Obama, in my opinion, has an open view of the way he wants to make policy decisions. He is not fundamentalist about ideology, though he has strong principles and values. He doesn’t believe he is always right; instead he sees the truth lying out there among the people being recreated continuously.

I went back to read Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, and fate has it that I then read this paragraph:

The answer I settle on – which is by no means original to me – requires a shift in metaphors, one that sees our democracy not as a house to be built, but as a conversation to be had. According to this conception, the genius of Madison’s design is not that it provides us a fixed blueprint for action, the way a draftsman plots a building’s construction. It provides with a framework and with rules, but fidelity to these rules will not guarantee a just society or assure agreement on what’s right. It won’t tell us whether abortion is good or bad, a decision for a woman to make or a decision for a legislature. Nor will it tell us whether school prayer is better than no prayer at all.

What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future.

Today, this argument is extended to millions of people thanks to new ways of communicating. The Internet is not made of machines, cables or protocols but of people willing to have a discussion, to interact as human beings. The same rules and tools that work in the physical world, will work on the Internet, because they are built for the humans to have this discussion to be had.

President-elect Obama has launched a new page on his www.change.gov site to foster debate about several issues. It has started with health care. As it is reported in The Huffington Post,

more noteworthy than the website itself is what the Obama team is signaling with its launch. It isn’t coincidental that Obama is addressing health care in this type of forum. During the campaign, he was repeatedly critical of the closed nature of negotiations during the Clinton-era push for health care reform. Already, he seems to be trying to make the public a shareholder in the process.

it might be the first sign of canalization of the energy of the communities created during the campaign. It is a new way of creating a constituency that supports a reform of the policies this new administration wants to change. Obama, in my opinion, has an open view of the way he wants to make policy decisions. He is not fundamentalist about ideology, though he has strong principles and values. He doesn’t believe he is always right; instead he sees the truth lying out there among the people being recreated continuously. The Internet allows this truth to be shared, reconstructed and communicated to those that have the capacity to take decisions. He and his administration will set the agenda and take the path that adapts better to what they think is right, but it will be an informed and participative decision. This information and participation won’t come anymore from an exclusive group of people (i.e. lobbyists and powerful constituencies), but from many different quarters of society, which will be empowered by the Internet. By allowing this, he is also empowering himself, for he will have the public and expressed support of those that are participating in this new way of doing politics.

In a matter of hours, I had messages from friends expressing surprise and, very kindly, congratulating me for the news, though they hadn’t been invited to the supposed wedding. They, and I guess other people too, took this change in my Facebook profile as a reality within the social institutions we’ve been taught to live in. I am not a sociologist, so I won’t try to explain the social process behind this phenomenon, but I think that social networks are getting so embedded in our lives that they are becoming social institutions in which we trust, for the information we found in them comes directly from our family, friends and other people we have previously given our trust to.

NB: From here, I would like to thank all my friends that congratulate me for my wedding

You can get more information here.

Evidence shows that most children in trouble are trapped in a cycle of disadvantage:

* they come from the poorest families and communities
* they have the poorest educational experiences
* they are more likely to suffer ill health and substance abuse.

Most children are not troublesome. They attend school, take part in activities and many volunteer in their communities.

Despite this, society has the perception that children are responsible for a significant amount of antisocial behaviour and crime and are becoming increasingly intolerant.

Society is demonising its young people.

This is one of the videos of the campaign

First of all, I don’t think that Barack Obama sees himself as black or white, but as an American with diverse roots. Though important, his main message is not one of integration of minorities in a discriminatory society, but of change and renovation, whatever the colour of the people bringing it. Our Obama, a European Obama is not an Arab, an African or whatever person from a minority, to prove ourselves how good we are, how progressive and open our societies are becoming. No. Our Obama is a person representing the ideals that the real one represents for millions of people around the world: democracy, equality and the power of the individual. I don’t care about the colour or gender of this person, I care about the change in the pursuit of these dreams that we need in Europe. We, Europeans, are arrogant, conservative and highly discriminatory, socially and racially. We think that because we once ruled the world, we have better societies, better political institutions and better cultures than the rest of the world. But we don’t realise how our education systems, our economies, our societies are clinging to the past, and how we are not willing to change for building a better future; instead we prefer to blame others for our failures.

We need a European dream. We need to renew Europe by recognizing the errors we made in the past as part of our legacy (racism, colonialism, exploitation, violence and war…), by reaffirming our common values and ideals as the foundations of our societies, and by building our unity in diversity. This is the European dream.

The new website for change is open. Obama’s team has opened the page for the presidential transition (www.change.gov). I must say that I was elated when I saw this page. It is so well made, its content is the work of weeks and a wit difficult to surpass. If this is the way Obama’s administration is going to work, I am sure it is going to be more than succesful. A colleague of mine wrote on Facebook that the soul of the information age is born, referring probably to Obama (though I haven’t confirmed this). As often, he is more than right!

I wonder why the spirit of Obama is so difficult to translate to the European political scene. It is not only that we are not united, still quarrelling for our nations. This is in fact the effect of the very problem Europe has, the control by the same elite that have governed us for centuries. We should say basta to them, break the chains their structures (including the political parties, left and right) have put on us. When will this happen?

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

These are the words of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie Wall Street.

A couple of weeks ago, the movie’s co-writer, Stanley Weiser, was complaining in an LA Times article that:

thinking back upon writing the screenplay of “Wall Street,” I never could have imagined that this persona and his battle cry would become part of the public consciousness, and that the core message of “Wall Street” — remember, he goes to jail in the end — would be so misunderstood by so many…As the years have gone by, it’s heartening to see how popular the film has remained. But what I find strange and oddly disturbing is that Gordon Gekko has been mythologized and elevated from the role of villain to that of hero.

