Big Picture/Present Moment
My wife, Marcia, and I sit in meetings with activists from around the country, usually in our capacity as web developers or communications specialists. Our colleagues are sometimes focused on process,...
View ArticleFittest Metaphor
Metaphors for the human brain have evolved over time. There were the clockworks for perhaps a hundred years. Then it was more sophisticated machinery, such as a mill or a calculator. With the advent of...
View ArticleTrouble Seeing
Grief seems to evidence itself in behaviors of activists around me. Rather, it’s a choice to avoid that feeling that informs how an activist’s life unfolds. When conducting business, talking to clients...
View ArticleStructure and Transformation
In a similar way that pollsters often end up integral to the running of a political campaign, website design can deeply inform the structure of a nonprofit or volunteer activist organization. Though...
View ArticleGrassroots
They call it the grassroots because that is where spring begins. The first sign of change is the slight blush of green in the grasses brown and yellow from the winter. As the thaw drifts downward,...
View ArticleGravity and Friction: The Physics of Social Change
I use an image to explain the relationship between different activists’ intervention philosophies. The image is the teeter-totter. On both the left and right, political activists engage tactics that...
View ArticleOpen Letter to the Activist Community
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...
View ArticleConservative Left
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...
View ArticlePJEP and the Afghanistan Escalation Protests
There are about a dozen of us volunteers working with nearly 1500 local peace, justice and environmental organizations in 50 states. The Peace, Justice and Environment Project (PJEP), located at...
View ArticleNew Left
We’ve been mulling over the relationship between the American Left and the new communications technologies. Integrally involved with this process is our role as co-facilitators of PJEP and its network...
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