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The most recent skirmish on the Patriot Act reauthorization battle ended badly for civil liberties. Despite passionate speeches all around in the Senate Judiciary Committee public hearings and classified briefings, in the end, only Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Specter stood up for the Constitution. As Marcy Wheeler says, we got rolled.
At the same time, though, the social network activism I discussed in Can Skittles fix the Patriot Act? and on the Get FISA Right blog highlights the opportunity to broaden and recharge the civil liberties community.
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Care2, OFA and other social network sites:
- provide a way to engage with Millennials and other diverse groups of people who care a lot about the Patriot Act — but are not currently involved with civil liberties activism.
- make it easy for people to let their politicians know their feelings — and recruit their friends in the process.
- allow civil liberties organizations to get beyond the media blackout and provide accurate information to everybody.
- complement in-person local campaigns like People’s Campaign for the Constitution’s local ordinances and good ol’ fashioned letters-to-the-editor
It’s a powerful narrative. Social network sites epitomize the wave of the future, Obama’s strength in 2008, and youth. They’re overwhelmingly in favor of civil liberties. And civil liberties supporters are getting organized there. As we continue to make progress, every political consultant and politician thinking about a primary or general election challenge in 2010 or 2012 will be paying attention.
Social network activism for civil liberties has made great progress so far. Some simple steps from organizations and bloggers can take things to the next level. Before getting to the suggestions, though, I’d like to discuss the diversity aspects in a little more detail.
A #diversitywin
Poll from Get FISA Right’s blog, October 2
The Get FISA Right poll above matches well with the trends described in Jessica Vascalero’s Wall Street Journal article The End of the Email Era. Social networks are now as important a communication mechanism as email. Millennials in particular are very hard to involve via email.
And the snapshot of the retweeting stream at the end of this post is a great illustration of the point Tracy Viselli and I have been hammering away on all year (1, 2, 3): Twitter is a place to engage with women, people of color, migrant rights groups, and others who are marginalized from other forms of activism.
I mean really, what activism campaign wouldn’t want to have people like @Hegemommy, @ColinCurtisKS, @desidyke, @dreamact, @votolatino, @ColinCurtisKS, @jjpolitics, and @baratunde advocating our cause to their friends and communities? Talk about a #diversitywin! They’ve all got important battles of their own, of course; but they spend so much of their time on social network sites that it’s very easy for them to tweet or share something and help out when they have a few seconds.
And yet:
- Civil liberties organizations’ action alerts today invariably push people towards email- and phone-based feedback to legislators — ignoring social networks.
- The "big blogs" of the "progressive blogosphere", even when covering issues sympathetically, virtually never include discussions of social network activism**
- Activism toolkits underplay, or even leave out, social network approaches
In some ways, this isn’t surprising. There are huge generational differences in attitudes towards social network sites — and most progressive bloggers and professional civil libertarians are over 30. And from a privacy perspective, Facebook and other sites are creepy panoptic environments that institutionalize tracking and behavioral targeting. So it’s not a matter of bad intent.
Still, the message to Millennials and others who hang out on social networks is clear: "we don’t care enough about your involvement to reach out to you on your terms."
The #1 recommendation from the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy "birds of a feather" session on New Strategies for Fighting FISA and the Patriot Act was to build a broad-based coalition — including students and migrant rights groups amongst others. And not to sound like a broken record or anything, but: social network sites provide a unique opportunity to engage with diverse audiences.
Taking it to the next level
Discussions of the Patriot Act on Twitter, via Twazzup
Organizations like ACLU, EFF, and the Cato Institute are becoming increasingly effective at using social network sites. Combined with Get FISA Right and our allies, we have solid presences on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Organizing for America, Care2, Change.org, and in the progressive blogosphere.
The challenge now is to leverage this strength and turn it to action. Here are a few suggestions to kick off the discussion.
- for civil liberties organizations, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, information in action alerts could broaden reach significantly. Providing social network-specific ways of contacting politicians (act.ly, a Facebook app, etc.) would similarly get a lot more people involved.
- progressive and libertarian bloggers and new media should include links to activism information when they cover the story.
- Twitter is a particularly attractive place for civil liberties activism right now. Civil liberties organizations and bloggers should get in the habit of using the #patriotact hashtag; retweeting important information and action alerts;taking advantage of technologies like Twazzup, act.ly, and 2Gov; and engaging with the people who show interest.
- as Chip Pitts, and Sarah Burris pointed out in comments on an earlier draft of this essay, social network activism is an ideal complement for and local in-person organizing. Somebody needs to take the lead on putting this all together — and then replicating it in all 50 states.
- Get FISA Right’s online and phone organizing meetings involving social network activists, bloggers, and non-partisan organizations have led to sharing value information and creating and deepening connections. More of this, please!
The Patriot Act battle’s far from over. Representatives Conyers, Nadler, and Scott have introduced some much stronger Patriot Act reform legislation in the House, and there’s still the floor debate the Senate. If you look at the votes from 2008 and the seats that have changed hands since then, we have a chance to win this one if we get organized.
And if we get really organized, well, there are at least a handful of seats where the civil liberties vote could make the difference in a primary or general election: Harman, Specter, Reid, Feinstein, Leiberman …. So our leverage will only increase.
Social network activism has proved very successful for civil liberties (Strange Bedfellows, Get FISA Right) and other causes (Jena, Join the Impact, the DREAM Act, Obama).
