Political Affairs Magazine - Some Social Implications of the Web

Matt seems to nail the idea that "it doesn't stop there". The power of MoveOn's strategy is that it seeks to continually test and retest the new ways to push energy off line and online and make the transits back and forth as a positive cycle.

Link: Political Affairs Magazine - Some Social Implications of the Web.

MoveOn approaches people where they’re at: online. And they start by engaging people exactly where they found them; they give people the chance to participate in online campaigns by emailing and e-faxing representatives or donating money for TV ads or electoral campaigns. And they’ve proved that these basic forms of online activism, particularly online fundraising, are wildly successful! It’s now possible, by utilizing the Internet’s ability to cast a massive net quickly and inexpensively around a potential membership base, to raise millions of dollars, and to flood our elected representatives with emails, faxes, and phone calls when it counts.

Yet, most importantly, MoveOn didn’t stop there. It doesn’t have to end with this basic, quick, online activism, which typically involves little more than a few mouse clicks and some light typing, or maybe a quick call to your congressional representative. They’ve proven that it’s possible to take people a step further: to draw them in to both traditional and time-tested forms of activism (like the physical phone banks, protests, etc.) or entirely new organizational forms made possible by the Internet (like the virtual phone banks, e-town hall meetings, etc.).