The Sunlight Network — our sister 501 c 4 organization — was launched yesterday with great fanfare. You should check some of the initial ways we hope to create a network of citizens who are engaging in accountability work. There’s a pretty neat new project you can find there that you can work on immediately. We also launched a social networking site for Sunlighters — the commmunity of folks who want to work with us on a regular basis. The primary purpose of that site is to provide a useful forum for distributed research and activism — to figure out together the kinds of things it makes sense to work on jointly. It enables individuals to connect one on one, as groups, and work collectively on projects. Think of it as MySpace for people who want to demand more transparency from lawmakers.

One of our goals is changing not just the culture of Washington, but the culture of citizenship. We want to put tools in people’s hands that show them that power is actually in their grasp, if they choose to use it. Given some of our recent experience on our distributive journalism efforts, we think they will.