Does the Internet increase the effectiveness of Activism?

In this blog, I will define activism as individual acts such as letter-writing, phone-calling and participation in gatherings of protest. I also include giving money to groups for causes in order to have lobbying power and to stay informed.

In 1992, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and took a year off from school. I got a job canvassing for an environmental group called, “Clean Water Action.” I can still recite the 4 sentences that I said at every door that I knocked on (when they opened it anyway). Every weekday afternoon, we would meet at our office in the Tenderloin (depressed neighborhood in SF) to practice our talking points in pairs. I learned to shake my head up and down and make sure that sentences did not end up in pitch like a question. Then we would pile into vans to go knocking and ringing bells in neighborhoods all over the Bay Area, in the city and suburbs. Our quota every night was $120. Sometimes this happened with one simple check (only $10 a month!). Most often, it was the result of $5 and $10 and change buckets emptied out. We were gathering our membership base, getting signatures, and asking people to write letters about issues to protect wetlands in California (from developments like the ones we were often canvassing in....). We would ask people to please write letters (about bills in Congress) and then leave them outside their doors and we would pick them up at the end of the night. I met about 40 people a night.

I looked them up online and found out, they are still doing this work - in fact, there is a video all about why you should join their canvass team.

I think that people join groups such as Clean Water Action(CWA) because they do want to be informed and to hold politicians accountable. These groups gain political leverage by lobbying congress with a membership base in numbers to back them up. Letter-writing campaigns and phone calls do get tallied in offices in DC. The impact of these public campaigns varies, but I know that some of the legislation efforts in California to protect wetlands did come about from CWA and other groups efforts. I don’t think that the Internet and mobile technology change the impact of groups such as CWA in significant ways. People aren’t all of a sudden going to join because it’s easier online. The groups still have to do the face to face grassroots exchanges to build a strong base that can make a large enough membership to have some power in its lobbying efforts. In fact, CWA canvassers still gather most of the revenue (about $10.5 million out of 10.8 in 2008). The network of environmental groups hasn’t significantly altered how governments are making policies about environmental regulations of the private sector. There have been some steps, but not big ones, and I’m not sure if any of them are because of the Internet and mobile technology. Maybe messages got out faster, but I don’t think that speed helps people to organize more effective issue campaigns.

I know that this example is very different from the more urgent organization of protest groups mentioned in our readings. However, I think that all activism does have to start in face to face settings in order for them to have any true long-term significance and effect.