Activists YouTube Wolfowitz Into “The Office”

De Vellis even posted the video to YouTube under his ParkRidge47 ID. That was a play on Hilary Clinton’s birthplace and year: Park Ridge, Illinois, 1947.

The sub-three minute video intersperses content from The Office with public appearances from Wolfowitz, set against the background of the global kerfuffle over his role in securing a State Department job for his romantic interest, Shaha Ali Riza.

An activist group called Avaaz worked with de Vellis to make the video. In their statement, which was passed along to us by MoveOn, Avaaz calls for the firing of Wolfowitz from the World Bank.

Avaaz also asked people to sign their online petition supporting their position. Over 40,000 people have done so, and they are trying to reach 50,000.

The tools available to modern Internet users allow for not just greater ability to express a viewpoint, but the potential to have a well-crafted message virally reach thousands of people. Such distribution through word of mouth, or we should say word of IM or email, makes these messages much more potent.

Whether someone agrees with Sidney Blumenthal or the Wall Street Journal on the Wolfowitz situation, it’s clear that people can have a greater say in modern politics than society has seen since the days of Thomas Paine.

The power of people is what Andrew Rasiej, founder of WeFixNYC.com, had in mind when he began his Public Advocate campaign to address various municipal concerns. Bureaucracy is not match for the city’s “greatest under-utilized resource”-it’s people.

Raisej’s primary goal is tracking and documenting potholes. He asks his fellow citizens take digital photos, using either their camera phones or digital cameras, and then send them to his site.

Using Google Maps, Raisej is developing photo documentation of the city’s potholes and tracking how long it takes the city to fix them.

His next photographic campaign: Cops in Doughnut Shops.