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It sure is easier to garner support when you're a single-issue organization like the NRA is.
BTW the Brady Campaign is a hate group and I always wonder about news article that have quotes from them. Would they quote the KKK taking about the NAACP I wonder?
Hydroelectric and nuclear energy are the way to have lots of electricity with low emissions. As an example, Vermont gets over 70% of its electricity from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Vermont also has the nation's lowest sulfur dioxide and CO2 emissions of any state.
One thing that people in the tech industry can do to watch out for their own interests is to learn the arithmetic of electrical generation and then support license renewals and new build of nuclear energy facilities.
(side note: I worked in Congress nearly a decade before coming to the tech industry)
Tech groups really need to start to use whatever 'star power' they can muster. Have Bill Gates meet some Senators, or Steve Jobs, or anyone else who might be recognizable. Tech pundits / bloggers also need to focus, tightly, on the technology issues at hand, and not go all 'over the world' on things that are not directly relevant to the tech industry (abortion, guns, Iraq, etc). Does RIAA have a position on Iraq? Does the MPAA believe in a right to bear arms?
And, above all, they should avoid, at any cost, becoming the darling of one political party or another or supporting one candidate over another due to non-technology related issues. That's the fastest way to a slammed door in your face.
I think for the 'tech lobby' to become effective, it will have to portrary technology as an essential thing to the day-to-day life of the average American. These are things that each and every American needs to continue to be productive and informed. The NRA has massive grass roots who believe, very strongly, in their individual right to bear firearms. The abortion groups believe very strong in an individuals 'right to life' or an individuals 'right to choice.' Technology is part of our everyday life, and competitive access, net neutrality, etc is part of our 'rights'.
It should not be perceived as "these are the things the telcos need to be wealthy" or "these are the things the computer companies need to turn a profit." It has to be more neutral, and more across the spectrum than a benefit to any one person.
But that's just my two cents...
The NRA makes those who buck it pay a steep price. Oh, you may get reelected, but it will cost you allot and does not mean you will repeat that performance.
How to do this in high-tech? First, you need an issue that enpassions your audience. Next, you need to get your audience to regularly donate money and commit to doing so. You need to start state-level efforts too, like Texans for Net Neutrality just as the NRA has the Texas NRA. You must have a way of tracking the votes of members of Congress, score them annually, and let your members know what their Rep's and Senator's score is. Lastly, you have to start working to defeat you movement's political enemies. And as a necessity you must reward your friends so that they can stand up to their political enemies.
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.as...
"In House of Representatives elections this year, the NRA Political Victory Fund endorsed 259 candidates, and our candidates won 228, or 88% of those races. The 110th Congress will convene with 24 pro-gun freshmen - 11 Democrats and 13 Republicans - in the House, and 227 A-rated members (eight less than after the 2004 elections). For the record, there will be 150 members we rate as Fs.
Of the 17 candidates NRA endorsed for the U.S. Senate, eight won their races. What really matters, however, was that there was a net loss of only one pro-gun seat - our good friend Jim Talent was defeated in Missouri. Four pro-gun freshmen in the Senate include: Democrats Jon Tester of Montana, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Jim Webb of Virginia, along with Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee."
Another, more important, is that it claims to represent something deeply embedded in American history - and it has an original amendment to back that claim up. (I'll lay aside whether their arguments stack up or not for someone else to wage war over) That gives them tremendous clout with lots of *ordinary people.* I'm not talking about "Valley ordinary," but blue-collar ordinary, like my step-dad, the Vietnam vet union electrician who rarely ever uses a computer (or, if you prefer, banana pudding ordinary).
As much as the tech industry wants to have the clout of the NRA as a lobbying organization, they don't have that connection to regular folk yet. You're representing an industry. The NRA purports to be representing a part of the fabric of American life.
Of course, I find it hard to believe any lobbying effort could get the entire tech industry to agree enough to become that powerful.
"TechNet is the bipartisan, political network of CEOs and Senior Executives that promotes the growth of technology and the innovation economy. TechNet focuses on politics and policy by bringing its members together with our nation's policy makers to sustain and advance America's global leadership in innovation. In addition to its offices in Washington, DC and Silicon Valley, TechNet has a presence in the high-tech centers of Southern California, New England, Texas and the Pacific Northwest. TechNet's members represent more than one million employees in the fields of information technology, biotechnology, ecommerce and finance."
The current tech industry is a modern classic example of the survival of the fittest. Social Darwinsm at its finest.
