[DEBATE] : [Fwd: Social Movements 2.0]

[Peter Waterman]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Social Movements 2.0
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:16:51 -0800
From: Steve Zeltzer <Lvpsf at igc.org>
To: Waterman Peter <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>

check out www.labortech.net

Steve



http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090202/smith_costello_brecher/

Social Movements 2.0

by BRENDAN SMITH, TIM COSTELLO & JEREMY BRECHER

January 15, 2009


On September 27, 2007, the world experienced its first virtual strike.
In response to a wage dispute, IBM workers in Italy organized a picket
outside their company's "corporate campus" based in the 3-D virtual
world of Second Life. According to a report in the Guardian, workers
"marched and waved banners, gate-crashed a [virtual] staff meeting and
forced the company to close its [virtual] business center to
visitors.... The protest, by more than 9,000 workers and 1,850
supporting 'avatars' from thirty countries," included a rowdy
collection of pink triangles, "sentient" bananas and other bizarro
avatars.


While the strike was playful, it was also buttressed by careful
planning and organization. Workers set up a strike task force,
developed educational materials in three languages and held more than
twenty worker strategy meetings. The hard work paid off. According to
Christine Revkin of the UNI Global Union, which was involved in the
strike, the online protest led to new negotiations and a better deal
for the workers. Twenty days after the initial protest the Italian CEO
of IBM, Andrea Pontremoli, resigned. (Here's a video from the strike.)

Stories like this offer a glimpse into the powerful potential of the
emerging Web 2.0 world, a place where workers and others use social
networking tools to quickly reach across national and workplace
borders, outflank bosses and politicians and wield collective power.
But right now, the type of virtual solidarity seen in the IBM strike
remains more promise than reality. People are willing to sign
petitions, donate money, trade information and join in political
discussions online, but translating these activities into solidarity
built on trust and a willingness to take economic or physical risk on
another's behalf is exceedingly rare.

As a result, political action online has been largely relegated to
electoral politics and tepid humanitarianism: it's been great for
raising money for tsunami relief and mobilizing voters, but pretty
flaccid when it comes to wielding social movement power. (One
exception is organizing around highly repressive regimes, where
workers, students and others have successfully used mobile phones,
Twitter, etc. to organize escalating protests and to free jailed
activists.)

This tension around the pros and cons of online organizing has spurred
a healthy debate in the social movement community. Earlier this year
Eric Lee, the godfather of the online global labor movement, posted
"How the Internet Makes Union Organizing Harder," an article that drew
a flurry of responses. More recently community organizers in the
United States have beendebating on DailyKos the merits of an article
that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, entitled "Real Change
Happens Off-line," written by Sally Kohn, senior campaign strategist
at the Center for Community Change.

As labor activists we have been experimenting with online strategies
for more than a decade, spurred by our work in the 1990s building a
large but informal network of contingent workers, and now running
Global Labor Strategies (GLS), a resource center for the global labor
movement. We come to the problem as longtime chroniclers of social
movements interested in the underlying forces at work online, how
these forces can help or hinder social movement building, and how they
challenge existing union and social movement structures.

What's New and What's Not

Social networking is not new and not about technology. It's not about
MySpace, Facebook or YouTube; instead it's about what all of us do
every day: kindle and expand networks of friends, family, co-workers,
etc. In the political context it's about finding and building
communities of interest, linking common struggles and acting
collectively. Facebook and other online social networking tools are
just a new way for people engage in this age-old activity.

But at the same time, the online universe is not simply another place
for people to congregate, circulate a petition, debate politics or
mail out a newsletter. Nor is it simply a new technology like cable
television--merely bringing more channels into the home. Instead, the
web is increasingly looking like the invention of the printing press,
which radically changed the lives of even those who could not read, by
spurring the Protestant reformation and scientific revolution.

During the past several years, the Internet has evolved from its first
generation as a static information portal (e.g. websites) to what is
now referred to as Web 2.0, marked by the explosion of user-generated
and interactive content. According to Clay Shirky, author of Here
Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and one
of the best chroniclers of the social implications of Web 2.0, this
communications revolution promises to be the "largest increase in
human expressive capability in history." There are five reasons why
this revolutionary electronic space is especially relevant to the
future of the global social movements:


1. Group Formation: New social networking tools, ranging from Facebook
and Twitter to e-mail and listservs, make forming groups--and
hopefully social movements--much easier. Every time organizers knock
on doors, hold a community meeting or organize a protest the primary
goal is to entice individuals into group activity; they hope to
transform isolated actors with little social power into a powerful
collective force for social change. The problem is that group
formation has always been very hard to do.


