While Lessig did a fantastic job of drawing the audience to the inevitable necessity of making a serious effort to reform Congress, the Change Congress movement itself is pretty simple. Loosely, the campaign will challenge candidates for office to brand themselves with Change Congress badges on the basis of which three reforms they support, specifically:

1. refusing money from lobbyists or political action committees (PACs)
2. abolishing earmarks
3. endorsing public financing for campaigns

Simply, it’s a campaign to unite disparate reform movements through common branding, and it’s simple enough to get some traction.

But Lessig also mentioned some things that I hadn’t heard before — a piece of the puzzle he described as additional “layers”. The branding is the first layer, which is to be supported by a second “carrot” layer and a third “stick” layer.

The carrot is conventional enough — a pledge of funds for candidates that take up one, two, or all reforms as part of their campaign.

The stick, however, is a bit more unconventional and interesting. People have rightfully challenged the Change Congress badge idea at the outset — why would a campaign pay any attention to these badges and/or why would anyone pay attention to whether or not the candidate is badged? Lessig posits that people should “escalate the cost of running without a badge” by running themselves. When candidates ignore the campaign and avoid taking positions on those reforms, regular citizens can and should run as single-issue candidates, bringing the issue to the surface.

It’s interesting and hard to pooh-pooh, frankly, because of technology. One observation is that small communities really are engaging in a broader discourse through blogging, tagging, and commenting; another is that local media are paying more attention “downward” to their readers and local constituents because they provide valuable resources in the form of news leads, online comments and flamewars, and pageviews. Imagine housewives, programmers, sysadmins, grandpas, high school kids, having some baked-in media juice (and maybe even some money) thanks to a national “Change Congress” campaign…? It doesn’t seem that far-fetched and most of all — it sounds pretty fun.

Stay tuned — I’ll try to update with audio and/or video when it’s posted.

Come to San Diego and join EFF in honoring Mitchell Baker and the Mozilla Foundation, Michael Geist, and Mark Klein at the 17th annual Pioneer Awards! Michael Robertson, the Founder and CEO of MP3.com, Linspire, MP3tunes, and Gizmo5, will keynote the ceremony with his talk: “What to Expect When You’re Expecting… To Be Sued”.

Awarded every year since 1991, the Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. This year, the Pioneer Awards ceremony will be held in conjunction with ETech at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina on Tuesday March 4th, 2008. The event begins at 7:15 p.m. and is open to the public.

Tickets to the Pioneer Awards ceremony and Michael Robertson’s keynote address are $35. You can buy your ticket in advance at:
http://secure.eff.org/pioneerfundraiser

TCHO is the Platinum Sponsor for the 2008 Pioneer Awards ceremony. Founded by Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto and legendary chocolatier and former technologist Timothy Childs, TCHO is “a new chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.” TCHO will sample a “beta release” of their dark chocolate during the awards ceremony. Attendees are invited to taste two different formulas and vote for a favorite. Feedback directly influences the formula used for the national release bar. Learn more about TCHO at:
http://www.tcho.com

Bronze sponsors of the 2008 Pioneer Awards ceremony include: MOG, Three Rings, JibJab, Atomic PR, Barracuda Networks.

For more information about the 2008 Pioneer Awards:
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer

For the Upcoming.org page:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/441454/

The first stirrings of major intergenerational conflict are already being noted. The basic rights of the recent past – a safe job, free education and healthcare, secure homes to raise a family, a modest but comfortable old age – have slipped quietly away, all to be replaced by a myriad of vapid lifestyle choices and glittery consumer trinkets. Excluded from a national social housing scheme sold off by their parents, unwilling to give birth in the UK’s draconian new system of rental accommodation which gives tenants no more than six months grace from eviction, and unable to afford homes of their own in 85 percent of the country, today’s iPod generation is stunted: trapped halfway between childhood and adulthood. It now takes them until 34, on average, before they can afford a house, let alone have a family of their own. Little surprise that they are such a woeful models of grown-up responsibility for their younger siblings to emulate. Mom and Dad aren’t much better. By blowing their children’s inheritance on 80 percent of the UK’s luxury good purchases, from SUVs to cruises and antiwrinkle creams, Britain’s baby-boomers seem hell bent on ensuring that, even without coming resource shortages such as Peak Oil, their offspring will be the first generation in living memory to have a lowered standard of living.

Honk if you felt a pang of déjà vu. Take a look at the article and feel free to hit me up with some comments.