Working from the Inside Out: Success Stories in Netroots Organizing
Employing an inside-outside strategy seems so obvious that it's amazing how often it isn't used. Insiders in Washington regularly fail to engage the public on key issues and then wonder why people never seem to care. And popular ideas in the Netroots fail to take root in Washington because there's nobody on the inside making the case—or worse, the insiders are actively working against the public interest. This panel will look at campaigns that have been a result of innovative collaborations between Washington policy groups and the Netroots.
Karr is the Campaign Director for Free Press -- the largest nonprofit organization devoted to media and technology policy in the US. He oversees all campaigns and online outreach efforts, including SavetheInternet.com and our work on public broadcasting, propaganda, and journalism. Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Tim critiques, analyzes and reports on media and media policy for the Huffington Post and on his personal blog, MediaCitizen.
Adam Green is a pro bono philosopher. He serves as Director of Strategic Campaigns for MoveOn.org Political Action, a 3.2 million member progressive advocacy organization. He also serves as Civic Communications Director for MoveOn.org Civic Action.
He leads MoveOn’s media reform campaigning, including the successful push to keep Democratic presidential debates off Fox and the successful campaign to get TV networks to allow people to put debate footage on YouTube legally. He also leads MoveOn’s Internet freedom campaign.
Adam blogs at HuffingtonPost.com, DailyKos.com, OpenLeft.com, and MyDD.com. He attended GWU undergrad & UVA Law.
Liz is the former Director of Public Affairs of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) where she was the spokesperson for the Chairman, William Kennard.
Before the FCC, Liz served at the Labor Department under Secretary Robert Reich. She was a media relations consultant to NARAL Pro-Choice America for four years, and was the Media Relations Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for four years, including when it opened in 1993.
Before that, Liz worked on Capitol Hill, first as the press secretary for U.S. Rep. Thomas Downey (D-NY) and then for U.S. Senator Jay. Rockefeller (D-WV).
Craig Aaron is the communications director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform group. He works in the Washington office on issues related to media ownership, public media and the future of the Internet. He speaks regularly on media and journalism issues and blogs at SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com and The Huffington Post. He previously worked as an investigative reporter for Public Citizen's Congress Watch, where he launched the WhiteHouseforSale.org Web site. And he is a former managing editor of In These Times magazine and editor of the book Appeal to Reason: 25 Years In These Times.
Joan is Senior Policy Editor at Daily Kos, where she's been blogging in various capacities since 2004. She writes on everything from healthcare and financial reform to the politics of the Mountain West from a home base in Idaho.
