theory
One Million Strong Against Hillary reaching One Million
Just a quick note, but the Facebook group "Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)" is at nearly 975,000 and rapidly closing in on its final goal.
Assuming it makes it before Pennsylvania, it'll make a tiny media blurb. But from a cultural perspective, it'll be a significant one because it'll perfectly exemplify an election-related story that wouldn't have appeared had it not been for a bunch of yokels on Facebook. Therefore, I would argue that participation in the group represents an act of activism. It's electronic engagement replacing in-person engagement, but it's still engagement.
This is one of those subtle examples of participation going on underneath the radar that today's young people rarely get credit for when experts and pundits compare us to generations like the 1960s. It's not a street protest, but it still matters.
a book about facebook organizing
I had this idea a month ago to write a handbook to Facebook organizing. I thought, hey, why not? It could be useful to some folks, plus I have the luxury of unemployment right now. Maybe make this 50 page thing and post it here or get it published, then I'll go land some real writing gigs again.
Anyway, why I'm posting this is because in the course of the writing, I've come up with a lot of ideas to help Lose the Label and launch other projects. I'll be trying some of them out, spending way too much time online, and writing about it a lot. Basically being a mad political scientist, and in the nerdiest ways imaginable. Please mind the crap.
Crisis Lobbying
This is cold poli sci term I made up the other day. If my tone here comes off as sarcastic sometimes, please chock it up to repression caused by middle fingers I never flipped my old professors.
Crisis lobby. A crisis lobby is the strength of the appeal by the people affected by a crisis to bring their crisis attention so they can resolve it. The victims of each crisis beg for help and some people hear the call and do as much as they can. Unfortunately, all the people facing every other crisis are calling, too. Therefore, each crisis has its own 'lobby,' comprised of the victims (and/or potential victims), individual citizens who become activists to support them, NGOs, and any government officials they can reach.
Facebook and Student Activism
Yeah, that’s right. I’m writing another serious post about Facebook. Strap yourself in, it’s gonna be sooooo exciting. …
Facebook is a mindbogglingly underused organizing tool for student activists. We’ve discussed this at LtL before, here, here and here. But I wanted to make a post that more explicitly spells out how the tool has been used, how it can be used, and also speculates on why it hasn’t been used to its maximum potential.
facebook group idea
Have you ever searched through the groups on Facebook? There are literally tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands or millions of them. A lot of them are devoted to causes, too. Not like they actually do anything, but still.
There's no umbrella group for activists.
I think we should create a group called "Activists Unite" and push it really really really really really hard. It could be a center for publicizing events, networking with other schools, chatting, procrastination...
Yeah, I know. That's Lose the Label.
But if we launched it, it could become a satellite group and we could spam the walls as much as we wanted. That'd translate into membership, obviously.
ActivistNet: The Coolest Group in the Entire History of Lose the Label!
Let me tell ya a story. There are 2 parts.
PART 1
Antiwar Bob goes to Berkeley. He wants to link up with antiwar activists at UC Santa Cruz to talk about coordinating some events, but he doesn't know anyone there. And he doesn't want to email some stranger because that'll get him nowhere and probably take a lot of time.
But it's ok because he's a member of *drumrolllllll* ActivistNet.
An Ideological Disease
This is not a timely article. It's from 2003. But it perfectly exemplifies the state of mind that prevents human beings from helping each other.
The article is written by a conservative in reaction to the possiblilty that the U.S. might intervene militarily in the civil war then devastating the western African country of Liberia (founded by repatriated U.S. slaves). I don't want to debate the merits of his opinion, but rather point out how he expresses himself.
Here's how the article starts out:
a formula for Facebook organizing, ideas for Lose the Label
How do you make a social justice oriented group successful? It's hard to do something big on Facebook unless you have something gimmicky like the If ___ people join, I'll Streak at the Yanks/BoSox game or the Brody Ruckus thing. But how do you make a big group that appeals to the intelligent, compassionate side of people?
Well, first invite your friends, duh. That won't get you far, though, especially if your idea is lame bullshit. It takes more.