[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Palestine solidarity from an unlikely source

[Patrick Bond]

(A former Joburg-based cooperante, comrade Zach was.)

What Does Web 2.0 Have to do With Gaza?

SAMAR , News Feature, Zachary Wales, Posted: Jan 14, 2009

Corporal Carl Larson is a 30-something Iraq war veteran (Charlie 
Company, 54th Engineers) who lives in a working class suburb of Seattle. 
He has a dry and matter-of-fact demeanor that tells you he is not easily 
impressed or excited. But there's an infectious twinkle in his eye when 
he talks about the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.

"In Iraq during the initial war I blew up a lot of arms caches, guarded 
a lot of prisoners, manned a lot of checkpoints," Larson recalled when I 
asked what drew him to the issue. "But I talked to a lot of Iraqis and 
learned that maybe there were a few holes in our foreign policy."

It was April 2008, and I was on a 20-state tour promoting a campaign for 
the Washington, DC-based American Association for Palestinian Equal 
Rights (AAPER). Prior to my arrival, I had contacted several people in 
Seattle, including a friend, hoping to find someone who could connect me 
with grassroots activity there.

Larson was that connector.

He picked me up from the airport in a rickety pickup truck, and within 
10 minutes had tasked me with photographing downtown street corners 
where a demonstration against a pro-Israeli occupation group was 
planned. In the next 12 hours, I would meet, among others, Adam 
Horowitz, from the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia; 
Eitan Bronstein, director of the progressive Israeli group Zochrot; 
Muhammad Jaradat, co-founder of the Badil Resource Center in Palestine; 
and an academic and grassroots organizer from Hawaii. These were all 
people I had intended to meet for months, and I never expected to find 
them there. Had I remained with Larson in Seattle another week, I would 
have met writers Norman Finkelstein and Ali Abunimah ahead of my own 
schedule.

None of this happened because Larson is a formal community leader, 
although everyone in Seattle, Olympia and Portland, Oregon knows him in 
one way or another. And it wasn't because I had known Larson previously, 
which I hadn't. Nor was it merely because Larson is concerned about 
peace, justice and U.S. foreign policy.

It happened because Larson is a social mechanic. A copper wire in the 
world of grassroots activity. I didn't stay with him and his wife, Kate 
- a gentle-natured Czech woman with a proclivity for techno music - 
because I hate hotels, I did so because I had chanced upon the perfect 
connector. If I stayed close to this guy, I would learn something.

At this point in the article, you're beginning to wonder what Larson has 
to do with Web 2.0 strategies and the crisis in Gaza. I lead with this 
anecdote because online organizing is nebulous and vague, even for those 
who practice it, and analogies are helpful: Larson is the human version 
of an exemplary online campaign.

More on him soon.

Enter Gaza

Ever since late December when Israel began bombing Gaza, the internet 
has come alive with activity over how to contact elected officials or 
donate to humanitarian relief. Organizations like American Near East 
Refugee Aid (ANERA), the United Palestinian Appeal (UPA), JStreet, 
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli 
Occupation have inhabited and maneuvered in these spaces like never before.

And since Israel barred all journalists from entering Gaza, the media 
and public have largely relied on non-traditional sources for 
information about the growing crisis. Traffic to the online magazine 
Electronic Intifada (EI) - whose contributions come from journalists, 
academics, humanitarian workers and activists on a pro-bono basis - has 
more than doubled in two weeks. On December 27, an Al-Jazeera 
correspondent called yours truly to ask for humanitarian contacts in 
Gaza, knowing I was in touch with the EI community.

The story in Gaza itself is a moving target. Civilian mortality rates 
change hourly. The outrage of Israel blowing up a mosque is soon topped 
by that of a school. The Orwellian PR campaigns of Foreign Minister 
Tzipi Livni and the Israel Project can't keep up with their own 
military's actions. Even Jon Stewart is pressing the bullshit button.

But it's not just the story that can't be nailed down, it's the story's 
consumption. You email me a Daily Show clip or Sky News video footage 
from Gaza, and I email it to my friends and family, post it to my 
Facebook profile, comment on it in my Twitter "micro-blog," "dig it" 
through my Digg account, add it to my Youtube favorites, and share it on 
my Facebook fundraising Cause whose charitable beneficiary is the UPA. 
Each step multiplies the consumption of that initial media item by 
untold exponents, and I did it in less than a minute. This is the 
phenomenon of social media.

How many times have you had that conversation with your parents about 
how journalism has gone to hell, replaced by the chaos of blogs and 
social networking sites? If you nodded along respectfully, thinking that 
something was wrong, then you were right.

