This weekend marks a year since millions of nasty women (and men) marched in protest following the inauguration of Donald J. Trump.
March On, a new organization branching out from the Women's March movement, wants to take a "bottom up" approach to the resistance.
Founded by people who organized and led sister Women's March events around the country, March On is using this weekend's anniversary to launch "Operation Marching Orders," a tech-driven campaign to crowdsource an agenda for political change. That agenda will put into words what the movement is fighting for in advance of the 2018 midterm elections. It may also become a set of demands or expectations of political candidates and elected officials.
"This movement is the people’s movement, it belongs to the people."
The project begins Saturday with the debut of an interactive Pol.is poll that allows people to vote on value statements (example: "We need a new political party of the left that takes no money from corporations").
People can agree, disagree, or pass and propose their own statements, which are also subject to a vote. Once machine learning analyzes that data, the goal is to understand participants' common values, how their opinions diverge, and what issues are most important to them.
"This movement is the people’s movement, it belongs to the people," says March On executive director Vanessa Wruble. "We can’t impose what we think this movement wants. We need to hear from the movement itself."
The split between Women's March and March On has largely been amicable in public, but it hints at the tension over which political and organizing strategies best engage the millions of people who showed up to protest last year, some of whom became fixtures at demonstrations and town hall meetings in their own communities.
Wruble, who previously served on the Women's March national committee, wants to effectively hand the mic to people on the ground, with an assist from Pol.is' technology and artificial intelligence.
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People who participate in the March On poll must register their email address. Statements submitted by users will be heavily moderated for duplication and trolling.
Colin Megill, cofounder of Pol.is, describes the tool as a survey created by the people who take it, which is then analyzed by an algorithm designed to see beyond binary beliefs and instead pull out nuances in people's political positions.
The results, he says, "give a snapshot of the landscape of opinion amongst a bunch of people who’ve never talked to each other about these issues."
Pol.is is used by private companies, public and academic institutions, and governments in Canada and Taiwan.
One of the key challenges for March On is enlisting a diverse group of participants. Otherwise, the values and priorities expressed by users risk reflecting narrow slices of the moderate and liberal American electorate. Wruble is aware of that possibility and says March On is working with many partners, including local leaders who participated in the Women's March, to distribute the poll widely amongst different networks and communities.
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Once the poll closes on Feb. 4 at midnight Pacific Standard Time, Pol.is will analyze the results and provide the insights to March On leadership. From there, March On will use that information to draft a "declaration for the future" that reflects participants' values, principles, and high-priority issues.
That grand vision wouldn't be complete, of course, without some kind of massive in-real-life turnout. The end game for March On in 2018, says Wruble, is to send people marching in the streets (or by caravan and rally) to vote on Nov. 6 in the midterm elections.
"We want to take the movement's creative spirit and intergenerational spirit and point it toward something that can really move the needle, and that is the vote," says Wruble.
If March On can begin its efforts with an interactive poll and culminate in a huge showing at the polls, it'll indeed become a fascinating player in American politics.
