Thursday, September 16, 2010

Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert to host Rally in Washington DC

Ok, so this is really cool. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have just announced that they will be organizing a rally on the Washington DC Mall near the Washington Monument on October 30th. Check out their websites:

Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity
Stephen Colbert's Keep Fear Alive

Jon Stewart's site gives me some hope. And Colbert has cleverly claimed the role of Stewart's foil and will continue to outplay Fox news in this role. I'm stoked. But, this is the coolest part, the whole thing started on the internet on this website called Reddit. Anyone can post there and if someone likes what you post they can "upvote" it and then more people see it and upvote it or downvote it and reply to it and form it. Over time some rise to the top of the pile, the "front page". One such post filtered to the front page a few days ago, not long after the Glen Beck "rally to restore honor", someone posted on Reddit that they had had a vision that Colbert would lead a rally on Washington. People joked about it a bit, a "sub-reddit" dedicated to the subject was created, and soon there were over 5000 members. Within a day or two they had gotten serious. They decided that if they really wanted to make this happen they had to get Stephen's attention. They zeroed in on one of his charities: Donor's Choose which donates school supplies to classrooms throughout the US.

They organized and donated over $233,000 to Donor's Choose in THREE DAYS, and at the end of those three days we have these announcements from Colbert and Stewart. This is a lightening fast response to an incredible ground swelling of this internet-based network of honestly generous people. If I lived near DC I would be there. What a great thing.