July 12, 2009

Equal Opportunity for the King or the Hood

(...or, a cool comic-related thing nobody else knew about last week except me)

It all started, innocently enough, with a Twitter follow.

At first, I thought it was a request from one of my fellow (and favorite) comic bloggers, who tweets under the name "The Atom". Ignoring my usual check-out-the-link-before-following rule, I followed...and then realized my mistake, but then, checked out the home site atomfordc.com, thinking that I might have to quickly unfollow.

Following various links, a story emerged that appealed to the blogger/social media user/non-profit community organizing geek within me. It turns out this initiative was part of a training sponsored by the New Organizing Institute, which trains people to become sharp online advocates. They all participated in a "BootCamp" training to engage people to advocate online, and the premise for this year was....superheroes running for Mayor of DC.

Granted, the effort received a lot of mainstream media support (click here, although it will spoil the result of the election), but I'm surprised a lot of comic bloggers/writers did not write about this...until now. (I am more than happy to be proven wrong) Perhaps the idea that political candidates are often comic characters (and I'm talking to you, Sarah Palin) has taken over popular characters, but the idea of supporting someone who actually seems to propose a general train of thought - rather than the usual bullet points - who is fictional seems appealing.

And to answer your question - yes, I supported the Atom. The guy's been through enough, and quite frankly, I would have loved knowing I helped put a physicist in office.

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