You may recall that I spent half of last year as John Bonifaz's campaign blogger and internet person (that link is my LJ post where I link to some of my blog posts that I liked most). We got some good press for our online campaigning, in a campaign that was otherwise mostly ignored by the press. The Boston Phoenix had an article about blogging that said:
- Only John Bonifaz, running against Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin in the Democratic primary, comes close to the real thing. According to campaign manager Juan Martinez, Bonifaz has "the only statewide campaign with a full-time blogger." And it shows. Bonifaz's campaign blog has all the proper accoutrements of the medium, [...]
The campaign ended when incumbent Bill Galvin predictably won the Democratic primary last September.
Yesterday evening I went to this talk about Darfur * by a Wellesley professor who is also the UNDP's staff historian. After the talk, while some of us were milling around to chat with him, he asked me what I do, and when I mentioned that I worked on John Bonifaz's campaign last year he nodded in recognition. This is pretty close to how the conversation went from there:
- me: Did you ever read the web site?
him: Yes
me: I was his blogger ...
him: You were good! His campaign used the Internet really well...
me: I was the Internet person, I posted the YouTube videos, ...
him: Wow. That was a good example of a campaign and issue I probably wouldn't have paid a lot of attention to, or given money to, if you hadn't used the Internet so well.
* A reminder to call your 2 Senators, Representative, and the White House about this (again, if you haven't done so recently). There is still a genocide going on, for over three years now, and the US could be doing more - would be doing more, if they knew people were paying attention. The International Criminal Court just brought two indictments a few days ago against some of the key organizers of the genocide, which would be a lot more effective if the ICC's legitimacy weren't being undermined by the US, so when you call, you might also mention supporting the ICC (or at least ceasing to undermine it) as one way the US can help.
