{"id":1044,"date":"2009-10-02T21:34:39","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T04:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2009-10-02T21:34:39","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T04:34:39","slug":"can-skittles-help-fix-the-patriot-act-and-fisa-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2009\/10\/02\/can-skittles-help-fix-the-patriot-act-and-fisa-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Skittles help fix the PATRIOT Act and FISA? (DRAFT!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">DRAFT!\u00c2\u00a0 Final version published <a href=\"http:\/\/seminal.firedoglake.com\/diary\/8700\">on <em>The Seminal<\/em><\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ambiebambie39507\/2377420546\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Skittles photo from ambibambie39507\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flickr page\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3016\/2377420546_b0cd210795.jpg?v=1207082444\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"152\" \/><\/a>This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on a couple of amendments by Russ Feingold proposing significant reforms to the PATRIOT Act and the FISA wiretapping statutes.\u00c2\u00a0 These votes are the best chance yet to influence the PATRIOT Act reauthorization in the Senate.\u00c2\u00a0 We&#8217;re kicking off a last-minute Twitter- and Faceboo- based activism campaign to pressure key politicians and try to get some media coverage on the issue.\u00c2\u00a0 Please get involved!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On Twitter, make a tweet about the Patriot Act Tuesday evening.<\/li>\n<li>On Facebook, sign up for Tuesday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/event.php?eid=143452597869\">Action to fix the Patriot Act<\/a> and invite your friends<\/li>\n<li>Help get the word out by sharing this link with your friends (via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or carrier pigeon).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read on for more &#8230;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Earlier this year, my multi-part series <em>Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists <\/em>explored Twitter-based activism.\u00c2\u00a0 The series was inspired by Agency.com&#8217;s brilliant promotion for Skittles, the rainbow-colored candy. \u00c2\u00a0 Within two days, Skittles got 3000 links from blogs and significant traditional media attention by replacing their home page with a Twitter feed of the #skittles hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed to me that activists and poets \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and anybody else who wants media attention without spending a lot of money \u00e2\u20ac\u201d had a lot to learn here.<\/p>\n<p>Six months later, it&#8217;s time to apply the lessons.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Get FISA Right logo\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3198\/3046160741_a8dd6a3b40.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a>Get FISA Right activists, along with progressives and libertarians, are trying to spearhead a last-minute social media activism campaign to complement all the other hard work the EFF, ACLU, American Library Association, Cato Institute, BORDC, CREDO Action, Downsize DC, and many other groups have been doing.\u00c2\u00a0 Time is incredibly short.\u00c2\u00a0 Fortunately, things happen very quickly in the Twitterverse.<\/p>\n<p>The basic idea&#8217;s straightforward: try to get enough momentum that the campaign goes viral on Twitter and Facebook, and then target some key politicians and journalists. \u00c2\u00a0 At that point, hopefully traditional media wakes up and takes notice &#8212; and politicians are confronted with the overwhelming opposition online to the government surveillance and telecom immunity.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 With luck, it leads to a success like Get FISA Right had last summer organizing on my.barackobama.com with the support of progressive and technology blogospheres.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, there have a series of breakthrough social media actions on other issues: Join the Impact, #amazonfail, the DREAM Activists, Open for Questions, Twitter Vote Report, the Facebook Terms of Service protesters, #iranelection &#8230; and there&#8217;s a fascinating pattern: most of the people involved in all of these causes also care about fixing the PATRIOT Act and opposing government surveillance.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Can we tap into those existing networks, and get people to spend a few moments tweeting, sharing links, and forwarding an invitations on Facebook and MySpace?<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>A bunch of us laid the groundwork this week with a lot of tweeting on the #patriotact hashtag and a steadily-growing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/group.php?gid=134538932549\">Facebook group<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 San Francisco-based startup Twazzup was kind enough to provide a search page and so <a href=\"http:\/\/getfisaright.twazzup.com\/\">it&#8217;s easy to follow what&#8217;s going on<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 We&#8217;ve also been using act.ly, Jim Gilliam&#8217;s brilliantly viral Twitter petition mechanism, in particular to encourage Senator Arlen Specter &#8212; who, coincidentally or not, voted the right way in last Thursday&#8217;s hearing.\u00c2\u00a0 If you&#8217;d like to sign our &#8220;thank you&#8221; petition to him, please use the widget on the right &#8212; and share it with your friends.<\/td>\n<td><script src=\"http:\/\/act.ly\/widget\/firebox\/mp?recruiter=skittles\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>After spending the weekend recuperating, we&#8217;re planning some major action for Tuesday night.\u00c2\u00a0 If you&#8217;d like to help fix the PATRIOT Act and FISA, please join us:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On Twitter, make a tweet about the Patriot Act Tuesday evening.<\/li>\n<li>On Facebook, sign up for Tuesday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/event.php?eid=143452597869\">Action to fix the Patriot Act<\/a> and invite your friends<\/li>\n<li>Help get the word out by sharing this link with your friends (via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or carrier pigeon).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The easiest way to follow what&#8217;s going on will be to visit <a href=\"http:\/\/get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com\/\">http:\/\/get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com<\/a>, where we&#8217;re also featuring the #patriotact Twitter feed.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, it worked for #skittles \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>jon<\/p>\n<p>* for a list of references, please the Twitter section of my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?page_id=742\">Selected writings on activism<\/a> page.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Skittles photo <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ambiebambie39507\/2377420546\/\">from ambibambie39507\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flickr page<\/a>,<br \/>\n<\/em><em>licensed under Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DRAFT!\u00c2\u00a0 Final version published on The Seminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16],"tags":[120,378],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-tales-from-the-net","tag-drafts","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}