Friday, November 5, 2010

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.

3 comments:

  1. I do agree that people stand to be more invested in something if recruited in a face-to-face effort. However, you can't deny that new media has influence in the places that canvassers for organizations like Clean Water Action don't make it too.

    Grassroots efforts take a good deal longer to implement change, because they're largely run by an insular network of activists that don't have a good deal of professional sway within the institution that controls change. However, with the help of new media like the internet, I believe these groups only stand to benefit because it extends their reach and their message to limits they may never know.

    You never know who will stumble on a website and what will catch their attention, but the internet gives a lot of more freedom to experiment with that than a canvasser who can only try out different techniques on around 40 people who answer their doors on any given day.

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  2. Willow, you and I both know that this not a knock at you, but if you were to knock on my door and ask me to join something, I am probably not going to be entirely receptive. I think of it as a similar situation to walking into a clothing store and the clerks swarming on you whenever you walk in (to the point that I now PRETEND to be talking on my phone when I walk in just so they don't bother me). I don't like things pushed on me. Perhaps this is because I am proactive enough that if I want to join a cause, or in the case of the store, ask for help, I will.

    But don't sell the internet short just yet. For example, one of the factors that puts me off from the door-to-door selling is that you are invading my limited free time. If you sent me an e-mail, or any other means of social media, I could deal with it when I am ready--not when you are there. So I actually do think that social activism could increase with the internet, only because it allows the flexibility of one doing it on their own schedule, not that of someone else.

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  3. I understand about not giving at the door, but at the same time, having experienced it for 6 months, the number of people who were receptive, even if only for signing a petition, was surprisingly the majority on most nights. And looking at the statistics of how much money is raised that way proves that more people give in that format for that group.

    However, I don't think that this means that new media outreach is not significant. I just think that it has to follow personal interaction and connection to a group or individual and the cause they are working on.

    I won't give to a group unless I do research about them online. But, if some college student comes to my door enthusiastic about activism and organizing, I'll definitely give at least a small contribution as encouragement for their individual efforts because I think it is so vital that community efforts toward lobbying don't get swept away. And I do believe that the online presence may actually help the canvassers because the people can just go look the group up online right away. I used to be invited into people's homes for meals and sometimes just long conversations, and we would talk at length about the issues they were concerned about. The group ACORN has an approach that I really like where they go into a community and ask what that community wants and then they help the community organize (projects like making more green spaces, river clean-up, etc.)

    I think what I came away with is that a lot of people are not proactive because they are so tired and they actually appreciated our work of coming out to talk about issues and to help people write letters to hold elected officials accountable to their communities. While there were people who obviously didn't want to be bothered, I understood and we were not supposed to be pushy. I think it probably depends on the style of the canvasser and the type of group.
    I know the internet and texting makes things easier, but I also think that it doesn't necessarily translate into more activism.

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