It is not far fetch to wonder if the ultimate good will always win over out of necessity.
One of the founders of LOTV, Silona Bonewald, and Nancy Scola, a member of Gov. Mark Warner's internet team that helped develop his tech policy, are hosting a session at SXSW 07 titled "The Technologist Agenda: Political Activism for Geeks".
@8 You're right on Andrew about star power *and* making it any every American issue. A few of us 'wild-eyed activists' in Austin, TX managed to defeat some bad municipal wireless legislation from SBC/AT&T in the state house. We brought constituents to the legislators in the capitol offices to explain how their everyday lives would be effected. But, Michael Dell also got involved and acted as an effective closer. That combo beat 200+ corporate lobbyists.
First of all, organize yourselves, and don't try to be inclusive, just try to bring in social leaders who others will follow. Don't try to organize 'the tech community', since it's not a monolith. Top executives at companies like Dell are very well-represented, for instance, but they care about taxes and trade, and not in the way that you do. Gaming companies have representation as well, but it's all very corporate. It's engineers and creative types that are not represented. There are also very strong cultural differences between hardware and software companies. Anyway, based on what I know about your politics you are progressives. Not all of you, but most of you don't want to kill gay people, and most of you believe in, well, science, and stuff like global warming. The other side doesn't so the differences are pretty stark, and this leads to the Democratic Party being the natural home for people who want a good environment for innovation and creativity. And no, libertarianism doesn't exist, that's just silly marketing that has convinced people that they don't use publicly funded roads. In most issues it's really a choice between massive corporate control and public control - there is no libertarian natural state unfortunately. Think of yourselves as being on the side of the public, in fact, you are the public.
There are groups that sort of do this. EFF is one, though it's a law firm and tends to eschew politics more than necessary. Public Knowledge is great, though it's not directly involved in politics. I would also recommend Free Press, which does good work on media reform and technology issues (disclosure: I may do some consulting with them). Moveon does great work as well, direct political action on issues that are usually of concern to you.
Second of all, build alliances with the group most like you in the poltical process - the liberal blogosphere. Many of us came from the tech industry, or are still in it and suffer from a lot of its structural problems. You can do this in one of two ways - (1) link to posts from blogs like DailyKos, MyDD, or Talkingpointsmemo (2) or send your political posts to political blogs so we can link back. There's much less cross-over than there should be, even though we care about your issues and we are a nascent power center in the political process.
Three, capture the institutions that exist around you and make sure they channel their money and effort towards progressives. For instance, many of you work in companies that push money to the right-wing through vehicles such at the Cato Foundation or other right-wing think tanks that ostensibly support 'tech-friendly' policies (that are in effect just tax cuts for the wealthy). Lobbying shops are another big one. You should encourage your companies to channel their lobbying and political money (they send lots of cash to c(3) 'charities' that are think tanks and other politicalish groups) to progressive groups instead of hard-core right-wing ones.
What you guys have is money and expertise, and what you want is power. You are progressive, but there's a certain fear of parties because your natural home - the Democratic Party - kind of sucks. This is an organizing problem not a structural one. The NRA cleaned out the GOP first and took it over. Only when they had a fully captured Republican Party did they move into the Democratic Party. If they have two candidates with equal records on guns the NRA still chooses the Republican. You should pursue the same strategies, since they are effective. Work outside the parties but with the Democratic Party as your natural base.
Politics is a dirty, nasty business built on unwieldy coalitions. It can also be really fun and fascinating for a lot of the same reasons that creating art or technology is. The key for the tech community (yeah I'm generalizing) is get over the fear of parties and embrace the progressive movement proudly as your movement. If you organize yourselves, build alliances and make good arguments, you'll succeed over the long-haul.
Let's get this ball rolling Robert!
I've been talking to one of our organizers at Teamsters Local 4 in Minnesota. Back in the 90s they tried organizing tech workers but in the boom times, not too many workers were interested. They represent a few shops in the state -- mainly progressive web firms. The effort fizzled because techies didn't know
much about unions and they were more interested options, profit sharing, etc. Then came the 2000/01 bust. Now a lot of tech workers are working long hours with minimal pay raises and increasingly expensive benefits. And, like you said, are sidelined as more jobs move overseas.
Anyway, this organizer was saying that they are now in a chicken-and-egg position. They can't really get out there and make a big push to organize because they don't have much leverage in the industry and they can't achieve that influence until they get a larger concentration of workers.
