Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

[From an e-mail to Kara and Erik]

My personal goal boils down to /the greatest power possible for all people over our own lives./

This is a concrete goal, more difficult to corrupt with ends justify the means disasters than the worthy but more abstract goals of justice and liberty and even prosperity (all of which, in my opinion, require a high degree of equality).

PWGD will provide tools for anyone working toward *any* cause, but in the light of day, with people in the network(s) more in control than the people leading organizations, will help the long arc of history bend toward justice (paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr).

And on legal, I need to re-research exactly how much a single person can donate, and match all other people's donations up to that. So, that info, and donations welcome also :-) -- goal of lining up enough matching donors that we can legally match all donations dollar for dollar.

On to the links, first two or three should be enough:

informal statement of People Who Give a Damn's goals
http://pwgd.org/node/23

People Who Give a Damn, purpose restated
http://mlncn.com/node/744

Principals for partnering with PWGD (which boil down to "give up some of your organization's control over communicating with the people you serve or who work for you, so that we can all build a more powerful movement together.")
http://mlncn.com/node/361

Affero license and thoughts on group-funding Free Software:
http://mlncn.com/node/189

Counter-recruiting hypothetical cause within PWGD
http://mlncn.com/node/351

Seth Godin doesn't know it, but he's an official spokesperson for PWGD
http://mlncn.com/node/464

PWGD for journalists
http://mlncn.com/node/527

The real economy need not suffer in the downfall of the speculative economy
http://mlncn.com/node/707

A Movement Larger Than Electoral Politics is More Important Than Who is President
http://mlncn.com/node/346

Clay Shirky: provide people the legal/practical benefits of incorporation without the rigidity/overhead (a PWGD goal)
http://mlncn.com/node/514

Power as permission to communicate
http://mlncn.com/node/334

"Do you think this is important?"
http://mlncn.com/node/776

p.s. The first technical hurdle I've identified is way better e-mail handling. An open source, pluggable e-mail framework that would let PWGD filtering drop into the process of mass sending and receiving e-mail.
http://agaricdesign.com/note/e-mail-mailing-list-managers-brief-discussi...

Also I'd love to make everything PWGD distributed, decentralized, but have no idea how.