What is new about tools like Facebook is that they make more varieties
of group formation possible. Now, totally on their own, millions of
people are finding others who care about the same things they do,
whether it be around oyster farming, workplace complaints or radical
politics. What the web has revealed is that there were thousands of
these latent groups that for hundreds of years were never able to
form, because it was too difficult for people to identify others with
similar interests and too difficult for them to efficiently
communicate when they did. So now even the most transient and
marginalized sectors in society can potentially form support and
sharing networks. Thousands from the homeless community, for example,
have gathered online to share their stories and swap survival
strategies, often posting from public libraries.


At their core, social movements are about group formation, and
suddenly the tools exist to make it much easier to bring people
together. In practice, we might begin by helping ordinary people
access and learn how to use these tools and enable them to uncover
their own latent groups--groups that may well not fit neatly into
narrow organizational agendas. Social movement activists might also
spend more time trafficking where people are already gathering online,
such as within the Obama social networks, and practice getting in the
middle conversations and shifting debates.


2. Scale and amplification: With a single keystroke, social movements
can now push information out to millions of people and lift up
marginalized voices into national, and even global, spheres. But scale
increasingly does not just mean trying to reach the whole world,
especially as it has become increasingly difficult to break through
the online noise. Scale is also about surgically communicating with
discrete sets of readers. At GLS, for example, rather than targeting
the global labor movement writ large, we have tried to target the
narrow subset of the global labor movement that is grappling with long-
term, strategic questions of worker and class representation in the
global economy. Two decades ago we could never have precisely and
cheaply carved out this audience.


3. Interactivity: The web is not a one-way transmission belt like
television; it's more akin to the telephone, allowing conversation,
intimacy and debate by tapping into the fundamental human desire for
self-expression and shared communication. Much of the strength of
social movement organizations lies in their ability to empower those
shut out of elite political activity to participate. With the Internet
encouraging this participatory tendency, social movements need to
approach their technology platforms as more than just a new way to
send out fliers and opinion pieces or run petition drives. They need
to build freewheeling electronic spaces where people can share, debate
and collaborate.


4. Destruction of hierarchies: Elites have long dominated the
broadcast and distribution networks, making them the primary
gatekeepers of information flow, allowing them to frame and dominate
political discourse, and decide what is and what is not news. But new
broadcast tools increasingly allow ordinary people to publish and
distribute their own news and begin redirecting information flows. The
elites are terrified of this "mass amateuration" of broadcasting. The
mass layoffs of journalists and the frantic fears of politicians who
never know when a swarm of people might go on the attack are two
recent examples of this erosion of the power of the "professional
classes."


5. Cheapness and ease of tools: Social movement organizations have
been perennially under-resourced, and with the current financial
crisis and global recession the situation will surely worsen. But with
the advent of web-enabled mobile phones and $300 computers, cutting-
edge communication tools are becoming cheaper and more powerful, and
as a result, are quickly leveling the technological playing field. In
South Africa, for example, even though Internet penetration remains at
around 10 percent, mobile phone penetration sits at 98.5 percent.

Social networking tools are also becoming easier to use. Just in the
past two years, people with little technical ability are now able to
create websites, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, etc. We're drawing
closer to the point where the majority of online tools are so simple
that technical experts are beginning to fade into the background. The
web is no longer the exclusive dominion of the young and highly
educated, and as this trend continues it will allow social movements
to cheaply and easily reach out to increasingly diverse constituencies.

What We Don't Know

These rapid changes raise more questions than they answer. Here are
eight that we've been grappling with:


1. What does it mean when individuals begin organizing outside and
without the help of traditional organizations? We do not know the
ramifications for unions, for example, if truckers increasingly come
together online to organize protests over gas prices--as they did in
April 2007--without ever attending a Teamster meeting or receiving a
house call from an organizer. Traditional worker organizations have
already been outflanked by the global economy; now they face the
challenge of workers and their allies acting collectively outside of
trade union structures. This type of online self-organization might
offer fertile ground for social movement organizations, or it might
mean traditional "brick and mortar" institutions need to rethink how
they are structured and how to position themselves in a Web 2.0 world.
Some organizations might reinvent themselves as network hubs that work
to frame and synthesize issues for diverse and fragmented
constituencies; others might begin to transform into bridging
organizations that help transfer online organizing into offline
political power.


2. It's easy and cheap for organizations to bring people together into
a swarm or smart mob, but what do you do with them then? Groups like
MoveOn have perfected how to share information, raise money and sign
petitions. But outside the electoral arena, few have been successful
in converting group interest into escalating political activity.
Because of this, people are joining and then quickly dropping out of
social networks. Labor and social movement organizations need to keep
experimenting with how to keep workers engaged and encourage online
activity, from information sharing and debate to initiating
collaboration, innovation and collective action.


