Back   OpEd News
Font
PageWidth
Original Content at
https://www.opednews.com/Diary/Change-org-Progress--ca-by-John-Bessa-121218-64.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

December 18, 2012

Change.org: Progress to capital, the treachery model

By John Bessa

Change.org, by deceptively switching from progressive to pure capital demonstrates "the problem within the solution" that (I believe) keeps us in the "squirrel cage" or "mouse wheel" of zero- or reverse-progress.

::::::::

Thus, Change.org presents an unusual opportunity; corporations, as capital families, are highly private, but, because Change.org apparently leveraged a deception it is continually forced to expose its internal methods and strategies that I believe all corporations use.  

Change.org even feels compelled to expose not just its operations, but the individual minds of its important staff--such as its president's and those of high-ranking staff members --they make their thoughts, and lies, public nearly everyday.  


Ben Rattay, Founder and CEO of Change.org gloats for Forbes Mag.


My short history w/ Change.org is based purely on "petition signer safety:" 

I accidentally signed a petition and immediately asked them to remove my name (Sat). Monday, they replied that "that they apologize" that "that option is not available." To me this is entirely a safety issue, but for most, the problem of Change.org is that it leveraged progressive activists as a non-profit to position itself for multi-million dollar investments from "venture capital angel investors." 

Others have attempted to remove their names for much the same reasons, and some have been threatened by the target recipients when the lists were delivered (mine has not yet been delivered). 
CEO and founder Rattay admits that progress was never the goal, profits were. He defines defective dominance by a) defining a fraction of a cent of profit as more important than a person's safety, and misleading the public about it.  

The organizations who use Change.org, such as Amnesty International, will not stop using it despite its being purely mercenary. This, in my view puts them in the same psychological and social categories that I am grouping as "defective dominance." Going further with this, Change.org needs to be stopped as it, more than any other entity, defines "the problem within the solution" that defines the critical inquiry into the dialectic that is occupy critical inquiry.



Reference material:



Admitted deception by CEO Rattay:  
  • "Change.org did not plan to reach out to its base of progressive users about the change" to a non-progressive business model
  • "Rattray has also recently been meeting with a number of well-known venture capital firms"
  • "Nothing big was ever achieved by taking the safe option" while talking about firings based on the shift from progressive to profit 



Clay Johnson, an author and expert on using social media for fundraising, said he had "huge problems" with the Change.org model. "It's dangerous to monetize "change' because there's an economic incentive to sensationalize." 

philanthropy.com



Daily Kos author: "The only way this works for them financially is if they start hiring campaigners to run conservative campaigns working counter to everything we believe." (Acutally, Daily Kos seems suspicously pro-gun, hmmm...)

DailyKos



Change.org creator Ben Rattray self-describes: I had "no real ambitions beyond a career in investment banking" 

Ben Rattray (Change.org CEO) said his firm is profitable and hopes to bring in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue within a few years"  making "money by running campaigns for advocacy groups such as Amnesty International" 

Forbes Magazine



Ben Rattray (Change.org CEO) said his firm is profitable and hopes to bring in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue within a few years"  making "money by running campaigns for advocacy groups such as Amnesty International" 

Washington Post



Future writing


Authors Bio:
I am a worker, photographer, and writer. I am now working on a counseling masters degree focusing on youth and community, neurology and medication, and underlying genetics.

My photography is my greatest accomplishment. The style is the art of photojournalism, and I also photograph nature with much the same approach.

I try to show life, or tell a story, as it is by connecting with the subjects, or the impressions they have left behind as photograph-able artifacts. There is much empathy in nature, and the beauty of nature, technically speaking aesthetics, tells us that there is love in its creation, and definitely in its animals. My best animal subjects have been birds, and I have a significant beaver project. I am working to create an catalog of animal pictures especially within society's environments, or its artifacts.

Photojournalism, like journalism, has to be real, and not made up. What people expect from it is as artistic as fantasy art because they can use it to insert themselves into the environment that it portrays just as easily as they can insert themselves into a fantasy.

Occasionally the photojournalist has to step away from what is comfortable (and sell-able) and make a critical statements, and often the statement needs to be harsh, as there is some exceedingly harsh activity in the world today.

News: I am exhibiting widely, and selling work! This tremendous, as I never for a moment every expected anybody, let alone lots of people, to get my work :)

Back