The answer, of course, is for tech workers to work with our organizers at the grassroots level to create the kind of representation they want.
The Teamsters have the infrastructure, the benefits, the experience in collective bargaining and lobbyists to stand up for you in Washington. All we --
Teamsters and tech workers -- need are leaders in the tech community who could stand up and help develop a national technology labor movement.
For more information, see Local 4's web site.
Jim, conservatives are just not particularly interested in protecting net neutrality. That's why they all voted against it. And McCurry was attacked and discredited by progressives in this argument.
The effectiveness of the RIAA and MPAA is that they haven't gone one party or the other--they've made progress under both, they have friends in both and they will continue to be effective no matter who is control. MPAA President--former Congressman Glickman (D-KS). RIAA Chairman, former Republican operative in the Reagan White House and on Capitol Hill. Their assistants come from both sides of the aisle, and you can be sure they don't argue about silly things like "which party is better for us' but instead work on "which votes can we get, regardless of party."
something else in order to secure future
access to resources... Right now, there is
a water war beginning to develop along the
Utah Nevada Border over access to water.
Las Vegas with it desperate water shortages
is wanting to deprive ranchers, farmers,
environmentalists and sportsmen of their
future water needs in order to support
the massively expanding Southern Nevada
population.
There is also in Utah a very minor party
that is in a position to speed along the
process of finding a functional solution
to the problem, if that party should have
some money available and was able to hire
some good negotiators it might be that a
very useful precedent can be established
that would be instrumental in finding
solutions for future resource conflicts.
IP is a very difficult problem because there is almost no organization going on with regards to our side. I helped found IPac before going on to strict progressive politics, and the situation is bad. It's not however hopeless and it can be turned around with smart organizing. A primary challenge to Howard Berman would be one model, for instance.
The natural home for techies is the Democratic Party. But politics isn't soft, you have to go in and grab the power you want, and make the Democrats the party of your policies. Guns were going to be eliminated in the 1970s, or at least that was the conventional wisdom, until the NRA began to organize through the GOP.
The RIAA and MPAA work through both parties, but you'll see them move to the GOP in the next five years.
If enough people pushed it, there could be tech unions with socialized medicine, family benefits like free education, etc. It could be done if people wanted it.
I miss the populist ideals this country used to hold. Americans have largely sold themselves out to foreign ideals and products and look where it has gotten us. We are largely surrounding now by populist nations. South America is completely populist with one exception. Mexico, while being led by a so-called righty, is actually very left in operation.
The US is the only country of its size and economic clout that does NOT offer socialized medicine and some form of free higher education.
This country doesn't even take care of its own people. What makes anyone think anyone cares about tech industry. I have no respect for the vast majority of companies out there that would possibly make up some kind of tech industry leadership or whatever else you may want to call it. People just want to think about profits without taking into account anything else. What about the workers and their families that make these ultra-successful companies ultra-successful?
• The 'progressive' blogosphere is often a bastion of hypocrites. To depend on those people guarantees failure. (And, yes, my opinion of the conservative blogosphere is even lower.)
• I don't think most college educated people have gotten over the belief that unions are for lesser beings, ie. blue collar folks. A former reporter, I have watched newspaper strikes fail because the editorial employees did not feel much solidarity with the longshoremen and truckers who provided most of the protesters. (The Newspaper Guild is part of the AFL-CIO.) In addition, many of them felt that walking a picket line was beneath them. I suspect the same class issue exists with IT employees.
• The EFF is more about finding issues it can somehow exploit for legal fees than serving the tech community or consumers. Its leadership is also out of touch with reality as proven by their anti-DRM stance.
As for the current crop of presidential wannabes, their grasp of tech issues is shallow at best. I really don't think tech has arrived in that sense.
Huh?
This doesn't jive with reality, and is the type of thinking that will DOOM tech political lobbying. DOOM.
Well said. I was trying to say that.... :)
You're right. Techies, like some other workers, see themselves above the everyday man, as somehow NOT blue collar. We're all humans in the end, just some of us THINK we are smarter because we have a degree. Educated, usually. Smarter, no.
Unionization is what will save IT.
I loved the comment "the natural home for techies is the Democrtatic party"... Yeah, really? What makes anyone think that? High taxes are the enemy of capitalist companies, and that is just what Democrats are good at -- high taxes. Look around you -- companies are worried about the new Democrats in office and really worried about a possible Democrat president AND congress. That bids ill for big business.
Unionize IT and it matters not who's in power. The power of unions goes a long way if implemented correctly.