| In the small chance you've been off the Tubes of the Internets for the last 48 hours, chances are you've heard a whole lot of noise about how the Senate Republicans slashed the state's Higher Education budget yesterday, which included the Michigan's Promise, the $4000 scholarship for Michigan students, which 96,000 students in our state receive and depend on. As a geek, I love the online organizing tools -- but as a citizen, this is a great way to send a message that we won't stand for breaking Michigan's promise. From subscription-only MIRS Minutes before the vote on many of amendments that attempted to restore the Michigan Promise Scholarship, Lt. Gov. John CHERRY, who was presiding over the Senate was sending out messages on Twitter telling his followers to use an online tool to write local newspapers to stress why cutting the scholarship was wrong.
Not too long after I saw the tweets from the Lt. Governor, I clicked on one and was taken to the website from A Whole Lot of People Supporting Cherry, his exploration committee, asking me to make sure our state is 'Keeping Our Promises' by visiting an entire section of his website to take action on this one singular issue. Now that might not seem to extraordinary, but if you visit the page, you're apt to be a little more impressed. The page includes a You-Tube video, a petition to sign directed at the Senate Republicans, a link to the Facebook group for the issue, a link to a tool that allows you to automatically send a letter-to-the-editor about this particular issue (with suggested text), a "tell-a-friend" tool, and lastly a link to the news page with all of Cherry's press releases. From an online organizing/get-out-the-vote (GOTV) perspective, that's pretty sweet. To be fair, the Senate Democrats have done an impressive job of also using some of these very same online tools to keep folks informed and engaged through their website, blog and Twitter, and Facebook accounts, and have one of the most active and updated YouTube channels, with over 75 videos to date. On top of all of that, Cherry started using a new online petition tool, http://act.ly, the Twitter Petition, that just launched within the last 72 hours, to also drive the subject. Obviously the Obama campaign set the bar pretty high last year for similar online action, but this early in the 2010 game it's pretty impressive. As someone who makes monthly student loan payments equivalent to what some pay for a mortgage, I appreciate the fight that the leadership of Cherry and the Senate Democrats are taking on with this issue. As a giant geek, I think it's great to see public officials really grabbing this online technology by the horns and using it for a very worthy cause. |
