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ADD Activism, Facebook, and the Millenials

Matt Singer is the CEO of Forward Montana, a youth-directed non-profit that trains, mobilizes, and elects a new generation of progressive leadership in good ol' MT.

Jake Thorn wrote earlier of the ideal way to organize on Facebook

A temporary group, geared for a short-term purpose, action-oriented, discarded as soon as the group’s goal has been accomplished.

The unfortunate part of this statement is that it is a self-reinforcing "doom loop" that exacerbates one of the most difficult aspects of organizing Millenials.

Anyone who works with young voters knows the difficulty of building identification with an organization. At Forward Montana, we have our own members and interns regularly ask, "What are you guys doing next?" The notion of ownership, membership, and involvement is a bit foreign. And this makes the task of building infrastructure insanely difficult.

Consider this, logging into Facebook, I check to see if the League of Young Voters has a Facebook presence. So I search for Young Voters. Mixed in with national and local organizations and campaigns (including Rock the Vote and the National Campaign to Make College Affordable), I also find F*ck the Voters of the MVP Race!!!; People Who Think Bush Voters Should Pay Off the Nat'l Debt; and Admit it, When Tim Tebow ran Over Jim Laurinaitis, a little Pee came out...

Now, a little pee did come out, but that's not the point. The point is that in my own list of "Groups" I'm a member of, Forward Montana and the Bus Project -- long-lasting organizations -- are treated the same as not just student government campaigns, but even identically to "The Professor Drake Drinking Game," an homage to a local history professor.

And here's another problem -- to avoid spam (a worthy goal) -- Facebook actually bans mass messaging to groups of over 1,000 people. So if you build an organization with a large following on Facebook, you actually lose the ability to contact your members. There is an alternative -- you can pay for a sponsored group (I'm currently a member of Apple's group) and retain the ability to contact your members. But most non-profits, even ones that focus on youth organizing, don't have the resources to pony up to be a sponsored group.

So, instead, organizations are forced to break up into a bunch of different chapters, lose organizational identity, and become a difficult operation. On top of that, building an organization becomes tough when the primary method of outreach is touching people through other, short-term, single-issue "groups" that are the Facebook face of a campaign.

What's the end result? A hodge podge of groups, person-to-person connections, and an utter lack of the real kind of list-building and infrastructure development that creates the kind of "flywheel" turning that allows bigger and bigger successive campaigns. It's the equivalent of running a non-profit as nothing more than a group of personal rolodexes, rather than with an organizational database tracking contact info for thousands of individuals; individuals who develop a relationship not just with other individuals, but with the organization as a whole.

The worst part of this is that in treating the Sierra Club in the same way that it treats "Bong Hits for Jesus (Duke Chapter)," Facebook reinforces an already deeply set cultural norm of the Millenial Generation. We're not members or clients, who build for the long-term. We're single transaction customers who decide occasionally which brands we trust, but never which institutions we're proud to be a part of.

In previous generations, the notions of membership were deeply ingrained. People were members of fraternal orders, country clubs, churches, and civil rights organizations. These older generations are still quite active in groups -- the Elks, the Pachyderms (for 'wingers), the Rotary, etc. And on the left they even understood that the civil rights advances in the '50s and '60s were not the result of an ad hoc, short-term association of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and John Lewis, but of serious organizations -- the NAACP, SNCC, the SCLC, etc.

Every week, Forward Montana and MontPIRG come together to teach our interns some fundamental principles of organizing. A couple weeks ago, we had a discussion about the importance of organizing v. activism. Facebook enables activism -- short-term work for short-term change. It actually impedes organizing.

If our generation wants to see real progress, we need to embrace organizing. If Facebook wants to be a valuable tool for networking, they need to facilitate a rethinking in our atomistic culture.

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April 30th, 2007 11:50am
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the times they are a changin

Submitted by Jake Thorn on Mon, 2007-04-30 21:35.
If our generation wants to see real progress, we need to embrace organizing.

I agree. But I think this…

Facebook reinforces an already deeply set cultural norm of the Millenial Generation. We’re not members or clients, who build for the long-term. We’re single transaction customers who decide occasionally which brands we trust, but never which institutions we’re proud to be a part of.

