Blog: MoveOn

Talk to a Drinking Liberally host around the country, or another progressive leader, about MoveOn.org, and the vast majority will react with loathing. MoveOn may have an enormous mailing list and become a potent force in progressive politics, but it seems to engender a deep dislike among many local leaders.

I was talking with Deb Rappaport about this recently, and she pointed out how her mother loves MoveOn - it gives her a way to be involved, and feel like she is making a difference. So millions of people are clicking on MoveOn actions, but I think the more active local progressive leaders dislike it because there is no way to get more involved. MoveOn holds no national strategy conferences, has no local meetings; you can't email Joan, Wes, Eli, and the others. If you want to do more than just give money or click on a petition, you can't. If you want to shape its direction, you can't. And if you want to build an organization that's doing more, MoveOn doesn't want to work with you.

The MoveOn site does have one place for people to participate, the "Action Forum" software. And they lay out a noble goal: "Every member has a voice in choosing the direction for both MoveOn.org Political Action and MoveOn.org Civic Action. Using our ActionForum software, you can propose priorities and strategies." But you can't do more than propose.

Micah Sifry discusses the shortcomings of Action forum in a recent article on Personal Democracy Forum. Micah writes,

If Wes, Joan, Eli and crew were indeed interested in "strengthening democracy," why aren't they enabling their members to talk to each other directly? You can post something to the ActionForum and use your own name, but there's no lateral linking going on inside the MoveOn membership, other than what may happen on the ground if you go to a MoveOn-sponsored vigil, such as the ones happening today to mark the 2000th American soldier killed in Iraq.

And that's really a huge lost opportunity. It may not matter that much for the purposes of sifting ideas if a MoveOn member only reads and rates the suggestions of, say, ten or fifteen other members. . . . But if your purpose is to actually strengthen democracy and the engagement of your members in that valuable effort, MoveOn's failure to open up its walled garden is a huge disappointment. It's ActionForum system is useful in the same way a giant focus group might be useful to the people sitting behind the one-way mirror watching people talk. But it's not a way to empower anyone else.

Micah concludes buy suggesting, "What if MoveOn were to invite its members to form state-, county- and city-level MoveOn spinoffs, give them a wide tether to self-organize and invent new forms for engaging each other and the issues, and then see what happens?" Good idea, though in fact many of these organizations already exist, as chapters of DFA, Drinking Liberally, or many other local organizations. What if MoveOn started engaging with those groups, and encouraging the many grassroots groups in local areas to work cooperatively with MoveOn actions?

When I suggested local involvement to Deb Rappaport, she pointed out that we shouldn't fall into the trap of expecting MoveOn to do everything. It can be a useful focused tool for solving one problem, and other groups can solve other problems. Where we lose out is when those individual groups don't interact. In New York, we've build tremendous value just by creating a mailing list for the many progressive groups to share ideas, and a calendar for them to share events, leading to more cross-promotion and cosponsorships. Meanwhile, there are millions of people out there clicking on petitions who might want to get more involved, and a national staff looking for input, both completely cut off from the existing local ecosystems.

And that is the tragedy of what Micah calls "MoveOn's walled garden," and the reason most local leaders roll their eyes at the mention of the name, MoveOn. Certainly many groups would love to get their hands on the huge lists, but I'm not advocating a simple one-way benefit from MoveOn to local groups. MoveOn could get the ideas it claims to seek. It could get more energetic regional or local leaders who might plan campaigns under the MoveOn banner. And it could get more information and email addresses through an arrangement similar to the DNC's Datamart, which groups can utilize but also have to give back. Local groups and MoveOn could certainly work out a similarly mutually beneficial arrangement.

Now if only Action Forum were conducive to posting this feedback.