Update 01-15-09:  Congratulations Grassroots Supporters!

You Did It! Thanks to the posting by Stephen Zendt of Walnut Creek, CA at Change.org and the tireless work of volunteer State Leaders, Congressional District Team Leaders, many peace and justice organizations, Yoko Ono, and hundreds of grassroots activists around the country and the world, the idea "Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence " placed in the top ten at Change.org's "Ideas for Change In America."

While Change.org is not officially announcing the top ten winners just yet - the voting page  showed the Department of Peace Idea in second place with 14,994 votes at 5:00 PM eastern time when voting closed. 

The top 10 rated ideas will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC co-hosted by the Case Foundation. We have been in conversation with Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org, who told us that the following social network leaders will be speaking at the press conference:

• Chris Hughes, director of My.BarackObama.com and co-founder of Facebook, 
• Jose Antonio Vargas, political reporter for the Washington Post, 
• Joe Trippi, who was Senior Adviser to John Edwards' 2008 Presidential Campaign and Campaign Manager of Howard Dean's 2004 Presidential Campaign, and
• Lee Brenner, Political Director at MySpace.

The Peace Alliance will have representatives in the audience.

Congratulations and thanks to Stephen Zendt and to all of you who worked so hard to make this happen.  You are being the change and helping the Obama Administration see another way to bring the change we want to see in the world.

Original Action:

Change.org is a citizen-driven effort to identify and create momentum around ideas for change in America. The top 10 vote-getters will be delivered to the Obama Administration on Inauguration day.

As a Campaign, we’re encouraging people to support two ideas:

• "Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence," submitted by Northern California volunteer Stephen Zendt (in the "Other" category) and
• "Bridging the Empathy Gap - Yes We Can," an idea supporting Nonviolent Communication submitted by Jori Manske, (in the "Government Reform" category)

The first round of voting ends December 31, 2008, after which the top three ideas in each category will move to the second round. Round two voting runs from Monday, January 5 through Thursday, January 15, 2009.

The top 10 ideas will then be submitted to the Obama Administration and Change.org "will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations and millions of combined members," according to the Change.org website.

Change.org is also a social networking site, much like Facebook or MySpace. It can be a powerful tool for connecting with others who are politically active.

Voting On Change.org

If you have trouble with the above direct links, you can navigate through the ideas on Change.org.

• Go to www.change.org
• In the top right corner, you'll see a series of menu items. Click on Ideas. You can also find that link at the very bottom of the page.
• In the Search Ideas bar on the right, put in the name of one of the two ideas above
• On the search results page, click on the title of the idea you want
• The idea page itself will come up. Click on the blue Vote! box to the left of the idea name
• You'll be asked to create an account. Fill in your name, email address and a password of your choosing. A confirmation email will be sent to the email address you put in.
• Open that email and click on the link supplied. This will take you back to your vote page
• Click on Vote! again (if needed) and your vote will register. The Vote! button will change from blue to red and there will be a message in the top right corner of the screen that says you have voted
• Now that you have an account you can invite friends and get them to vote as well. Use the "Email a friend" link on the right side of the page

A Personal Letter from Miki Kashtan of BayNVC

December 24, 2008

We have posted a proposal named "Bridging the Empathy Gap - Yes We Can" designed to make empathy central to government functioning, tying it to Obama's repeated highlighting of empathy as a crucially needed quality.

To make it to the 2nd round of voting on this site, we probably need to have at least 1200 votes for this idea in the coming week.

If you are moved to support this initiative to be brought to the attention of the administration, please take the steps below as soon as possible.

Ideas that get a lot of votes quickly are posted as "ideas on the rise" and then have more of a chance of getting more votes.

Our hope/goal/intention is to create an overwhelming response to our proposal so it can get the attention it needs to be brought to fruition.

Thank you for giving your time in this way.

With gratitude for all you are doing in your life,

Miki

HERE'S THE PROPOSAL: Bridging the Empathy Gap - Yes we can!

President-Elect Barack Obama has spoken repeatedly about empathy, which he defines as "the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us. And that strikes me as the most important quality that we need in America right now and around the world right now."

Empathy is a value we can cultivate in our government. We propose to create an inter-departmental office of empathy, or a division within a Department of Peace (when that is established) that can support the closing of the empathy deficit by employing strategies such as the following:

1. Implementing specific processes and methods for making empathy central to government operations both within government and in every sector of society to support meaningful use of our resources.
2. Identifying specific offices, agencies, and individuals within government that would benefit from intensive training in empathy skills.
3. Utilizing advanced empathic facilitation as a foundation for decision-making to support efficient and productive processes in all branches of government.
4. Assessing the impact of government policies and decisions on the overall purpose of bridging the empathy gap.
5. Creating public forums for dialogue to create empathic connection between people across differences - political, religious, ideological, racial, class, etc. The purpose of such forums would be bridging divides in our nation.
6. Creating and proposing curriculum based on Nonviolent Communication (www.cnvc.org ) to all schools for teaching empathy skills.
7. Creating an Empathy Corps - volunteers trained in empathy skills to go into conflict zones domestically and internationally to support diffusion of conflict through empathic connection.

"Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world." - President-Elect Barack Obama