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Its the lefts secret weapon in the continuing resistance.

While Facebook is getting a lot of the credit for making last weekends Womens March happen, a somewhat obscure tech platform called the Action Network was critical to organizers efforts. And in the wake of that worldwide protest, the platform is already helping to push the movement forward.

A nonprofit created by progressives who hoped to build a political movement with staying power, the Action Network offers toolsfor sending emails, organizing marches and events, fundraising, creating petitions, conducting surveys and connecting with other organizers. Activists who use the tools can keep all the email lists and other data they gather a feature that Facebook and most other platforms dont offer.

More than 650 womens marches in more than 50 countries were organized using the sites tools last Saturday, according to the networks own data.

This was the largest mobilization weve ever seen, Brian Young, the Action Networks co-founder, told The Huffington Post. Millions of people around the world turned out to march, according to multiple estimates.

Many of the Womens March organizers used the Action Networks tools to create embeddable sign-up widgets and maps, like the ones below, that helped spread the word about the events.

action network

Now theyre using the sites tools to get marchers to sign on for the next things:

The Action Network

As organizers plan new events over the next 100 days, tools like these may help keep the momentum going in a way that Facebook cannot.

Facebook was crucial in mobilizing women after Trumps election, to be sure. But it can only take activists so far. Theoretically, its possible for the pages of one-off events to turn into organizing tools going forward. But its much harder for one-off events to connect with each other, as happened in the Saturday marches and to stay connected. Plus, Facebooks algorithms might keep news about future events or marches off your feed.

The Action Network, by relying on email, gives activists a more consistent way to reach local organizers. If you can reach organizers, you can reach the marchers, and you can bring them back to the streets or the ballot box.

The marches that happened all over the world and in the U.S. are a great example of where grassroots organizing and technology combined can mobilize many, Ceci Young, who worked to organize sister marches this past weekend, told HuffPost in an email.

As each march formed, we had the tools and support for them to take ownership of their march on the website, Young said. This was way more effective and powerful [than] would have been possible even 5 years ago.

Organizers like Young also made useof Eventbrite, the chat tool Slackand an app called Rally, which helped people organize transportation.

Brian Young, whod worked on digital campaigns for John Kerry and Howard Dean, co-founded the Action Network in 2012. At the time, progressives were frustrated with how Occupy Wall Street had waned as a movement after the protesters packed up. The idea was to create something that would give activists an infrastructure that could help build lasting movements.

For those tracking progressive politics closely, it may not be surprising that the Action Network became the platform of choice. (It can also be used by journalists: One of the authors of this article uses the Action Network to send his newsletter to subscribers,which is how we noticed the platforms ubiquity during the Womens Marches.) It was used to organize rallies against the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to arrange the 2012 Black Friday protests against Walmarts around the country, which stunned observers with their breadth.

But all of those were just road testing the tools for the moment were in now, Young said.

While the pipeline and wage battles advanced under President Barack Obama, the Trump administration is now vowing to reverse that progress. Whether the infrastructure built during the initial protests is able to withstand this renewed pressure will to some extent determine how far Trump is able to push.

Following the outpouring of support, Womens March organizers are brimming with confidence, though it remains to be seen where the movement goes from here.

Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, a leading expert on the relationship between social media and political movements, has found the former to be both a blessing and a curse for the latter.

While Facebook and Twitter enabled protest movements to scale up rapidly in places like Tahrir Square in Egypt, the Maidan in Ukraine and Gezi Park in Tufekcis native Turkey, she has found that such easily organized networks tend to prove fragile that they can be broken by a combination of government pressure and bitter internecine fights among allies within Facebook threads.

In the days before social media, nascent movements took much longer to grow to serious scale. But once they did, their bonds were stronger than much of what exists today.

Moving from Facebook to an email network going back in time, in some ways could actually end up moving things forward.

Go here to read the rest:
Progressives Have A Secret Tech Weapon In The Fight Against Trump - Huffington Post

By Eugene Robinson, San Antonio Express-News

The larger crowd relative to Donald Trumps inauguration at the Womens March in Washington speaks to the level of opposition in the country to the new president.

