Re: What is MoveOn.org? | Wes Boyd

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Transcript

Wes Boyd: I work with a group of people – it’s an organization called MoveOn.org – to help Americans be more effective in engaging in politics.

It was an accident really, starting Move On. My wife and I had started a software company prior to Move On and had just sold it, and we were looking for our next business to start. And it was a time when we sort of raised our head for a couple of seconds and said, “Oh my gosh! What’s going on in Washington?” And it was during the Clinton impeachment years. Things were . . . seemed quite a mess. Coming from business, we wondered why we were wasting our national lives on this nonsense. And we just thought to put up this petition online that just said, you know, “Congress should censor the President and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” It seemed like common sense. Everybody that we talked to said, “That makes a lot of sense. Let’s just do that.” So we did that. We put that up online. And in a week’s time, 250,000 people had signed. And then we said, “Oh my gosh!” Coming from, you know, Silicon Valley . . . coming from the dot com era, we knew that it was more that you could do with being able to reach 250,000 for free.

The greatest joy really for us is, you know . . . This has been a hard time for the country, I think. A lot of people have seen what appears to be the country, you know, going in the wrong direction in its international foreign policy; a country not respecting its roots . . . its Democratic roots. And what’s really been a joy is to be in touch with so many people who really do get it . . . who really do get what America’s about and are willing to work for that.

I suppose the struggle is hard work. The struggle is dealing with losses, because when you . . . When you deal with hard problems like this, it doesn’t all come to you in a day, or a week, or month. And so we’ve had to really rest on that joy of working with great people through . . . through a very hard time. And now things actually seem to be shifting in the country. The country seems to be moving in a different direction, and it’s a very optimistic time for us actually.

Recorded on: 7/5/07