What we're seeing with this era is the triumph of journalism. It used to 
be that the story began and ended with a piece in the New York Times. 
Today news is valued as much by the action it inspires as the thought it 
provokes.

Welcome to the echo chamber that is Web 2.0-conomics.

You had me at hello, but

Web 2.0 is a term that misleadingly suggests a new version of the Web, 
when, in fact, it refers to the dynamic Web you know and love, complete 
with sites like Facebook, Youtube, Travelocity and Craigslist. The term 
was hatched from the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference of 2004, where 
people started conceiving of a new era, post 2001 dot-com bubble burst.

Not to worry, the term still retains pomo chic.

When people talk Web 2.0 strategies, they're referring to the 
"architecture of participation" and "network effects" created by the 
competing sources and action pathways of online content. A less fancy 
term for it is the echo chamber effect. And an even lesser fancier way 
to understand it is the way you might understand a conversation.

For instance, what happens when I walk into a room full of rich 
environmentalists, announce that I have a solution for global warming, 
leave my business cards on the table and split? I'm not Al Gore, so I'd 
be lucky to get one phone call.

Now suppose I do all of the above, but hang around for a 2-hour Q&A, 
hashing out my plan and making arguments that hold up to scrutiny. Does 
this help my case? Might I acquire contacts for my email list and 
potentially appeal for donations? In theory, yes, but only because I was 
there for the conversation.

So if the theory is that simple, then all we need to know about are the 
tools and strategy that make it all happen.

This was at the front of my mind when I attended the New Organizing 
Institute's (NOI) Washington, DC Organizers' Summit last July. NOI is a 
non-profit organization that grew out of the internet successes of John 
Kerry's 2004 Presidential Campaign. Its Organizing Summits are held 
throughout the country and feature non-profit gurus from groups like 
MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote and M+R Strategic Services. At NOI summits, 
geek isn't chic, it's totally sexy, and I've never felt as humbled by my 
non-profit peers as I did by the attendants at that conference.

Among these non-profit X-Men was Michael Crawford, a known blogger and 
LGBT neo-lobbyist, who Clark Kents it at Public Citizen. Crawford caught 
my attention because I noticed him asking the same question to everyone 
he met: "What do you like about the conference so far?" to which people 
quite often replied, "I'm learning a few new things, but I mostly just 
find it affirming."

I spoke with Crawford later that day, and we both found this somewhat 
disappointing. We came here for new ideas, not affirmations. But then 
something dawned on us. There is no such thing as a definitive expert in 
Web 2.0 strategy. There are only best - and better - practices. If you 
do them, you know them, and if you don't know them, you're not doing them.

More importantly, if you're doing them, you inevitably learn more as you go.

The Culture War

Last July, I was sitting in a cafe with Cecilie Surasky, JVP's 
Communications Director, for a non-profit therapy session while she was 
briefly in town from Berkeley. Since attending the NOI summit, I was 
overcome with the Cassandra complex: The World Wide Web had endless 
possibilities but my superiors wouldn't listen.

"You know what it is," Surasky said. "People treat Israel-Palestine as a 
foreign conflict, and not as the domestic culture war that it is. That 
could be why they're not listening to you or using the tools they should 
be using."

Among Surasky's brilliant contributions to this culture war is a blog 
called Muzzlewatch.org whose subheading reads, "Tracking efforts to 
stifle open debate about U.S. foreign policy." (At the time this article 
went to press, Muzzlewatch's homepage featured John Stewart's "Gaza 
Strip Maul" - the essence of cultural warfare.) Through the art of 
exposure - which oftentimes merely requires publicizing a story from the 
Israeli newspaper Haaretz - and timing, Surasky has managed to tear down 
bogus muzzle campaigns around the country.

A notable example was in 2007, when Muzzlewatch, through a tireless 
censure and letter writing campaign, turned the tables on right-wing 
Jewish groups that attempted to have South African Archbishop Desmond 
Tutu barred from speaking at St. Thomas University in Minnesota. In an 
open letter, Muzzlewatch effectively invented a new crime -- 
anti-Semitism fraud:

Ultimately, groups like Minnesota's JCRC (Jewish Community Relations 
Council), the right wing fringe group Zionist Organization of America, 
and the increasingly embarrassing Anti-Defamation League, who have all 
attacked Tutu for his criticism of Israeli policies, will face the 
consequences of smearing Tutu - a hero to millions and leader of a 
movement that was known for the massively disproportionate involvement 
of numerous South African Jews.