…is too cynical.

In previous generations, the notions of membership were deeply ingrained. People were members of fraternal orders, country clubs, churches, and civil rights organizations. These older generations are still quite active in groups — the Elks, the Pachyderms (for ‘wingers), the Rotary, etc. And on the left they even understood that the civil rights advances in the ’50s and ’60s were not the result of an ad hoc, short-term association of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and John Lewis, but of serious organizations — the NAACP, SNCC, the SCLC, etc.

Those advances were due to long-term commitment not because it takes long-term commitment to accomplish major objectives but rather because in 1960, that was the only way to accomplish major objectives.

The beauty of 2007 is we have access to a magical communications device that allows us to organize ourselves with extreme speed. We don’t NEED institutions to tell us what to do. Ad hoc groups of people can quickly self-organize, generate successful events that generate waves of media attention that impact the public discourse. All you need to build long term movements out of this fabric are wells of people united around their causes——-NO salaried leaders or physical offices or big lists of people to bomb with form emails——just people who know each other and trust each other based on past events they’ve pulled off, conversations they’ve had, ideas they’ve exchanged, etc.

A pool of people communicating with each other directly and steadily, a loose communication network that occasionally taps into itself to generate activism whenever the network’s cause requires attention. The trick is keeping the communication open and active. Facebook has been a great start because it’s attracted so many people—-seriously addicting people with information—-getting MASSES used to the technology. We’re just now figuring out it could move mountains; it wasn’t the original idea—-no one joined Facebook thinking this kind of shit…we joined because our friends did and it’s a cheap way to stay in touch and there’s funny drama sometimes—-we’re just kind of stumbling across the practical applications lately.

21st century orgs will have huge advantages. More people will become engaged, because there are no rules, no bosses, no orders, no boundaries; people will feel true ownership over what they’re working toward because without their personal effort, nothing happens. There is only the goal and a group of people discussing how to achieve it, then getting out and making it happen. And if it takes a second round of actions, there’s a network of people in place to go back to the drawing board. And if it takes a third, and a fourth, whatever… but as long as the people remain committed to the goal, they’re every bit as capable of achieving it as SNCC was theirs, and in some cases, far more.

To sum up, I hear your pain on FB not being able to help your org much, but the thing is, social networking’s power is not in its ability to help 20th century model preexisting orgs, but rather allowing individuals to empower themselves without the need of institutions, i.e., facilitating offensive insurgent people-powered campaigns as opposed to bolstering defense-oriented institutions and political actors.

My advice for existing orgs is to try to adapt by using tools like events and groups to launch and sponsor sub-projects. Better to adapt than resist.

[[http://www.losethelabel.org/|if facebook was the tip of the iceberg, we’re the penguins dancin on top]]

Didn't realize I was so defense-oriented and anti-people

Submitted by Matt Singer on Tue, 2007-05-01 10:26.

My bad.

But here's a fair question for you. The immigration rallies organized partially through MySpace and txt were supposed to result in massive new voter registration...that didn't ever happen. So we get some rallies and some media...and then things stop.

The models you're talking about were already used -- in the 60s and early 70s. And you know what happened? We got our asses kicked for 30 years as the right built institutions and organizations.

In the late 90s, we heard that technology had changed the laws of economics. Now you're claiming that it has changed the fundamental laws of politics. Meanwhile, everyone in the game I talk to says to not rely on distributed events tools whether it's Facebook or an organization's system. People aren't self-organizing, even with the tools at their disposal. The biggest successes of youth organizing still happen offline. And while blast email doesn't work, it turns out we still need salaried folks organizing big events, overseeing massive voter registration efforts, turning out the vote, and building bigger campaigns.

It's also worth noting that the most significant political successes online have come, not from Facebook or MySpace, but from institutions that, while democratic, are also fairly top-down -- the blogs and MoveOn. Both the blogs and MoveOn accept massive input from their members, but they are membership institutions, not ad hoc associations. The netroots are not a temporary group, but a very real set of leaders with communications mechanisms. They are more ad hoc than most other pieces of "real infrastructure" but it's not a personal network on a social site, either.

