Hearts That Beat as 'One'

Ronald Brownstein, in the October 24 issue of the Los Angeles Times writes a fascinating article on the "power of celebrity, the power of the Internet, and perhaps to the power of an idea". The world is looking for leaders, especially with passion who simply cannot and will not sit on the sidelines, but rather engage himself and compel others to do so:

"It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. This should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's 'difficult' justify our own inaction.Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept."
-- Bono in an interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2004.

Hearts That Beat as 'One' Could Shake Up American Politics - Los Angeles Times

A few hours after lunch with his old buddy President Bush last week, the Irish rock star Bono, a guitar slung low over his hips, paused near the climax of a raucous U2 concert to ask 20,000 fans to sign up to save the world.

From a mammoth stage in a downtown Washington arena, Bono asked his audience to lift their cellphones and send a text message that would connect them to an organization he helped launch last year to prod the U.S. toward greater efforts against poverty and disease in the developing world. Instantly, the hall filled with the spectral glow of upraised phones, the way it once might have filled with lighters held by fans cheering the band.



By the time U2 was on its second encore, the names of those who had enlisted in the cause were streaming across a giant video screen above the stage. And before the fans filed out, those who signed up had already received a text-messaged 'thank you' from Bono on their phone.

So ended another night's work in a campaign to create something new in American politics: a nationwide, grass-roots constituency to aid the world's neediest people.

The organization that Bono asked his fans to join is called One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. It was formed last year by 11 leading anti-poverty and charitable organizations, including Care, World Vision and Bono's own group, Data - an acronym for debt, AIDS, trade in Africa.

One's explosive growth testifies to the power of celebrity, the power of the Internet, and perhaps to the power of an idea — a global offensive against extreme poverty and debilitating disease — whose time has come. But the organization is also an unproven experiment whose fate may offer important clues about what it takes, in the era of Internet politics, to transmute fleeting empathy into enduring commitment and online fervor into on-the-ground leverage.

The group sells white bracelets that read simply "One." It received testimonials from the stage during the Live 8 concerts that rocker Bob Geldof mounted worldwide in July to put pressure on the Group of 8 leaders before they held a summit in Scotland that focused on aid to Africa. On U2's fall tour across America, Bono has delivered his cellphone appeal at every stop, yielding as many as 10,000 names a night.

From all these sources, One directs its prospective recruits to its website (http://www.one.org/). Once there, they are asked not to contribute money but to sign the group's petition urging the U.S. to slightly more than double its spending on foreign aid over several years.

Each time someone signs, the group identifies another name that can be recruited for future lobbying campaigns. That process has allowed One, like other Internet-based organizations, to amass a network far faster than earlier generations of advocacy groups that relied on direct mail and phones.

But the challenge for advocacy groups now is to transform a large e-mail list into a functioning membership... Read the rest...
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