The BSD Blog

Not everyone reads blogs. Sad, but true.

For millions of people not yet tuned into the blogosphere, local newspapers’ “Letters to the Editor” pages are still the tried-and-true way to express opinions about political news.

Blue State Digital’s online advocacy tools have made the old-fashioned letter to the editor easier than ever before, allowing campaigns and organizations to use their online membership to take their message offline.

Gone are the days of individuals looking for a newspaper’s contact information, struggling to figure out what to say, and sticking a letter in the mailbox. These days, with the click of a button, campaigns can ask supporters to choose multiple publication recipients out of a customized list, provide talking points and writing tips so people know what to say, and even give readers a sample letter for inspiration. When it’s ready, the letter is emailed straight to the newspaper – with no evidence that the campaign helped.

Does it work? Ask Richard Cordray’s campaign for Ohio Attorney General. Today, the Canton Repository published a letter written on Cordray’s website, using BSD’s speakout tool.

Click here to learn more about BSD’s speakout tool:

http://www.bluestatedigital.com/pages/tools-advocacy/

Blue State Digital just launched ATU.org, the new website of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the largest labor organization representing transit workers in the United States and Canada.

ATU revamped their online presence to help the union more effectively communicate with its members. Labor websites are often hard to navigate, but ATU has done a great job creating a simple, member-friendly online center.

Take a look at their new site:

http://www.atu.org

Wal-Mart spends millions of dollars on fancy PR consultants every month. But no matter how much money Wal-Mart spends on reputational management, their opponents – including many of our clients -- always seem to win the PR war.

How do we do it? With grassroots organizing, quick responses, and smarter technology.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart was systematically warning employees not to vote for Barack Obama. Their twisted logic was that Democrats like Senator Obama would pass the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for employees to join unions for higher pay and better health care, putting employees’ jobs in jeopardy. I told you it was twisted.

BSD technology and strategy client Wal-Mart Watch wasn’t just ready to respond – they were part of the story. The Wall Street Journal came to Wal-Mart Watch and asked if they knew of employees who could verify their story before they went to print.

Wal-Mart Watch turned to its online community for the answer, emailing known current and former employees and asking them to contact Wal-Mart Watch if they had more information. The email list came through, and the Associated Press gave Wal-Mart Watch credit for the sources in its follow-up article:

Wal-Mart Watch, a union-backed group that has criticized the company for what it calls skimpy pay and benefits and poor treatment of its workers, said in a statement that the article "demonstrates once again that Wal-Mart intimidates its workers." The group, which supplied some of the sources to The Wall Street Journal, said the stories cited in the article are "consistent" with numerous reports it has received in the past week.

Although Wal-Mart Watch may not have single-handedly convinced Wal-Mart customers to stop shopping at their stores, they may have scared Wal-Mart to stop its voter intimidation tactics. And they did it by using their online community to do more than make a donation, but become an integral part of the campaign.

Wal-Mart Watch turned to its online community to uncover a story – and now it’s going back to the community to make sure Wal-Mart change its ways. Sign their petition to Wal-Mart, calling for them to stop intimidating voters:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/page/s/voters

PS: What candidate or organization has taken more money from Wal-Mart’s PAC than anyone else this election cycle – including the Republican Party? That’s Indiana’s Governor, Mitch Daniels. Learn more about his re-election opponent,  BSD client Jill Long Thompson, at her website:

http://www.hoosiersforjill.com

California is a crazy state. Each time the state needs to pass a budget, a 2/3 majority of the state legislature is required –  and getting 2/3 of Californians to agree on anything is nearly impossible. Budgets are often late, and it’s usually like pulling teeth to get it finalized.

But this time, Gov. Schwarzenegger upped the ante. He annouced that he would be slashing the paychecks of more than 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage - $6.55 an hour – until the most recent budget was resolved.

Punishing state workers for budget problems is pretty extreme, so one Blue State client, the Courage Campaign, sprang into action. Partnering with True Majority and CREDO Mobile, Courage Campaign used BSD’s tools to collect more than 28,000 petition signatures to the Governator in just four days.

The Courage Campaign then created a video of the petition delivery:

As you’ll see in this video, the power of Blue State Digital’s tools isn’t just in the ability to raise money or collect email addresses on a website. It’s the ability to do rapid response in a more efficient way than has ever been done before -- to shape the debate, and push online organizing into offline results.