I remember this feeling. I was only 13 then, but the spirit of the time were Gekko’s, and continued to be. But no more. I’ve just finished watching the movie again. And I must say that those and these words:

The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. You’ve got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I’ve still got a lot to teach you.

sound somehow different today. This crisis is changing all. It will change even more. Though we still have to put the real Gekkos in prison. They are wandering around, getting their parachutes, and protected by their political friends, those that accepted their money to fund their political enterprises for years.

In the original review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby said that

”Wall Street” isn’t a movie to make one think. It simply confirms what we all know we should think, while giving us a tantalizing, Sidney Sheldon-like peek into the boardrooms and bedrooms of the rich and powerful.

This judgment may be being corrected right now…

An online campaigner has already written about which lessons online campaigners and fundraisers can learn from it. The main idea is that fundraising and campaigning should go together. He mentions four points around this:

1. Starting trying to integrate donations as a campaigning action.
2. Link donations the success of the campaigning action: it is up to supporters to make it happen.
3. Be prepared for success (I don’t know if the British Humanist Society is) and for supporters to have a more ambitious vision that the organisation.
4. Tell your fundraisers: campaigning can be income generating.

So, I would like to develop further and try to explain this overwhelming success:

1. Use of “traditional media” (online though):

* Writer and comedian Ariane Sherine wrote an article in the Guardian’s Comment is Free in June 2008. Its impact was probably low, but there was at least one person who read it avidly and acted upon it, poltical blogger and campaigner Jon Worth (more on his actions later).

* Ariane Sherine used again in October 2008 the Guardian’s Comment is Free to make public the successful Atheist Bus Campaign.

* The day of the launch, October 21, BBC, Daily Telegraph, The Times ran the story on their websites. It was the 4th most emailed story on the BBC News site.

* This presence in the traditional media, which gathers most of online newsreaders, is necessary to get the wider audience, and make the story and the campaign trustworthy.

2. Use of online media:

* When Jon Worth read Ariane story he posted about it and did a mock up of The Bus with Ariane’s slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life”. Three weeks later he opened a pledge on PledgeBank. This pledge was “I will pay £5 towards the campaign to put an atheist advert on the side of a London bus but only if 4,678 other people anywhere will do the same.” So the objective was to get 4,678 people to pay £5 in order to get the necessary money to pay for the advertisements on the buses. Unfortunately, it only attracted 877 people. Some problems with it were that it limited that donation to £5 – in the current campaign some people have donated up to £750! –, it didn’t have any “celebrity endorsement” (more on this later), and (maybe because of the latter) it didn’t have much impact on the traditional media – yet in a Facebook comment, Ariane Sherine says that “The original Pledgebank page was created to see how many people would be willing to donate, and its success encouraged us to launch an official campaign. We initially thought we would need 4,680 atheists to contribute, but we now only need 1,100 to each donate £5 and we can have 30 bendy buses travelling across London for four weeks with the ad (pictured) on the side.” Now, this makes me think that a couple of sparks are always necessary to set a fire.

* For the new campaign, Ariane Shering, Jon Worth and others have created a website and a Facebook group. These do not have a huge impact on wide audience, however it is essential to construct networks between people and pass the message. The Facebook has at this moment 4,099 members! and the website reached 15,000 individual visitors in a day (so many that the hosting company contacted Jon Worth to see what was going on – more here!). It also gives the campaign identity and builds trust for other people to believe the message.

* A donation page was opened in Justgiving. This is essential to make the campaign tangible and to make possible the realization of the objectives. This is at the core of the success, without it the campaigners wouldn’t have a penny in such a short time and with so little resources.

3. Organizational support.

* The British Humanist Association agreed to use its name for the campaign and administer all donations. This is essential to give trust to the donor, create identity and, more importantly, deal with all legal and administrative matters. As a charity, it can administer all donations without having to go through painful red tape. Furthermore, its established organization network will help to build up the campaign into something more ambitious.

4. The Dawkins Factor

* Professor Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, is officially supporting the Atheist Bus Campaign, and agreed to match the first £5,500.

* It is a big deal of money, but more importantly, the Dawkins’s endorsement is the ultimate credibility maker. It has helped enormously in making this campaign unique and very special. People can relate to it through Dawkins and his book.

* There is also the “celebrity factor”, traditional and new media are attracted like bees to celebrities, because people are more likely to read a story if there is one in there. A well-known name in a news story guarantees a good deal of readership. Running the story with Richard Dawkins’s name helps in attracting large audiences.

5. Tangibility (or “gripability”):

* The Atheist Bus campaign is very tangible, a bus with an ad promoting atheism. The donor knows where his/her money will go, and many expect to see the fruit of his/her money with his/her eyes (many people are asking to bring this campaign to their cities in the comments next to the donations). Once the trust is built between the campaigners and the audience through the factors mentioned previously, this tangibility (or “gripability”, for you can get the get the grip of it) facilitates the ultimate step, that is, to give money, which is what eventually the campaigners are seeking on the practical side (aside the ideological aspect of the campaign).

These are so far my ideas on the subject. I am looking forward to your comments and criticisim. I will probably develop more on this, for this is only “a first reckoning”.

UPDATE: I reckon I forgot a very important point: the cause itself. The atheist cause proves to be strong and well supported by thousands of people. When they get the information and have the appropriate structures for action, the cause and those supporting it prove to be quite powerful.