Campaign 2012: Progressive Petition Site Bans Reform Groups

As you may know, Change.org, the progressive [but for-profit] petition site, has recently banned reformy nonprofits StudentsFirst and Stand For Children from posting petitions, apparently under pressure from teachers unions and others opposed to their positions and enraged at their presence on the site.

It's a massive victory for the organizations' critics, who also felt that the groups were misrepresenting their views and tricking parents and community members into signing onto petitions that they didn't really agree with.  

The last straw, according to this Huffington Post article, was a petition against the strike authorization vote in Chicago two weeks ago.  Roughly 5,000 people signed a petition urging Change to drop them -- using a competitor site called MoveOn.org which is nonprofit.

But not everyone thinks the ban is a good or fair idea.  Stand's Juan Jose Gonzelez describes Change's decision as a hypocritical overreaction to pressure that disrespects parents (Censorship of parent voice in Chicago).  Whether you agree with Stand or StudentsFirst or not, what do you think about them being denied access to Change.org?

Comments

[Mary]

The grounds for ejecting Students First was that they used the change.org site fraudulently. They've been running "teacher support" and "stop bullying" petitions, to ensnare "members" and inflate their membership rosters for PR purposes.

They even bagged Diane Ravitch.
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/21/more-about-change-org-and-rhee/#comments

You mention, "apparently under pressure from teachers unions and others." It's like the voice box on old Chatty Cathy dolls. There was a set of stock phrases, and anytime anybody pulled a string, the dolls would all say them in random order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatty_Cathy
They're collectors items now.

[Sarah]

It's always been my understanding that online petitions aren't taken seriously anyway because you don't have to prove that you are a legal voter in order to sign one.