I wrote 3 widgets for Amnesty International to help fight the Darfur crisis. It was exciting to part of a movement from the musicians, lawyers, designers and hundreds of others knowing everyone was bound by an altruistic goal of helping.

Please look at my blog and look at the widgets. Please send them around, put it on your blogs or best of all buy some music. It's one .99 cent buy you'll make that can make you feel good despite DRM.

Here is the URL: http://goodstorm.typepad.com/goo dstorm/2007/06/amnesty_interna_1 .html

I would post the widgets here but there are no embed capabilities. :(

Maybe they the ON sysadmins will allow the widgets here... At least in the Darfur discussion groups.

Thanks,

Yobie Benjamin yobie<at>goodstorm<dot>com music.goodstorm.com

Our little company GoodStorm has gotten some buzz lately forcing me to do a blog. Oh well...

My blog is: goodstorm.typepad.com/goodstorm

For those who care, just sharing some of the excitement around GoodStorm:

Motley Fool ~ http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13718916/ San Jose Mercury News ~ http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/06/26/silicon_valley_roundup_danger_the_accel_twostep_attributor_more.html Financial Times Of London ~ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bc25c288-0bc2-11db-b97f-0000779e2340.html Information World Review ~ http://blog.iwr.co.uk/2006/07/popular_science.html Blogging Stocks ~ http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2006/07/05/ebay-doesnt-have-the-inventory-to-profit-from-blogs/ MSN Money ~ http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=FT&Date=20060704&ID=5842215

Cheers to all,

I am so excited. I have never been more excited about working and from the bottom of my heart, this group in ON has been an inspiration to me and my new company, GoodStorm.com. Today is special because we're working with a very special group called BringThemHomeNow.com founded by Andrew Boyd of Billionaires for Bush (parody of course!).

My company, GoodStorm (www.goodstorm.com), a progressive e-Commerce company, is helping BringThemHomeNow.com, a coalition of groups calling on President Bush to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, to launch a tax day protest by selling an anti-war postage stamp online.

The Bring Them Home Now U.S. Postal Service-approved 39 cent first class stamp is available at Bring Them Home Now’s online store at: http://www.BringThemHomeNow.com. It features the symbol of the growing movement – a peace sign festooned with a yellow ribbon. At the store supporters can also purchase T-shirts, buttons (and soon bumper stickers). BringThemHomeNow.com will also be rolling out an on-line calculator where citizens can determine what portion of their taxes are going to pay for the war in Iraq.

If the BringThemHomeNow site is not up for some reason including possible Denial of Service attacks, please go to the site at Goodstorm.com which is: http://www.goodstorm.com/stores/bringthemhomenow .

Proceeds from the sale of the anti-war postage stamps and other merchandise benefit veterans groups working to end the War in Iraq and bring our troops safely home. These groups include Military Families Speak Out (http://mfso.org), Gold Star Families for Peace (http://www.gsfp.org), Iraq Veterans Against the War (http://www.ivaw.net), and Veterans for Peace (http://www.veteransforpeace.org).

We worked a lot with other organizations to make this happen and are thrilled to be a service partner to some true progressive folks and organizations.

The stamp was launched on March 20 at an all-star concert commemorating the third anniversary of the Iraq War. Michael Stipe, Rufus Wainwright, Margaret Cho, Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon were among the artists and activists participating in the historic concert and autographing a large format commemorative version of the stamp.

The concert and stamp were produced by NY America (www.nyamerica.org), an organization of artists and producers engaging the public in civic discourse through events that unite the arts, sciences, and humanities.

All my ON compatriots continue to be an inspiration for all of us GoodStormers. I hope you can find the time to spread the good word about this worthy cause and GoodStorm.

In the next few months we will be launchng some uber-cool items and media and entertainment products that many of the ON member organizations can use to help fund raise.

Till then, in the spirit of the "power of the individual", I wish you all well!

Cheers,

Yobie

First of all, another intro to my blog... http://empowersocialchange.blogspot.com/

and my latest post:

Another day in Washington.

Grandstanding senators, and on the other side of the table, lots of big words with very little meaning.

Welcome to the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito. This arch-conservative is up for the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

So how much is at stake?

To break it down on one set of issues alone —women’s issues.

If Alito is appointed to the Supreme Court, family and medical leave, pay equity, access to contraceptives, abortion rights and equality in education are all on the table.

According to the National Organization of Women:

Judge Alito wrote the Third Circuit decision that Congress did not have the power to require state governments to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act. Three years later, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist (Hibbs v. Nevada), the Supreme Court took the opposite position, upholding the right of Congress to require state and local governments to follow FMLA, referring specifically to the impact on women. Chittister v Department of Community and Economic Development, Alito opinion.

