Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Change Congress

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It’s no secret that Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes in the way that he takes on meaningful efforts to change the world for (what I think, at least) good and his ability to articulate those efforts in compelling ways. It’s also no secret that over the past year I’ve become more disillusioned with the government here in the US. Mostly it’s a frustration about how nothing changes (or will change), how money is the motivator for everything that happens, and how much it feels like we have lost the best of our democracy to special interests. I was a huge Obama supporter; today, notsomuch. I’m totally surprised and disappointed by the whole Race to the Top agenda. I really hoped he would have done better by the kids in this country who desperately need a different vision for “education” (even though they may not know it.) But that said, this really isn’t about a party or a person as much as it is about a system that is plainly broken. Sounds familiar.

Anyway, I’ve been a supporter (both as a contributor of money and time) of Lessig’s Change Congress agenda since it was first announced a couple of years ago. And I think his latest video is worth the seven minutes it takes to watch it since it paints a compelling picture of what’s wrong and one solution, at least, that we can seriously consider supporting. My own feeling is that while we have a lot of serious challenges that we’re facing in this country, none of them are going to be fixed in the long term until we get money out of politics.

One last thing…I’m hopeful that a movement like Change Congress can actually bring together millions of people to actually create change. It would be quite an inspiration for a similar movement to change education.

Here’s the video:

"Let our Congress Tweet"

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Thanks to a tweet from Andy Carvin comes this latest example of how social tools are pushing the old traditional ways of thinking, this time in Congress:

Given the rules in place, this clash between the old ways of talking to the Congress and the potential new ones may have been inevitable. Noyes says Culberson and Ryan are active users of the Internet. “They have been Twittering all over the place,” he says. “They’ve been Twittering back and forth, engaging one another in debates over politics and policy.” The reporter describes Culberson, in particular, as something of a Web maverick and a poster child for the issue.

I love it.