3. Will offline social movement organizations be willing to cede
control as ordinary people increasingly leverage social networking
tools to channel their own activities? The destruction of hierarchies
online means that top-down organizations will face increasing pressure
from members to permit more rank-and-file debate and input. This is a
healthy process and a long time in coming. If traditional
organizations are to embrace the dynamism of the social networking
sphere and move beyond simply posting op-eds on Huffington Post
written by union presidents or NGO executive directors, they will have
to cede significant control. Organizations that resist this trend will
become increasingly irrelevant online and offline.


4. How do labor and social movement organizations address the dangers
associated with online action? The majority of online tools and spaces
are commercial ventures, and the transparent nature of the web means
that elites and bosses are always watching. Several Egyptian bloggers
were jailed last year after participating in calls for a general
strike.Facebook recently closed the account of an SEIU affiliate who
was trying to organize casino workers in Nova Scotia, Canada. As Eric
Lee told the Guardian, "Social networks in principle are excellent but
something such as Facebook, for example, can close down anything it
wants. So I think unions need to have their own tools, websites and
mail lists." At the same time, there are legitimate concerns about the
spread of online anonymous slander and racism, "mobbing" of innocent
victims (e.g. "swiftboating"), false rumors or misinformation without
ways to rebut. Social movements need to anticipate and respond quickly
to racist, nationalist and other destructive forces converging online.


5. How do we track the demographics of who's online and who's not and
what tools they are using? Some of the numbers on web usage are
surprising. It's known, for example, that Latinos in the United States
are offline in huge numbers but their cellphone use is skyrocketing
just as mobile phones are increasingly web-enabled. It's also known
that poor and working-class folks in the United States are often
trapped offline, but those that are online appear to be more
interactive and engaged than other segments of the population.
According to the Pew Research Center, households making less than
$50,000 a year are more likely to post content (pictures, music,
comments in chatrooms, etc.) online than higher-income households. The
demographics are changing fast; social movements need to be constantly
reassessing assumptions about their target audience.


6. How do we present complex ideas online? We know that people take in
information in myriad ways and weigh it differently depending on
medium. On the web it is been difficult to figure out how to present
complex ideas and synthesize large swaths of information--blog posts
and YouTube talking points work; long issue reports and white papers
do not.


7. How does offline and online social movement building fit together?
We know it is essential, but where and when to rely on face-to-face
contact during an online campaign and vice versa is still unknown.
When, for example, do we call a virtual versus a nonvirtual protest;
when is physical contact required to build lasting and deep solidarity
versus cheap and fast Facebook or Twitter campaigns? The Obama
campaign broke new ground by fully integrating its online and offline
activities. Each time a supporter interacted with the campaign, data
specialists created new layers for targeting that person by region,
engagement and volunteer preferences. Then organizers used many tools--
text messages, phone calls, house visits, etc.--to figure out how and
where to plug supporters into the campaign structure. Social movement
organizations need to experiment with these techniques but anticipate
that online organizing will continue to be littered with failed
experiments.


8. How can social movements wield real power online? Corporate and
political elites have yet to figure out how to transfer their existing
power structures into the virtual world. This 2.0 governance crisis is
good news for social movements since it opens up a space for us to
build alternatives to the current system. But it also means that
essential social movement tactics we have used in the past to resist
and interrupt power structures--such as strikes and civil
disobedience--are at the moment less effective online. We need to keep
exploring what if any are the means by which organized groups of
people can exercise power online or parlay their online organization
into power offline.

None of these questions will be answered overnight, but it is in our
interest to engage this new terrain and figure out how to use these
swirling forces to our advantage.

So where to we go from here? Last spring, encouraged by the success of
their virtual IBM strike, labor organizers launched "Union Island" on
Second Life, a space built to help the labor movement leverage social
networking tools, including how to create avatars and build more
dynamic websites, as well as swap tricks of the trade over a "beer" at
the virtual bar.

Maybe we can all start by heading over to the bar for a virtual beer.

About Brendan Smith
Brendan Smith is a legal analyst whose books include Globalization
  From Below and, with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, of In the Name of
Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan). He
is current co-director ofGlobal Labor Strategies and UCLA Law School's
Globalization and Labor Standards Project, and has worked previously
for Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a broad range of unions and
grassroots groups. His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles
Times, The Nation, CBS News.com, YahooNews and the Baltimore Sun.
Contact him at smithb28 at gmail.com. more...
About Tim Costello
Tim Costello is, with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, co-author of
the new book Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity (South
End) and co-producer of the documentary video Global Village or Global
Pillage?(www.villageorpillage.org). more...
About Jeremy Brecher
Jeremy Brecher is a historian whose books include Strike!,
Globalization from Below, and, co-edited with Brendan Smith and Jill
Cutler, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and
Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt). He has received five regional Emmy Awards
for his documentary film work. He is a co-founder of
WarCrimesWatch.org. more...