Andrew Poppin in the article "Second Life Targets Existing Branded Communities" on Corante.com makes some interesting comments about how SL could be mobilized for political organizing:
Imagine the 699,000 of 700,000 DailyKos political blogging community members who will NOT make it to next year’s YearlyKos conference
in Chicago being able to "attend" online side by side with other
virtual attendees, complete with live streaming video of speakers and
somewhat analogous social interaction opportunities to those at the
conference, all without having to spend any money or travel time to get
to the conference…Imagine a dark horse political candidate with a virtual campaign
headquarters in which campaign volunteers can collaborate regardless of
geographic location and be trained personally by the avatars of real
campaign staff, and where the candidate can conduct a virtual
whistlestop tour to test new stump speeches and conversations with
highly educated, affluent, and socially networked focus groups (the
average age of a Second Life "resident" is 32).
Fascinating scenarios. But first we’ve got to deal with scaling issues, and other problems with throwing large- or even medium-scale Second Life events.