 mark. Once the circle of core supporters expands from 100 to 1,000, we win. Because all we need is 30,000 votes to win.
There was so much positive energy in the room last night. You could feel the tremendous momentum.
Already the candidate is doing an average of three events per day, events big and small. That is a tremendous pace.
Why do we want debates? So we can air our views, and we can get media coverage. We get on local TV. Are there other ways of achieving the same goals? I believe there are. Social media does better what traditional media does pretty good.
I was at the party last night, so I saw what happened. What if I was not there but wanted to know what happened? If the campaign were to post 100 pictures from the event at its Facebook page, if the campaign were to post a five minute video clip from the party at its YouTube channel, I might get a feel for what happened at the party last night. The audience for that video might only be 500 strong right now, but that is what social media is all about: media for all audience sizes. Small audiences matter, small audiences are intimate.
I say do events and be your own media, cover all events. There should be at least one photo from each event, posted at the campaign's Facebook page. Short video clips are great. They are free to produce. Long live the Flip camera.
And we have to produce full length videos of Reshma giving speeches on all major issues. We asked for but did not get two debates per month with Maloney. But we could easily do one major speech per week on our own.
I am all about taking attendance with the camera. When you capture a candidate speech on camera, it is important to capture all faces in the room. It is not just about the candidate, but also the crowd.
Upload the full speech, and upload a shorter video of highlights. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, one speech a week keeps Maloney away.
Another strategy would be to keep going on TV and keep challenging Maloney to do the debates.
Social media is not an imitation of old media. Social media is more. Social media is much more than saying, okay, we are going to be our own C-Span.
Social media allows you to turn your organization into a jellyfish. I am using that metaphor to hint at transparency. There are things that are private, but then there are things that are not private. The private strategy session that decided on the new office space was not something that needed to stay private. A three minute video from that session would have been great. You do that for your core 1,000 supporters. You are not on the staff, you were not even in the office that day, but we want you to feel included.
How much of the internal operations can you video blog like that?
I am for uploading five minutes of video every single day. The whole exercise is free.
And then there are the giants: Facebook and Twitter. Most everyone on the East Side who will vote on September 14 is on Facebook. I am guessing that to be the case. The campaign Facebook page has to be taken to new heights.
For every event the candidate does, at least one photo with a brief description has to end up on the Facebook page. It should be super easy for our core supporters to follow the campaign, and the Facebook stream is perhaps the best way. The accompanying staffer, also armed with a Droid X, can perhaps take care of the social media part of events.
Post video clips on Facebook.
And this is key: retweeting and pressing that Like button. All staffers and interns need to do that. East tweet by the campaign has to start with 30 retweets right away. Each Facebook update has to be liked by 30 people within the hour. And for key articles shared by Reshma on Facebook, there have to be 30 comments by the end of the day. I don't know how you do this. Do you send out an internal email each time? But I do know this has to be done.
It has to feel like there is a lot of activity. And you soon enough get the snowball effect. This is not about faking it, this is about engaging the core of the organization.
And then there is going out there. Take the NYDailyNews.com for example. It is not like they push six Reshma articles per day. It is one every few weeks. But those articles generate a lot of comments. Well, we can make sure at least 30 of those comments come from Reshma supporters. And if we can do that, more supporters will come out of the woodworks. This digital engagement is important because it is free, and it is real. These are real people. Many more people read the comments than leave them. That is an interested crowd.
Maloney's perceived advantages from dodging debates can be neutralized through a thorough use of social media. If she opts for just one debate early in September, we have to turn that into a slam dunk. And we can do that if we make extensive use of social media in the weeks before that.
If a tree fell deep in the forest, and nobody heard it fall, did the tree fall? Social media is about making sure people hear the tree fall. One photo per event, I would think, is the absolute minimum. The goal has to be to capture every face that shows up for every event. This is as much about covering the candidate as the crowd.
The idea is to produce short, compelling video clips for the Facebook stream every other day, so compelling people go ahead and press the Share button. If we are not going to get the free media from debating, we have to fill up the gap by becoming our own media. New media is better media.