The examples you've raised in the past of victories are things like getting a student senator elected. That's awesome, but who's going to turn students into organizers or leaders who will go on to be the next union leaders, campaign staff, or elected officials. Even if somehow all social advocacy becomes a part of our magical social networks, I'm guessing Presidential campaigns aren't going to turn into informal affairs.

Read your Alinsky and let's talk some more.

I feel like you’re more

Submitted by Jake Thorn on Wed, 2007-05-02 00:50.

I feel like you’re more focused on things to increase voting rates and I’m more just looking to increase activism opportunities—-each worthy civic engagement goals. And I didn’t mean anything personally, sorry if it came across that way. I’m just trying to vet some outside the box ideas.

But here’s a fair question for you. The immigration rallies organized partially through MySpace and txt were supposed to result in massive new voter registration…that didn’t ever happen. So we get some rallies and some media…and then things stop.

First, there were extenuating circumstances. Also, it’s not like we have a lot of massive protest movements to compare to each other; each have their own flow. But this one was indisputably incredible: interrupting the entire country’s routine and forcing it to face a very difficult and EXTREMELY difficult to solve issue. Voting isn’t the only indicator of a healthy democracy. If you had the choice between increasing the number of people doing community service and the number of people who vote, which would you choose?

The examples you’ve raised in the past of victories are things like getting a student senator elected. That’s awesome, but who’s going to turn students into organizers or leaders who will go on to be the next union leaders, campaign staff, or elected officials.

DIY/ourselves

Meanwhile, everyone in the game I talk to says to not rely on distributed events tools whether it’s Facebook or an organization’s system. People aren’t self-organizing, even with the tools at their disposal

http://www.losethelabel.org

=]

a baby just learning to walk, but still. But then like I mentioned at the start, I’m not in your game, I’m in a slightly different one.

It’s also worth noting that the most significant political successes online have come, not from Facebook or MySpace, but from institutions that, while democratic, are also fairly top-down — the blogs and MoveOn. Both the blogs and MoveOn accept massive input from their members, but they are membership institutions, not ad hoc associations. The netroots are not a temporary group, but a very real set of leaders with communications mechanisms. They are more ad hoc than most other pieces of “real infrastructure” but it’s not a personal network on a social site, either.

Blogs are communities. Daily Kos derives a lot of its power from pie, ponies, Totally Irrelevant Crap, MSOC-drama, troll diaries [complete with excellent recipes] and incredibly valuable user-generated material. Kos isn’t writing all those blogs. You read it enough, it starts feeling like a neighborhood. Amazing communications concepts at work. And only beginning… the blog medium is relatively weak compared to what we’ll be getting when we experiment with new formulas and tools [same goes for MoveOn].

[[http://www.losethelabel.org/user/3|-6.00, -4.15]]

At the end of the day

Submitted by Matt Singer on Wed, 2007-05-02 10:03.

it’s the same game. Moving the ball is moving the ball. Yesterday’s immigration rallies weren’t as big as last year’s.

I’m reading a biography on Einstein right now and it talks about Brownian motion. Without institutions, that’s all we’ll get in politics, temporary and random shifts. The problem is that there are institutions in politics that are playing a long game — making concerted drives to move the ball down the field. Without sustained efforts to respond to that, we lose — as we’ve lost for the past 30 years.

The idea of learning how to develop “organic” and “random” activism is itself contradictory — those things aren’t developed, they just happen. Figuring out how to harness Brownian activism to build it into sustained organizing is what will result in long-term change. And, if long-term change isn’t the goal, we should all basically drop what we’re doing and let the random actors take care of it.

Different Structural Model

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Tue, 2007-05-01 01:05.

Singer raises very good questions. I too feel that the cultural issue affinity activists of our generation can be likened to the wearers of the tiny punk buttons that line the straps of our saddle bags. The individual might be a GreenDay-era punk, but his value statements are the tiny buttons, maybe there’s a DL button, maybe a MFA, maybe an anti-W, a League right next to the GreenDay Handgrenade and the Dead Kennedys button.

The class of 2000 (give or take a few either way) built orgs because the old power structures failed. Bush won, Iraq happened, Daschle shit his pants. We had to start over. The class of 2006 is a looser movement.