The Courage Campaign is still hard at work to stop Arnold's paychecks stunt. Learn more about their campaign:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/CallArnold

We’ve got two great new Blue State Digital sites to show you this week:

Stand Up for Health Care is a new website by Families USA, a nonprofit organization working for high-quality, affordable health care for every American. Since their original website is geared toward policy wonks, they built this secondary site to help regular Americans learn more about health care issues and take action on its featured campaigns.

Visit the site today to learn if you’re healthy enough to get health care – or if you’d be denied for a pre-existing condition.

http://www.standupforhealthcare.org

We also launched Rep. Steny Hoyer’s PAC website, Ameripac: The Fund for a Greater America. Since 1992, Ameripac has directly donated $3.7 million to House members and candidates, and raised an additional $7.5 million. As House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer’s work in 2008 can help Democrats build on the historic gains in 2006.

Learn more about how you can help Rep. Hoyer protect the Democratic majority in the House on his new website.

http://www.stenyhoyer.com/

It seems like everywhere you go, a new Wal-Mart store is popping up -- right?

Now you can find out.

BSD just went live with Wal-Mart Watch’s Store Map Project, a resource to help shape the fight about Wal-Mart’s store development practices.

The project was months in the making, and does an amazing job mapping store sizes, proximity to distribution centers, type of real estate the store was built on, and much, much more.

Just one look at the map of store locations is jaw-dropping.

Click here to see Wal-Mart Watch’s new online resource.

This afternoon we launched a brand new site for the Results Educational Fund's “Advocacy to Control Tuberculosis Internationally” (ACTION) project.

ACTION is an international partnership - funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - to treat and prevent the spread of TB. As Action.org states:

It is our hope that this website will serve as a place where global citizens and experienced advocates alike can not only become more educated about TB but also get involved and take action to fight TB and other global health issues.

Take a look at the new site, and join the campaign to control TB:

http://www.action.org

So many Blue State Digital clients spoke at Netroots Nation that it was hard (maybe impossible) to attend them all. A few more of the highlights for me:

• Michael Waldman from the Brennan Center for Justice was part of a fascinating panel on how to restore the integrity of our judicial system, called “The Next President and the Law,” with John Dean and Cass Sunstein.
• Representatives from both Health Care for America Now and Families USA (whose new BSD website should be launching in a matter of days) discussed online efforts to fix our broken health care system.
• Congressional candidate Darcy Burner spoke on the panel “Working Outside of the Box: The Future of the Netroots and U.S. House Campaigns.” Darcy is amazing. It’s no wonder why she was quite easily the most popular person to attend Netroots Nation.

Once Netroots Nation posts video from all the sessions, we’ll try to post links to as many of them as possible. Blue State Digital clients are doing truly innovative things online, and it’s worth hearing more about them all.

Al Gore was a surprise speaker at Netroots Nation on Saturday, and he took full advantage of his appearance to plug WeCanSolveIt.org – powered by Blue State Digital:

Join Al Gore’s team (and check out the site) at WeCanSolveIt.org.

PS: As you can tell by this video, I’m not on BSD’s video production team… I usually leave that stuff to the professionals. If you want to see a heart wrenching video done by the Blue State team, I’d recommend this one.

Blue State Digital has invaded the Lone Star State.

Yesterday was the first official day of Netroots Nation, the 3rd annual blogger/progressive community conference (formerly known as YearlyKos). While most of us at Blue State are lurkers on blogs like DailyKos, Netroots Nation is a great opportunity for us to make new friends and show support for our many clients in attendance.

Day 1 was mostly caucus day – a chance for smaller communities within the blogosphere to meet and network. It was amazing to see so many BSD clients leading or actively participating in panels and discussion.

• The Democratic National Committee and Barack Obama’s campaign led a series of discussions on the new technology they’ve built with Blue State Digital to take back the White House in November.
• At the Labor Caucus, many of Blue State Digital’s union clients – including CWA – worked together to figure out how to promote the Million Member Mobilization for the Employee Free Choice Act.
• At the Calitics conference, Russ Warner stopped by to talk about how he’s planning to beat Rep. David Dreier.
• America’s Voice, a new BSD client, played an important role in the Latino Caucus to discuss bringing more Latinos into the blogosphere and how to procede with immigration reform.

And that’s just what I had time to see.

Once the caucuses were over, Governor Howard Dean made the keynote speech at the opening session, where he discussed change, moral authority and the politics of Republican division. Since BSD was founded 4 years ago by four members of the Howard Dean Internet team, it was moving to see the campaign come full circle, with Howard Dean leading the party – and the netroots – to elect Barack Obama.