Politics and Social Movements

Yesterday I read Activism Inc. I strongly recommend reading it. It's insightful and short. The thesis I got from it was that thousands of progressive-minded young people are joining canvassing operations, lasting an average of several days, and burning-out.

These young people could be forming the backbone of social movement organizations, however instead they burn out and find non-activist jobs (like being teachers).

The book argued that conservatives are succeeding in placing young people into conservative organizations, however the left is failing.

I'd be very interested to read a book on what the conservatives have done that works so well for them. I suspect part of the answer is that they may have larger sums of money that can create more organizations and better-paid positions (whereas canvassing jobs in particular, and other leftist jobs are generally lower-paid).

For a project I'm working on, I have to see a lot of Black Panther veterans telling their political histories and debating a complicated and conflicting set of analyses on what went wrong with the party/parties. But they all agree about one thing: before they ever were part of the party, when they heard about Bobby Seale going to the California Legislature with guns, they knew what they had been waiting for and the beginning of a huge international phenomenon began. Not to fall victim to hyperbole, but a similar moment may have just happened and committed activists have to take note.

Television has been a danger since the beginning. The devil box offered a silver lining: we might just be able to slip a insurgent message (and invitation) through the signal into homes everywhere. Malcolm got it and so did Abbie Hoffman. With the onset of video games, the idiot box got stupider. Now the message was written out in code long before anyone ever saw it - no live camera to sneak behind, no producer fiending to fill his daily hour with content. And then the internet. The potential is pronounced. Indymedia, and the like, became the new way to broadcast upcoming protests. But it is also, in many ways, an anonymous cave that doesn't involve relationship with known characters. Great information sources, like ZMAG and (cough) History Is A Weapon (cough), offer the educational material, but haven't figured out how to assist in outdoor struggle and community building. Meanwhile, the new kids are increasingly plugging in, cell phones, Crackberry, and online social networking.

I think someone could make a large sum of money and/or increase the level of democracy by creating an online game to simulate the 2008 US Election.

You'd create an online gaming environment that might be similar to the World of Warcraft.

Basic game play would have users acting as regular Americans, however their goal would be to support the political party and actors of their choice. Thus for instance, you might have people trying to persuade swing voters, raise money, engage in dirty tricks, form an interest group, work within a party, or other activities.

I think a lot of value would come from following the actual electoral calendar, but preceding major events by a couple days. For instance, you would hold an online version of every primary a couple days before they happenned in real life. You could have real debates with user-submitted questions broadcasted in real-time audio (and even video). After all the real goal of this software is that you'd be influencing the real political process, by engaging people in the political process online - it would influence their off-line actions.

Written 41 years ago, this song is all-too-relevant to the War on Iraq and Bush's foreign policy.

We Seek No Wider War
By Phil Ochs

Over the ashes of blood marched the civilized soldiers,
over the ruins of the French fortress of a failure
over the silent screams of the dead and the dying
saying please be reassured, we seek no wider war.

The treaties were signed, the country was split into sections
but growing numbers of prisons were built for protection
rapidly filling with people who called for elections
But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.

Ngo Dinh Diem was the puppet who danced for the power

The first meeting of the Philadelphia Activist Tech Group was a success. We had 13 people! Instead of having long meetings, it looks like we're going to focus on projects. So people will propose and join projects, and we'll skip the meetings for the sake of meetings.

We'll probably organize workshops ranging from "this is how to use email to do activism" or "how to be virus/spy-ware free", to more advanced topics like "Intro to Google Maps API".

Also we might organize the occasional social event, and connect people who have questions with people who have answers.

If you want to find out about our activities, then Subscribe to our low-traffic email list.

I am starting a Philadelphia group for liberals, progressives and radicals who are using Internet technology, particularly the web, to promote social change. We can share ideas, share code, help each other test and debug, get our projects to share data, explore emerging technologies, and perhaps collaborate on new projects.

We could meet once or month or however often people want.

Personally, I

The cost of the Iraq War is approximately $200 billion according to
the National Priorities Project

That is only the direct financial cost.

The US consumes approximately 20 million barrels of oil/day (19.65 million in 2001 according to the CIA world fact book , or 7 billion barrels each year.

If the war/occupation causes oil to cost $10 more per barrel (which I think is a realistic estimate), then this adds $70 billion/year to the cost of the war and occupation.

This doesn't include the increase in the price of natural gas, used for heating and power plants, which tends to follow the price of oil (though it is subject to much wilder fluctuations).

For longterm social change you need a long term strategy. Sure you need to fight the short-term battles (otherwise people suffer and die), but hopefully the left can scrape together some support for longterm institutions.

One example of such a program would be a database of skills and trainers. We need to convince all of the existing social change training organizations (Training for Change, Midwest Academy, AFL-CIO's trainers, ACORN, various socialist groups, etc) to publish their materials under the Creative Commons License. These materials should be available in large chunks (as books) and broken down into smaller chunks (chapters or exercises), and available online for free (PDF an HTML) - or in printed form for a charge.

Evolve Foundation recently came out with a paper on online activism called Pushing Power to the Edges with only barely mentioning Race, Class, or Gender.

Online activism might manage to mobilize millions of middle class white people, led by upper-middle class men who push the Mobilize Button. But is that pushing power to the edges?

I'm reminded of the Zapatistas who are common example of how the Internet can be used by a grassroots group that otherwise wouldn't have much power to acquire international fame and support. But wait a minute! Pratically every communique I read (and
I read many of them out load on a college radio show) was written by Subcomandante Marcos. Because he had more privilege that other people in the movement he became a media idol. We ended up reading poetic stories about rainbows, bridges, sea shells, Don Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, and parrots instead of about the conditions of people in the villages who were the most oppressed.

Theory #1 - Short Term - The Impact
Thesis: Either socially responsible investors receive a lower rate of return than other investors, or their investment has little to no social impact.

The US economy has a standard rate of return on investment. This is the average rate that an investor can expect to get. Of course this rate fluctuates all over the place due to economic cycles, and it is difficult to predict what it will be in the future. However, there is still an average rate of return.

Regular investors will invest in companies which they believe will give them this rate of return or better. These investors do not care if the company is socially responsible or not, and will thus provide enough investment to both responsible and irresponsible companies up until the point where any additional investment would be less productive, and provide a below-market rate of return.