What Jake said, “All you need to build long term movements out of this fabric are wells of people united around their causes” is how I look at how to best use SocNets for Orgs. The Org shouldn’t have just one big presence on the network. It should have the sub-issue campaigns represented.

The model is that your mainsite is a data hub and a server storage facility for your widgets and CRM. The major demographic clusters and/or major issue initiatives under your Org’s umbrella - the buckets, get sub-sites. These are planetary in relation to the hub as sun. Then, floating around the planets are moons on the many SocNets. The moons speak to very specific niches or clusters of people united around a particular fight or issue.

A national Dem Org or Candidate should be maintaining myspace and facebook presences about Walter Reed and Walter Reed alone. These link to a subsite about Vets akin to IAVA. That planetary Vet site links to the SunSite. Content is produced once at the Sun. Widgets and RSS feed the right things the right places.

good ideas n/t

Submitted by Jake Thorn on Tue, 2007-05-01 23:56.

[[http://www.losethelabel.org/user/3|-6.00, -4.15]]

wingers

Submitted by Sarah Burris on Tue, 2007-05-01 15:21.
Pachyderms (for ‘wingers)

Rare indeed is it for someone to make a worthy pachyderm joke.

My question for you is how MySpace compares with facebook. Facebook is very short term and limited to few of the swag and swank that Gen M seeks - by doing a Myspace that has music or video or something constantly uploaded on a blog with media or interactive … something… would it engage for the long term or do they too fall into the vicious cycle?

Wonderfully done piece - FMT is one of my favorite orgs out there!

The More I Use MySpace

Submitted by Matt Singer on Tue, 2007-05-01 19:44.

The less I like it. Facebook is basically constantly rolling out new features. Granted, the news feed is basically just “bulletins” on crack, but it’s the good kind of crack. Facebook has groups that work. Meanwhile, Facebook is now open to non-students. And I’m seeing more and more former students, like myself, continue to use it to stay in touch with folks.

In the end, MySpace has a few strengths over Facebook — it considers organizations to be acceptable for profiles, for example. But these strengths are still overshadowed by a conceptualization problem. People don’t join the Edwards campaign or Forward Montana. They become friends with us. You don’t own your friends. You should own an organization.

Myspace Vs. FaceBook

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-05-02 05:28.

Matt,

You don’t own your friends. You should own an organization.

I’m interested in hearing more about that. It strikes me as rather semantic. I can see an argument that says belonging to an organization allows for a tight bond between the org and the person, but the bond ends there. Whereas if you are a “friend” to a person, you are receiving an endorsement to their social network, allowing for greater growth potential.

Also, MySpace allows you to create a group, which seems to create more of the relationship you are looking for (Group Admin and members). Why wouldn’t you just opt to create a personal profile as the CEO of Forward Montana and then use that profile to create a group called Forward Montana which you administer?

On a more general point, MySpace is interesting in that it is much less rigid than FaceBook. Both you and your supporters/memebers/friends can DO a lot more stuff on MySpace than you could on FaceBook - fundraise via a ChipIn Widget, share video and podcasts, create and deploy layouts or badges as part of campaign initiatives, etc. That’s somewhat counterbalanced by Viacom’s unfortunate tendency to shutdown outside applications, but at this point it still strikes me as an advantage (though I say this as someone who only uses FaceBook and MySpace in the most rudimentary ways in promoting Future Majority).

It is semantic, but that has a point

Submitted by Matt Singer on Wed, 2007-05-02 10:06.

I’m a fan of the idea that the words we use impact pretty deeply how we think about things. And while MySpace does allow for groups, I haven’t had time to really figure it out. The reality is that these tools require hours of work to use properly and we don’t exactly have an abundance of time. We haven’t had luck yet finding anyone interested in running the social networking sites as a volunteer.

Cognitive Linguistics meets PoliSci

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-05-02 10:18.
I’m a fan of the idea that the words we use impact pretty deeply how we think about things.

I tend to agree, I was just hoping you’d elaborate on the advantages and disadvantages of this particular distinction. I can see a pluses and a minuses on both sides.

That’s too bad about your volunteer capacity. It sounds like Groups might be a way to go for Fo.MT., or at least appeal more to your organizational philosophy.