Medical marijuana activists in Olympia, Washington are angry with proposed caps on the amount of marijuana they are allowed to possess at one time (a mere 24 ounces).

Suggested Action

Perhaps, with the upcoming election coming up, pot advocates could channel some of their organizational energy into raising money to put into the hands of a pro-pot candidate.

For the last several months, Alex Steed used Make Something Happen to explore technology’s impact on collective action. We’ve decided try something a little different. From now on, Make Something Happen will highlight breaking opportunities for e-action, while blog.thepoint.com will focus on The Point and its impact on collective action.

Why the new format?

By the time news that inspires action hits the front page, the opportunity to leverage the new wave of innovative tools for self-organizing has passed. By highlighting opportunities for grassroots action at their inception, Make Something Happen will spark a discussion about the best way to use these tools, and hopefully help increase their adoption.

We will scour the Web in search of golden opportunities, and suggest action that can take place on The Point and elsewhere. We invite you to comment, make suggestions, and of course, take action yourself.

We expect to post somewhere between 5 - 20 “action opportunities” each day, segmented into categories. We’ll start out focused on a few categories, and expand on demand.

Consider Make Something Happen your participation clearing-house. We link important news before it explodes, then suggest ways to turn your desires and frustrations into a movement.

We need your help.

This is an experiment; we need your help to make it work. Here’s what you can do:

• Contribute to the discussion.  We’ll take smarter action when we put our heads together.
• Send us tips - links to stories and sites we should be watching.
• Give us feedback - is this format useful? What categories would you like to see? Are the posts appropriately focused?

Paperwork

• All of the old posts now reside at blog.thepoint.com.
• If you are an RSS subscriber, your subscription will be ported over to blog.thepoint.com.
• Here’s the RSS feed for the new Make Something Happen.
• Our community manager Aaron With’s band volcano! played their CD release show last night at The Hideout. Make sure you pick up their new CD, paperwork.