What are we fighting for?

This post’s title is not meant to be absurdly philosophical. I asked myself this question today as I mired through hundreds of foundation profiles to find grant opportunities for PAIR. I do love my job. But working on a Sunday is less than ideal, and working with the fundraising part of my job is not my favorite part. It was moments like today that I wonder why all of us working in social change do what we do and what gets us through the less glamorous and enjoyable parts of our work.

I have been trying to follow some of the news coverage of the backlash to the gay marriage bans passed in three states. I think the measures’ success in California, Arizona, and Florida took everyone by surprise for how much progress still needs to be made. The use of democracy as a tool to curtail rights only makes it more pernicious. Blaming minorities for passage of these ballot measures only obscures the real problems of ignorance and discrimination. Using the best charm offensive may help reduce ignorance on an interpersonal level, but changes on an institutional level will require a different strategy.

So I was really inspired to read Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish as he captured photos and readers’ account of the protests this Saturday through The View From Your Protest. Here in Houston, about 600 people gathered together in support. It’s incredible to hear about so many people fighting for something because it is the right thing to do; it makes all the frustrating moments worth the struggle.

Gen Y leadership on social change is more crucial than ever

It has become blatantly clear that Millennials have a lot of responsibility at their feet for cleaning up the current mess that the world is in. It certainly is not everyday that you see almost daily failures of financial institutions that have been around for over 100 years. While these major headlines are shocking, it is the changes at the local level where the human impact is most apparent and greatest: the failure of small business and families’ decisions to cut back on medical care.

If you are looking at my hometown of Houston, the economic depression is compounded by the lingering effects of Hurricane Ike. You would think that we would have learned from the lessons of Hurricane Katrina: safer mandatory evacuations, rapid restoration of critical services, and faster disaster recovery to get affected families back to normal as soon as possible. Instead, many of the victims of Hurricane Ike have found themselves ignored by the very institutions that are supposed to assist them. Maybe Generation Y is right to be suspicious of institutions’ ability to effect social change.

Optimists may prefer to make social change the focus of their career, electing to work within established institutions to change them from the inside outward. Others try to find their own way to be the change they want to see in the world whether through digital media or the next great idea to help the most people.

Social movements 2.0

flickr photo courtesy of racoles

The jury is still out on the potential that social media has to facilitate social change. I would argue its widespread prevalence is a major shift in itself at least in person-to-person interaction. I wondered what the world would look like if all of these individual interactions coordinated as a major social movement, linking online and offline activity.

The old way that social movements used to progress: emerge–>coalesce–>bureaucratize–>outcome–>decline

Social media definitely has the possibility to revolutionize this progression, making participation more democratic. I think the new movements start globally and move locally rather than the opposite in the past. There are countless wonderful posts describing what social media does best, so there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel. Here’s what I see as some of the defining characteristics of social media’s effect on social movements.

1) Linkages between offline and online activity are essential.

Armchair activism will not lead to substantive, sustainable change. The danger in social media is that people can mistake these tools as an end, rather than a means to an end. Rather than eliminating face-to-face interaction, social media enables and facilitates communities united behind that may not have otherwise formed, or may have been weaker for lack of social media.

• Meetup can help coordinate those initial meetings to formulate an action plan or plan events to gain more supporters in a given locality.
• If your cause starts after a physical meeting, keep in touch by creating your own online social network with Ning and create an online hub to recruit supporters and share news and insights.
• If your supporters are not all in the same city, which of course is virtually every online community, dopplr will allow you to let people know when you are in town.
• Don’t forget that call to action while you are online; Social Action’s newest product, the DonorsChoose plugin, allows you to have suggested steps for action alongside your WordPress blog post.

2) Technology facilitates social change by reducing costs of resource mobilization.

Resource mobilization is what allows your newly formed group of supporters to organize your actions into a single coherent message targeted to the individuals and institutions that you are hoping to influence. Usually people think of money, when they see resources but there are a number of other resources related to significant actions including recruitment, advocacy, raising awareness, communication and publicity. One of the best things that social media does is reducing the monetary costs, given that many of the services are free. It also saves resource-poor groups and organizations from things like high printing costs.

• Need to find a expert and/or mentor? LinkedIn connects professionals worldwide and may help find your cause’s version of a celebrity advocate.
• Online fundraising? Awareness raising? Showing off your online networking profiles? Sprout allows you to build mini-sites, widgets, etc. to embed on you Web site, blog and several popular social networking sites.
• Social networks for change such as Care2, change.org, and TakingITGlobal allow people around the world to find out about your cause. Social Actions aggregates several of these platforms together, making it easy for organizations to publicize their causes and calls to action.

3) Supporters have the ability to tell and publicize their cause’s stories, needs, and goals.

Mainstream media in the past presented a tough barrier to getting the word about your cause. Organizations usually had to relay on time-intensive means of publicity like word-of-mouth, which could be slow and impractical. Social media lowers the previously high bar to awareness raising, allowing you to tell and show the emotional side of your cause in words through blogs, audio, photos, and videos. Once your supporters are emotionally engaged, they will be more likely to become more involved in advancing the cause.

• Microblogging through Twitter gives you 140 characters to talk about anything and aids in community building. Tumblr provides the sense of Twitter with the look of a blogging interface. Posterous is like blogging for dummies, allowing you to email your entries.
• Got podcasts? Make sure to submit them to podcast search engines like the iTunes directory so the public can hear about your cause. If you want to capture insights immediately auditorially, use your mobile phone to record and publish with Utterz so people can hear what you hear.
• For those visual learners, photo and video sharing sites can show the impact of your cause in living color. With Flickr, you can share photos; YouTube and Vimeo both facilitate video sharing.

4) Social media enables greater transparency into the political process.

I wouldn’t characterize any government as being open and transparent, but there are some changes afoot that allow you a peek into the inner works of the federal government. Transparency of the political process, or at least substantial knowledge of the process, is key to help secure lasting change related to your cause. I feel that my year living in DC with several friends working on the Hill was a crash course on how the government works on a daily basis. For those who have not had this privilege, you can check out a few of the resources below.

• Social Butterfly aka Alexandra Rampy created a wonderful list of government agencies and legislators active on Twitter. Hopefully this list will grow even longer in the future. You can also check out the list of blogs and podcasts that the federal government produces.
• Learn from other activists who have worked in public policy and politics by reading wikis. Wikipedia is of course very popular, but PBWiki and Squidoo are good resources to look at as well. If it is not there yet, you can help build it!
• Along with wikis, presentations provide a resource about tips related to advocacy. SlideShare is one of the most popular sites to share presentations.