The larger crowd relative to Donald Trumps inauguration at the Womens March in Washington speaks to the level of opposition in the country to the new president.

Womens march a beginning for progressives

It matters that the crowd for the Womens March on Washington was far bigger than that for President Donald Trumps inauguration. The new president often boasts of having started a great movement. Let it be the one that was born with Saturdays massive protests.

If size is important, and apparently to Trump it is, there was no contest. The Metro transit system recorded 1,001,613 trips on the day of the protest, the second-heaviest ridership in history surpassed only by former president Obamas inauguration in 2009. By contrast, just 570,557 trips were taken Friday, when Trump took the oath of office.

Those are the true facts, not the alternative ones the administration wants you to believe.

Among all the news of the past few days, I begin with crowd size because Saturdays rallies and marches, in cities across the nation, were simply unprecedented. Perhaps half a million demonstrators, many wearing pink hats, filled the streets of Washington. Protests in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles also drew crowds measured in the hundreds of thousands, and there were big anti-Trump gatherings in Denver, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, San Antonio and other cities in the U.S. and around the world.

The White House predictably tried to blame the messenger. But, if Trump believes journalists can be so easily cowed, hes in for a long four years.

The president is skilled at diversionary tactics. He has been known to pitch a fit in order to draw attention away from news he finds inconvenient or embarrassing. Indeed, while his spokespeople have been spewing nonsense about television ratings and such, the administration has taken significant steps. Trump signed an executive order beginning the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act; withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact; imposed hiring and pay freezes for federal workers; and reimposed a ban (lifted by the Obama administration) on U.S. aid to family planning groups that provide or promote abortions overseas.

But whether Trumps ostentatious pique about the not-so-historic size of his inauguration crowd is real or feigned, the fact that so many more people came to town to protest Trumps presidency than to celebrate it is important.

Remember that the tea party movement looked at first like nothing more than a rowdy, incoherent bunch of sore losers until it swept Democrats out of power in the House in the 2010 midterm election.

I covered some of those early tea party rallies, and I saw similar levels of energy and engagement and, yes, anger at the womens march. The millions who participated nationwide now constitute the kind of broad-based network that can be harnessed into effective political action. The Trump administration can haughtily dismiss the dissenters by saying, as the Obama administration once did, that elections have consequences. But the next election is right around the corner.

If progressives are going to recreate the tea partys success, Saturdays multitudes will have to begin organizing at the local level. They will have to field candidates not just for Congress, but for governorships and state legislatures. They will have to develop policy positions that go beyond stop Trump and that also go beyond traditional Democratic Party dogma.

The movement will look to lions such as Vermonts independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., for guidance, but ultimately must find younger leadership with fresh ideas. The Democratic establishment now faces the same existential dilemma that the Republican establishment had to confront: adapt or step aside.

The administration will argue that, after a bitterly divisive campaign, it is time for the nation to come together behind the new president. No, it is not. We are in the midst of a political realignment that is nowhere near complete, and it is more important than ever that progressive voices make themselves heard.

And always remember: If Donald Trump can become president, nothing is impossible.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Excerpt from:
Women's march a beginning for progressives - San Antonio Express ... - mySanAntonio.com

Common Dreams

If Progressives Want to Defeat Trump, They Must Win Back Workers ... Common Dreams During the Sanders campaign I heard a high level official give a powerful speech blasting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act (TPP) for the harm it would bring to ... and more »

More:
If Progressives Want to Defeat Trump, They Must Win Back Workers ... - Common Dreams

About this past weekend

Someone won.

Someone lost.

When it came to the National Football League playoffs, it was pretty cut and dried. The New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons won and will be going on to play in the Super Bowl a week from Sunday.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers lost and have gone home or wherever it is football players go when their presence is no longer required in a stadium.

In local and national politics, determining who wins and who loses can be somewhat more complicated.

On Saturday, supporters of President Donald Trump including those who bused or drove from our area to the ceremony could bask in the afterglow of their man being inaugurated the previous day.

