What may be most exciting is the unexpected diversity of activist models out there. I have heard of environmentally committed foresters within the U.S. Forest Service who electronically share views that question official policy. There are multinational networks of activists whose communications frequently usher a story into the mainstream press, spurring change. Indeed, the profusion of innovative advocacy anecdotes and models is so great, but so difficult to identify and evaluate, that Essential Information, the Nader-founded group, has assigned a person to routinely prowl the Web for innovations worth replicating. Unfortunately, existing efforts in this area have not caught fire.
Nonprofits know that something is going on.
But even when strong personal presentations are made to the executive committees and boards of organizations, there is often little follow-through by those organizations. The community networking people have a Washington presence, but their stories and perspectives are not forcefully represented in policy circles. Dozens of other professions and user communities simply are not plugged in to the policy debate or action. Yet their participation can be transforming. When CD-ROM publishers were alerted to challenge West Publishing Company's monopoly on federal court rulings, they became a moral and political force in their own right, changing the terms of policy debate in the process.