As a justice department attorney, Alito wrote a memo laying out his proposal for the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, showing himself to be an advocate and potential architect of a Roe reversal. In 1991, going farther than any other judge on his circuit, Judge Alito argued that, under his interpretation of the Constitution, a state can require women to notify their husbands before they are allowed to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito dissent.

Lawsuits were brought by NOW and NAACP in the 1970's to integrate the Pittsburgh police department by sex and race. A decade later, after a consent decree required the hiring of female officers, sexual harassment became a way of letting them know they weren't welcome. In Robinson v. City of Pittsburgh, a female officer's direct supervisor engaged in two years of harassment (including unhooking her bra, snapping her bra strap, making comments about the size of her breasts, dropping his keys down the back of her shirt and trying to retrieve them, etc.) yet Alito's opinion dismissed most of her claims, including every claim of retaliation, allowed the trial judge to instruct the jury to disregard some of the evidence, and affirmed the judge's refused to admit a City of Pittsburgh report regarding the same supervisor's treatment of another female officer during that time.

Alito has rejected constitutional and civil rights protections against sexual harassment in schools - an especially pernicious form of sex discrimination. In D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vocational Technical School, Judge Alito voted that student who were sexually harassed and abused by fellow students (including repeated forced sexual acts) do not have a civil rights claim (42 U.S.C 1983) because the state did not have any special duty to care for them. A dissenting judge argued, "we owe immature school children attending public school who are seriously injured as a result of a policy of deliberate indifference to their danger no less a remedy than we are willing to provide to incarcerated criminals." This is another example of Alito's inclination to interpret civil rights statutes very narrowly, depriving individuals of legal protections and of their day in court.

So what can be done?

Call your Senator and tell him what you think about Alito’s record. Call before senators vote to confirm—or reject!-Alito on January 24. Dial the Senate switchboard number (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senator.

http://nomorepoverty.blogspot.com/2005/12/these-are-things-i-believe-in.html

http://empowersocialchange.blogspot.com/

Hope ON folks help spread the word.

Happy holidays!

Thanks all of you for being inspirational to me and many others for sure. I am cross-posting on ON my first blog entry at my new company, goodstorm.com. I hope you all visit us. You'll all understand how all of you were an inspiration. Special thanks to Will Fitzpatrick and Stephen deBerry.

Here is the cross psst...

Welcome to GoodStorm and our very first blog post! Two long months ago, four of us got together to discuss how we could do more good in the world. It was just after Katrina and more bad news was coming out - budget cuts for educators, college loan programs, WIC nutrition programs, Head Start, and even homeland security. In that conversation, we all agreed that something needed to be done. GoodStorm was born.

We decided to create GoodStorm to empower real people and down-to-earth organizations to do good, and to do it successfully. GoodStorm is not just an e-commerce site. We have no intention of just selling items to make a profit like millions of other sites.

We at GoodStorm, our team as well as our investors, take home less of a cut, so you and all of the good people who sell through our services can take home more of their own profit. We know that organizations need money to do their good work. Everything costs money - phone calls, leaflets, office space, voter registration drives. We want to make a difference by allowing our partner organizations to earn needed income, while they stay focused on their respective missions serving others or affecting social change.

We're bringing the message through our methods, and we decided to use open-source technologies for that reason. We want to create a platform that isn't just for us, but something we can share and give back. We think that there is more long-term value in collaboration and we want to work together to create something bigger than the sum of our parts.

We are also building a network of good people to collaborate with each other on designs. The kind of folks we've been talking too are all excited to help with cool design ideas for our partners' logos, shirts, and stores. This means our partners get the added benefit of access to designers whose values are in line with theirs. These are GoodStorm's kind of folks.

GoodStorm is blessed because of our partners. We want to take this opportunity to thank all our launch partners: Working Assets, The Princess Project, CrossLeft, Music For America, Youth Speaks, Youth Movement Records, Students for A Free Tibet, Roosevelt Institution, Think Blue and The League of Young Voters. We also want to thank our first individual designer partners: DangerMarc, Evan Brock, Nathalie Baudoin and Chris Conlin. We hope you take time to look at their products (and support them – buy some!). If you are interested in joining our community as a partner, please feel free to send us your inquiries using our partner form. We will try to respond to all of you.

GoodStorm intends to build the world’s largest community of good people and organizations that are dedicated to doing great things for the world. We can only do this with your help. We're brand new, and at the same time we want our community to grow organically. So, while we're not taking out SuperBowl ads, we've got you, our partners and our community, to help us. So, send us feedback and please spread the word that GoodStorm is the place to participate in something, well, something pretty darn Good!

You’ll notice that we’re starting with apparel but in the very near future we will be launching other cool products and services so that our partners can have more opportunities for sustained and reliable income streams.