Mr. Trump won the election, and by extension, so did his followers.

Hillary Clinton lost, but by extension, were those who greatly preferred her to Trump losers?

Many of those folks who live in our area have told us they have felt that way since the election.

They didnt watch the news on TV or follow the post-election events online. They turned to Netflix, situation comedies, movies and catching up on their novel-reading.

They have been depressed, in a funk. Waking up each morning hoping that the shocking election results had all been just a bad dream. It was almost like a death in the family and having to go through the five stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Then, something happened Saturday. All over the country and many other places around the world, including here in Oneonta, Cooperstown and Delhi, progressives paused their mourning. They rallied in massive numbers in Womens Marches against the new president and the statements he made during the campaign and since the election.

In Washington, their numbers dwarfed those at the inauguration. In major American cities and in small towns, attendees carried signs, listened to speeches, cheered and generally felt a palliative sisterhood and brotherhood.

They realized that they were not losers. Under the new administrations plans, the environment lost, health care lost, reproductive rights lost, tolerance lost, immigration lost and criminal justice reform lost.

But the estimated three million worldwide protesters Saturday did not lose. By their common purpose, they made a statement. They are not defeated until they say they are defeated.

Has Trump awakened a sleeping giant? Does the prospect of a Supreme Court that may overturn Roe v. Wade give a much-needed booster shot to the abortion-rights movement? Will a denuded Environmental Protection Agency, global warming denial and oil pipelines springing up hither and yon invigorate those who care about such things?

The rally in Oneonta like the others was a worthwhile exercise in democracy. Organizers estimated about 450 participants, but it looked like there were more. From across the street from Muller Plaza, a young man repeatedly called out his support for Trump from an apartment window as marchers passed by, taking it in their cheery stride.

Among the speakers was another young man, who insisted that ex-President Barack Obama is a war criminal for the bombs he authorized to be dropped in the Middle East. The crowd booed, but heard him out. The other speakers pleased the audience by denouncing Trump and calling for resistance to his policies.

What the rallies and marches tell us is that in the long run, who has really won and who has really lost are yet to be determined.

Excerpt from:
In Our Opinion: Marches helped progressives fight back - Oneonta Daily Star

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. -- Roughly 450 people will decide in a February vote who will run the Democratic National Committee moving forward. None of them were in the small Cheektowaga union hall Tuesday night as Idaho Democratic Committee Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown spoke.

The candidate for DNC chairperson came anyway, more than 2,200 miles away from her home in Boise, at the request of members of the Liberty Union Progressives. The organization originally formed to campaign for Bernie Sanders the presidential primary.

Member Jamie Diamond said she found a video of Brown speaking and was impressed. She reached out to her online.

"I said, 'why don't you come to Buffalo' and I was really expecting her to say something along the lines of, 'my schedule's really busy' because you know, you get that with leaders," she said.

Brown has made it a focus of her campaign to speak with any group that asks her to join them. She said not doing so would be hypocritical.

"It would be ridiculous for me to run a campaign saying that I'm going to return power to people and then not go out and talk to people and only focus on 447 people in our country when our nation is so large," she said.

Brown said she wants to represent the ideals of the party, not push her own on others. She wants to get back to local politics, communicate a focused message and said she knows how to organize.

"I'm a worker. I'm the executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party and I'm the president of the National Executive Directors so I hang out with the people in our party who get the work done," she said.

She also told Sanders supporters she knows she's an underdog in a contest with seven active candidates. The Vermont senator has already endorsed Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison. Former Labor Secretary and Buffalo native Tom Perez is running as well.

"Ultimately, I think all of my colleagues and I agree on what needs to happen," Brown said. "I think we definitely agree on why it needs to happen. I think it's the how that ultimately is what comes down to differentiating this race."

Diamond said it's good to have choices, but she's fully behind Brown.

"As I talked to her, I just really was able to relate to her and she kind of spoke my language so to speak," she said.

Brown said regardless who wins, this is the most important DNC chair election in her lifetime.

Continued here:
Candidate for DNC Chair Pitches to Progressives in Cheektowaga - Spectrum News