If exposure and timing are key elements in waging a culture war, few 
have handled this more brilliantly than JStreet, the new progressive 
Jewish lobby that is changing what it means to be pro-Israel: supporting 
diplomacy and multilateral solutions over military action. At the end of 
eight disastrous years of Bush Doctrine, the organization's timing 
couldn't be better. JStreet, of course, doesn't espouse the most daring 
political views in this culture war - like a single, democratic state 
for Israelis and Palestinians - but they have mastered the most 
enterprising techniques in the field.

One of JStreet's first targets was John Hagee, the self-styled 
"Christian Zionist" and mega-church evangelist from Texas who founded 
Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Academically, Hagee's affinity for 
Israel and end-of-times eschatology is a stage for the absurd.

But politically, Hagee works. CUFI draws thousands of Christian 
fundamentalists to its annual conferences and has become the great "Yes, 
but" pragmatic ally of the right-wing American-Israel Public Affairs 
Committee.

In addressing Hagee, JStreet avoided the academic argument altogether. 
Rather, they hit the Hagee machine early and often through 
video-embedded email campaigns revealing the skeletons in Hagee's 
closet: homophobic pronouncements, apologetic statements about Hitler 
and the Holocaust - all matters that resonate viscerally and immediately 
with Jewish Americans, a largely liberal constituency.

According to Isaac Luria, JStreet's online director, the efforts yielded 
"crazy good press, just absolutely wall to wall." Even Senator Joseph 
Lieberman, the born-again hawk from Connecticut, was forced to publicly 
acknowledge Hagee's toxicity.

Another matter owing to JStreet's success is the deliberation that went 
into its formation. Its founders, who include Morton Halperin, remain 
doggedly tight-lipped as they raised about $1.5 million to launch the 
new project.

Those who know non-profits know that strategic staffing is one of the 
most critical building blocks in the industry. Perhaps borrowing from 
the NOI legacy (recall, this preceded Obama's online revolution), 
JStreet prioritized hiring an online director third after its executive 
director and chief of staff.

 From the perspective of people like this correspondent, who listened 
closely to JStreet's pre-existent rumblings, the debut of their website 
elicited a collective, "Are you serious?" Bereft of activist porn 
imagery like Israeli tanks and concrete walls, the three-tone, Sesame 
Street-like design was kind of unbelievable. It was the cheap spirit 
T-shirt of some high-school cheerleading squad. But aside from its 
fool-proof navigability, and wildly sophisticated software, there was 
more genius than met the eye.

"I just don't like those cluttered websites that are busy with too much 
information," commented Luria. "If you think about it, we get about 500 
visits to our site per day, and we have about 100,000 people in our 
email list. All of our activity happens in the emails, while the site is 
just a repository."

Online directors are terribly fun to talk to. They scheme and conspire, 
constantly. My favorite is ANERA's Michael Austin, who used to work at 
the Human Rights Campaign. In a few excitedly nerdy observations, Austin 
once convinced me to restructure AAPER's entire campaign website. "It's 
all about the ladder of progression," he said, seemingly talking to the 
website. "Don't make me sign in or you'll lose me. When I take one 
action, don't leave me hanging - give me things to do."

Austin is right. It's his job to be right about these things. His advice 
reflects the principles that one sees in JStreet's email campaigns: The 
text has a graduated format, leading with basic points and take-action 
links. Next is a paragraph that elaborates on the basic points, followed 
by another take-action link. Then comes a personal anecdote, something 
about when Luria spent a summer on a kibbutz blah blah blah. Closing 
salutations, a blurb with JStreet's mission, how to join them on 
Facebook, and so on.

If you click on a JStreet take-action link, you're brought to a screen 
with a form letter that you can edit and send to an elected official, 
editor or media producer. After you send that letter, you're asked to 
spread the word. Throughout the process, which never really ends, 
JStreet collects email addresses and builds its list, increasing its 
power in the culture war.

When I spoke with Luria, he mentioned a tricky new device that would 
connect people's phones directly to their members of Congress and 
Senators. A few hours later, it arrived in my inbox.

Connecting the dot.org's

Bashir Abu-Manneh is a Palestinian from Israel who teaches English 
Literature at Barnard College in New York City. On the day that Israel 
launched its ground strike on Gaza, he published a moving article 
stating that "[m]ass Palestinian and Arab mobilization and organization 
is the only way forward."

I asked Abu-Manneh what he thought needed to be done to counter the 
statements of powerlessness that permeate this movement.

"Organization from below is essential, using all sorts of instruments, 
including the internet," said Abu-Manneh. "But it's also about 
formulating strategies that are effective and that can work. For 
example, does the boycott work? How can it be made to work effectively? 
How de we tell existing organizations about what's going on, like unions 
and grassroots?"

