We haven’t had time to start thinking about many of the lessons learned from Oct. 24 yet–we’re too busy figuring out how to follow up to make sure everyone’s actions have the maximum political impact.
But one thing we’ve been thinking about a lot is the role the Internet played in making this possible. Some journalists have described the whole sprawling day as a ‘beta test for the wired world.’ We know that the internet is far from perfect–we’ve lost contact with organizers for days at a time as the system has gone down in one poor country after another. And we had all kinds of reports from African and Asian cities of organizers sneaking into the one 5-star hotel in town to nab a little wireless so they could send us photos.
But we know there’s no way we could have done this even two years ago, before the web, now firmly connected to cell phones even in remote regions, was built out.
Here are a couple of early thoughts, the first from Joe Trippi, who managed the Dean for President campaign in America in 2004 that really blazed the path for Internet politics: https://joetrippi.com/blog/?p=2900
And here’s a roundup of how the day was covered America’s foremost progressive blog community, dailykos.com: https://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/26/797086/-Green-Diary-RescueOpen-Thread:-350-ppm
You’ll need to scroll down a ways for the full list of diaries published during their live-blogging extravaganza. Many thanks to all, especially MeteorBlades and RLMiller!