The re-energised US left has much to teach its dismal European counterparts

Title: The re-energised US left has much to teach its dismal European counterparts

Author: Adam Price

Publication:  The Guardian (London)

Date: February 13, 2012

… The most recent progressive home-run – the high-profile reversal by the cancer charity Susan G. Komen of its decision to de-fund the abortion advice charity Planned Parenthood (imagine Marie Curie doing battle with Marie Stopes) – has followed a familiar pattern of Twitter-enabled people power. In what politico.com has predicted will become the “textbook case on the political power of social media”, Komen executives were clearly overwhelmed by a half-a-million-a-day tweet tsunami, 80 to 1 against the decision, that engulfed them.

The killing off of the internet censorship bills Sopa and Pipa in January, despite big-battalion backing by the entertainment industry, and Bank of America’s binning of a proposal to charge for debit-card usage at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests, were similarly internet-fuelled successes. The US left, it seems, has gone from retreat to re-tweet in just a few short years.

The progressive revival may be tech-enabled, but it’s far from tech-driven. The real social web these movements have created is a web of values, a vision that somehow connects with people at an emotional level, joining the dots between the personal and the political to create a sense of shared purpose – though often using new digital tools. It wasn’t a thinktank report – that staple tactic of the European left – that won the battle for Planned Parenthood but people like Linda from Las Vegas, a breast cancer survivor, who became an overnight YouTube sensation, when she literally bared her scars to demonstrate her anger at Komen’s small-mindedness…

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University group ends Komen collaboration after Planned Parenthood decision

Title: University group ends Komen collaboration after Planned Parenthood decision

Author: Lena Sun

Publication:  The Washington Post

Date: February 2, 2012

The Washington-based American Association of University Women …a national women’s advocacy group with 1,000 branches across the country said Thursday it would no longer collaborate with the [Komen] foundation… said it would no longer list Komen among the community service opportunities available to the 600 college women who attend the AAUW’s annual leadership conference in June.

The headquarters office will no longer sponsor Washington teams in the Komen-sponsored Race for the Cure and expects its branches to follow suit, said Lisa Maatz, AAUW’s director of public policy and government relations…

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