(Crossposted on Personal Democracy Forum)

It can take a lot to amaze those of us who study the web's impact on on the world, but the speech and reach of the organizing against California's Proposition 8, passed on the same day Barack Obama was elected president, has been simply astonishing.

In a handful of days, a movement called "Join the Impact" has gone from a humble website dreamed up by a 26 year-old Seattleite to a global movement which, as the New York Times' Claire Cain Miller noted, generated protests this weekend in 300 cities in fifty states (and the District of Columbia), and eight countries.

Organizing via the Web, When Time's Counted in Hours, Not Months or Years

Perhaps a bit surprisingly, Miller and others have done a good job covering the enormous role of the web in the protests. Organizing has happened almost solely on the JointheImpact.com hub, on Facebook, and through a wiki service called Wetpaint.

The latter two have been most important. Not only has the national Join the Impact Facebook group swollen to 34,000 members, but dozens of local, home-grown cells of activists are also organized on the site. One rally in Raleigh, North Carolina promoted the attendance of "One Tree Hill" star Sophia Bush and got commitments to attend from more than 700 people. Another at Houston's City Hall had more than 600 confirmed guests as of this weekend, and called for protestors to only bring signs that "don't have anything antagonistic or hateful written on them."

Wetpaint, Join the Impact's virtual organizing center, is wiki technology geared towards social organizing -- whether that's around opposing the rollback of marriage equality or a shared fondness for "High School Musical."

As we hear back from the rallies that took place this weekend, it's become clear that the Join the Impact movement is now a landmark case study for anyone interested in understanding political organizing in the Internet age -- not only for its massive scale, but for the sort of inclusive organizing that's being attempted.

Who's Being Touched by the Movement?

From the beginning, the Join the Impact movement was motivated by the idea that the next step in the fight for LGBTQ rights was educational, not legal. While some protestors stormed the gates at Mormon churches across the country, Amy Balliet, the founder of JointheImpact.com, wrote that the mission of the group was to reach out across communities, never scapegoating, but "engaging our opposition in a conversation about full equality and to do this with respect, dignity, and an attitude of outreach and education."

In fact, in the aftermath of the declaration of Proposition 8's victory, a choice appeared, detailed in a post-mortem by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara in the Democratic Strategist. The political fight could continue. Or the focus could be on education, on creating a bedrock of social change so that any victories, in the courts or legislatures, could take root in the public space, sparing them the fate of Roe vs. Wade -- hotly contested by a country that still hasn't come to terms with the subject.

Which raises a question. It's settled fact that the Internet makes it easier to organize. But does it make it easier to organize people not (obviously) like you?

I put the question to four of the local organizers of this weekend's rallies, in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oregon. In short, it does seem like the Join the Impact protests are drawing significant support outside the LGBTQ world. But is the Internet is a factor, helping organizing to make the leap over the gaps between gay and straight that still exist in American society? Are we becoming one interconnected country, linked by Facebook news feeds?

That remains to be studied. Anecdotal evidence, though, suggests that Join the Impact organizers have managed to build diverse coalitions in nearly no time at all.

Local Organizers Weigh In

Tom Greene, a 23 year-old a social studies teacher in North Carolina, who helped organize the Raleigh rally that featured TV star Sophia Bush. Putting together the event, Greene told me, was a one-two punch. Join the Impact seeded the effort, and they ran with it locally on Facebook. Greene's personal estimate: fully half of the 1,400 people who turned out for Saturday's event were heterosexual.

Brandi Fitzgerald, a 32 year-old photographer, organized Philadelphia's Join the Impact event, held downtown's Dilworth Plaza. Saying that she can't imagine how civil rights organizing occurred in the pre-Internet age, Fitzgerald credits the "netroots" movement has "allow[ing] us to prove" that human beings are connected. Within a week, the Facebook group she launched grew to more than 1,300 members. Fitzgerald reports that Saturday's event had "a large turnout of straight families, young and old."

(Fitzgerald's one complaint? The limitations that Facebook places on organizing -- for example, not allowing group conveners to export the email addresses of those they've organized.)

Thirty-two year-old Derek Stephens organized in Columbus, Ohio's City Hall, and estimates that turnout reached 700 people credits Wetpaint. "This was how I got my speakers, volunteers and anything else I needed." The response of those outside the LGBTQ community was, he says, eye opening. The message of Sunday's rally, said Stephans, "was about love, not gender."

Finally, Becky Groves helped to organize the rally in Bend, Oregon's Brandis Square. The Internet, she reports, was "very helpful" in organizing an event that was to be held more than 30 miles from where she lives. Did the event, I ask, attract support from outside the LGBT community? "Definitely, yes," says Grove. In fact, she herself is straight.

It remains to be seen whether Join the Impact Internet-powered organizing can win over hearts and minds in the days ahead. But one thing is for certain. Some are already believers in the movement's power.

Philadelphia's Fitzgerald says that she'd she'd never organized politically before a week or so ago. And today, she's scheduled to turn in paperwork to start a local chapter of the national group Marriage Equality USA. Says Fitzgerald, "I have cried every day over the sheer power this has had."

"The people who started Join The Impact were a few friends who had an idea," says Columbus's Derek Stephens. "One person reached out to another, and it ended up a national movement."

Photos of this weekend's Join the Impact rally in Philadelphia used with the generous permission of Michael Albany -- copyright Magick Michael Photography

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