Abu-Manneh's words made me reflect on my first epiphany about 
Israel-Palestine. I was a U.S. news correspondent in South Africa, and 
it was 2002, a year when people there were talking about two things: the 
Israeli massacre in Jenin, and the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. The 
movement was led by yesteryear's anti-apartheid heroes, like Archbishop 
Tutu and Dennis Brutus, and the toy-toying masses that filled the 
streets were youth from places like Soweto, Alexandra and Khayelitsha.

I used to think that if only South Africans spoke out about the 
parallels between the Israeli occupation and apartheid; if only 
Palestinian non-violent resistance got some press; if only progressive 
Jewish Americans and Israelis were heard; if only a boycott, divestment 
and sanctions campaign were launched...

But all of these things happened. In fact, hybrids of these things have 
happened and continue happening.

This is where people need to ask questions like Abu-Manneh's, and take a 
few notes from JStreet, ANERA, MoveOn.org and, of course, Obama. And it 
wouldn't be fair to say they are not. The U.S. Campaign to End the 
Israeli Occupation, or U.S. Campaign, which long ago adopted 
anti-Apartheid era tactics like boycott and labor union outreach, has 
recently incorporated best practices into their email campaigns, using 
open letters, online fact sheets and platforms like change.gov to 
contact Congress. However, their emails still lack the "ladder of 
progression" sensibility that is needed.

Smaller, local groups like Adallah-NY have made headway in the boycott 
movement, getting under the skin of Lev Leviev, the American diamond 
magnet who develops illegal settlements in the West Bank, not to mention 
some shady gentrification settlements in New York. Adallah-NY has 
discovered the power of Youtube, but could do much more with a savvy 
Michael Austin or Isaac Luria behind the scenes.

On the humanitarian front, the scrappy, charismatic staff at UPA has 
popped up all over Facebook, marketing itself through various Facebook 
groups and - this part is unprecedented - marathons. The kind people run.

Last October, UPA saw over $30,000 roll in from people who ran the 
Baltimore and Washington Marine Corps Marathons under the banner of 
Iqraa (Arabic for "read"). Thanks to Facebook's Cause function that 
allows anyone to choose UPA as a charitable beneficiary, the 
organization became the recipient of multiple Iqraa-inspired marathon 
runners around the world, including a two-person marathon between 
Ramallah and Nablus in the occupied West Bank (they blogged about it 
here: http://www.toomanyspoons.org).

And it wasn't for a lack of courage that those runners, Gergey Pasztor 
of Switzerland and Gerard Horton of Australia, raised only $2,000 for 
UPA. They deserved a proper publicity campaign.

Superhuman superconnectors

"You know, we're still a fringe movement," Larson told me last Monday 
evening over the phone. He had just gotten out of a night school class - 
he's going back for his bachelors at Washington University - and was 
filling me in on the U.S. Campaign's plan to make him a regional 
representative. "This is why I study marketing, not social organizing."

Last July, the U.S. Campaign somehow caught wind of the superhuman force 
that is Carl Larson, and flew him to Washington, DC for their annual 
convention. Now they're courting him to take on a regional leadership role.

The effort is a revival of one that U.S. Campaign National Advocacy 
Director, Josh Ruebner, instigated years ago, where designated 
"Congressional District Coordinators" would effectively act as 
autonomous regional executives.

"Did you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point?" Ruebner asked me 
one day in 2007 when we were discussing his CDC model. "Once you reach a 
critical mass, things become unmanageable, and the leadership needs to 
be distributed and granted autonomy. That was the idea of the CDCs, 
anyway, we just didn't have the tools to sustain it."

Perhaps now they do, if their increasing online sophistication is 
anything to go by. However, their website is still fairly noisy, and one 
tends to get lost in its navigation. JStreet, in contrast, scarcely has 
the ground operation to match its online arsenal, although Luria alluded 
to future plans to build one.

Regardless of who does what, and when, the key to change lies in 
bridging the digital divide. This means fighting the culture war online, 
and moving people to action offline. The non-profits that excel in 2009 
will have online directors at their offices, and superhuman 
superconnectors - like Larson - in the field.

There have also been calls to bridge the humanitarian-advocacy divide, 
such as Just Vision's Ronit Avni, who paired take-action links to 
JStreet and UPA in a recent email campaign.

"We know the leaders of these two organizations and thought they were 
worthy of mention," said Avni. "But we recognize that our supporters are 
based in multiple countries and have varying perspectives on the issue, 
so we encouraged them first to do what they regarded as ethical, but not 
to remain passive."

Avni was wise to make this call. For as long as we stand by passive or 
powerless, Gaza will burn, and all we can do is watch.