Now’s the time to take things to the next level.
jon
Also posted on Pam’s House Blend
A #diversitywin, as we say on Twitter
5 Comments
Thanks to Harry, Colin, Tracy, Jessica, Ari, Chip, Jen, Doreen, Kyle, Sarah, and Deborah for feedback on the previous drafts. Thanks to Pam, Baratunde, Ari, Tracy, Maegan, Gloria, Harry, Cheryl, Jen, Shireen, Willow, Prerna, Mo, Gina, Cynthia, Jason, Rebecca, Lillie, Deborah and many others for all the discussions about social networks and diversity over the last year. I see the latest activism as dramatic evidence supporting the theories we’ve discussed so many times. At some point people will listen to us :-)
While I’m at it, thanks as always to the Get FISA Right members and our allies for the hard work. I honestly believe we’re making progress! Thanks to Sarah in Global Comment, Maegan on Wilshire and Washington, Julian at Cato and everywhere else, Marcy at emptywheel, Jessica and Tracy on Care2, Rebecca, Harry, the various Jims, and all the others who covered the activism and the issues; and to Kevin, Michelle, Mandy, Chip, and all the other folks from “the coalition” who worked with and linked to us
This is likely to be my last activism post for a while, as I focus on my startup Qworky. Thanks to Pam and Jason for giving me the opportunity to explore these ideas over the last year on Pam’s House Blend and The Seminal! And a tip of the hat to Join the Impact and the “Stonewall 2.0″ movement, the DREAM Activists, Color of Change, and the #iranelection protestors for showing what’s possible … and most of all to Deborah for the original vision of the transformative power of social network activism for civil liberties.
Thank you, Jon, for shedding some much-needed light on the vast potential of social media. It’s a topic I hope we cover a lot more here on The Seminal. Good luck on your new endeavour!
As one of those non-Millennial privacy advocates, I admit that I still have a hard time understanding the Millennial mindset — including the comfort with radically more transparency and strong tendencies toward consensus — even while I greatly appreciate and admire aspects of the mindset. Hence, I am on Facebook but have not yet succumbed to Twitter.
But there is no doubt that it is the global future and that, increasingly, that future is here. I am sure that human evolution will continue to evolve in that direction, with even greater transparency and technological connectedness. So if we want to preserve what is good about the old approach — human rights values of autonomy, diversity, empowerment, and equal dignity that have been enshrined in so many foundational documents, ranging from the US Bill of Rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — we must do a better job of furthering an updated and rich understanding of their continued relevance for this new era.
The practical relevance of such values persists: the downside of the Millennial mindset is excessive deference to authority, an attitude forged in the crucible of 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks and the responses thereto in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all over the world. Yet without the classic human rights values of liberty and equality, privacy and dignity for all — so tragically sacrificed to such a significant extent worldwide in the counterterror response — we so easily end up stumbling into a stultifying, oppressive, and chilling system like an updated, supercomputer-powered version of the former East Germany or Burma/Myanmar today. And that is not good for anyone other than the top officials and their minions — as even some leaders in China realize as it gradually (too gradually) evolves toward a greater embrace of the rights that have worked pretty well elsewhere.
So . . . yes! As systems of top-down control give way (or at least seem to change) to less hierarchical systems of collaboration and empowered equality in every realm — ranging from politics, to business, to society generally — we should highlight and use the contemporary social networking equivalents of the Committees of Correspondence that the Sons and Daughters of Liberty used at the time of the American Revolution.
I would just urge that we do so in ways that deeply recall, understand, and appreciate the values including autonomy, privacy (for reading and deep reflection beyond 140 characters, among other things), and self-determination as well as the crucial values of transparency, cooperation, and solidarity. And at all times, we should remember to question authority.
It is absolutely essential that we retain a healthy skepticism about both old hierarchies and even the new centers of power and authority. I would include in this not only President Obama, whose actions in this realm have been so disappointing thus far, but also the social networks themselves (and the companies running them), and even ourselves and our colleagues in the civil liberties and human rights communities. The comment from Thomas Jefferson comes to mind: In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Chip Pitts
It has been one of the great honors of my life to have been able to work with Jon on these kinds of projects. As a millenial/member of the Progressive Generation, I have felt the effects of the condescending silencing through the dismissal of my generation’s collective voice my entire life. However, taking part in campaigns that utilize these tools has been a revelation for me, and I shudder to think what will happen when the rest of my generation—and the generations after—learn how they too can use their preferred communication systems to amplify their voices and launch their opinions into the public sphere.
Yet the Progressive Generation is certainly not the only demographic capable of taking advantage of the path Jon discusses for the future of activism:
Quite fortunately for us all, engagement with these otherwise marginalized groups not only helps our causes, helps our country achieve its ideals, but it also helps us become better as individuals though the greater diversity of thought through our engagement.
On a personal level, I know that I could never have discovered, much less engaged with, such a unique thinker as Jon without these tools—nor other diverse thinkers such as Tracy Viscelli, Shireen Mitchell, Baratunde Thurston, Julian Sanchez, Sarah Burris, etc. On a more general level, I have much more hope for our country by recognizing that vastly different kinds of people can engage in this manner as well!
For the now, diversity of demographics and thought alike acts as a phenomenal boon to an issue such as civil liberties that cuts across so many of the typical divides. For tomorrow, we must use such campaigns as a model not only for the future of activism in this country, but for the future of communication—-one which promotes the dissipation of the divisions between and fosters a world in which more and more begin judging others only based on their personal worth and character!
Well the social networks themselves stifle getting out the word with captcha and other methods of limiting getting the word out. How about beginning with social networks and even community blogs to stop persecuting people who stay on message and message as many people as they can and get rid of messaging limits and friend limits.
Myspace, facebook, Daily Kos and others don’t like liberal activists to reach many people by themselves and impose these friend request limits per day and other messaging limits.
What about civil liberties on privately owned networks and community blogs open to the public?