The Risks and Rewards of Thompson’s New Site

Bill Thompson just opened a new website designed by Blue State Digital, which also designed Barack Obama’s campaign site.

First of all, I’m increasingly inclined to give my qualified support Thompson for mayor – I don’t know if it was pure election-grandstanding, but it seems like every time he  makes a public announcement of some kind, like his workaround of the MTA fare-hike, it’s generally sensible, effective, and conscious of class dynamics in the city (for instance, as Comptroller he got city pension funds to remove their money from companies that privatise formerly public housing in the city).

But that’s beside the point – I think this will be a test case in how well folks other than Obama can use his organizing model in their campaign strategy.  While I trust that Blue State won’t apply the Obama model whole-cloth, many of the central elements of the Obama campaign revolved around him specifically, and might not translate well into other campaigns.  When someone wins, it always makes their system look better than it probably is, and thevalidity of the organizing model will be need to be tested in a vareity of contexts.

Here are some of the risks I see in adopting the Obama model:

-Looking like an Obama hanger-on: to stick in people’s minds, you need to develop a distinctive personality.  The individualist tendancy in American politics asks that politicians be in a way self-made.  Trying to ride the coattails too overtly undermines credibility and might hurt the campaign.

-Social Media can hurt too: trying to mobilize folks via twitter/Facebook/etc. can become a conspicuous display of a lack of support as well.  Having 50 people on a Facebook group demonstrates weakness in a citywide or statewide campaign.  Thompson should be  sure that embracing new media will build support among his target constituencies before over embracing the technology.

-You need a good story: Obama mobilized a series of glittering generalities based on his personal story.  Thompson needs to develop a central story that reduces to a short-worded theme and three key policy proposals to organize people behind the campaign.  One of the clear differences between Obama and Thompson’s site is the lofty quote Obama put on the top of every page.  Thompson doesn’t have the same type of cred, or story to get people together.

Twittering Your Thumbs

This is hillarious.

But what really makes it (and attached post from Radar) interesting is how it contrasts with the writing of people like Jeff Jarvis or NYC blogger Lisa Sabater that make Twittering a cornerstone of their online presence, alongside blogging and social networking.

I’m still trying to decide on how or if to use social networks – I consider them to have limited utility at best as organizing tools, as danah boyd explained in her essay in the anthology Personal Democracy. I think her argument about the online echo-chamber very simply explains why techno-phillia seems so prevalent: social networking sites, twitter, etc. only put you in contact with people who also like and use those technologies.  And if you write about media or technology, that necessarily skews your perception of how many people use that technology, and its relevance – your sense of what matters on a large scale leans towards their world view constructed through the lens of the people they know in (ultimately) local, small scale communities.

In terms of building organizations and effective social change, nothing beats feet on the ground.  The internet only functions as a useful device for social change if people already seek out other people pursuing social change, and already want to use it as such.  (Not to say that there’s an impossible gap between political types and non-, but it’s safe to say that folks use the internet in regular, enclaved ways)  Being ‘in the streets’ shouldn’t be fetishized – I’ve seen enough ineffective face-to-face preachings to know that you can alienate and  frustrate in person – but I think it’s a pipe dream to see social networking, or blogging (ha) as a cure to what ails organizers.

As a caveat, I think Facebook as some advantages, in particular contexts.  What drove Facebook’s early growth was its connection to specific places – colleges.  It built directly on the activity of daily networking students engage in for whatever reason, and made an online presence around that physical interaction, amplifying it in unique ways.  I think social networking can solidify certain types of relationships in ways useful to organizers, but those begin from local, physical interactions.

Movies and Mass Change – What if the Left Media Bias Was Real?

This movie is sweet.

Today I attended a screening of the above movie at the Brecht Forum, an event hosted by GoLeft.org, and also attended by the film’s co-writer Jeremy Pisker. GoLeft describes themselves as a group of “activists and pop-culture whores” that attempts to figure out how to make activist politics more palatable.

A necessary goal – I am taking up an oath to never once more chant “What do we want? [insert demand]!!! When do we want it? NOW!!” or “The People, united….” or other such chants at rallies or protest, on principle because of triteness and political impotency. The fundamental mediocrity of so much protesting almost hurts, and recycling halfhearted chanting makes that pain almost too much to bear. the Bulworth event sparked some interesting ideas -

What if the Left Media Bias Was True? – Any serious analysis of the news easily picks apart the claim of a left-leaning slant in reporting, but that doesn’t mean that activists can’t find useful tools in mass media. In the book Dream, Stephen Duncombe deconstructs a McDonalds commercial to discover arguments for shorter workdays, improved education systems and a clean environment – a ‘bias’ not evident in the ads funding or intent, but implicit in its appeal to the ‘good’ in people’s lives. The amenability of corporations to greenwashing and other forms of consumer activism (organics, Whole Foods, other such shit) demonstrates the underlying aesthetic of consumption in the fulfillment of human desire – it is this aesthetic of dreaming that progressive politics must attach itself to.

Make sure your people are enjoying themselves – A basic philosophy of new age corporate management is to treat your employees like volunteers. This means respecting them as human beings, and creating a work environment that is its own reward, rather than a mere means to an end. In my experience, too many left organizations don’t even treat their volunteers like volunteers. Folks show up to pay their moral debts, pontificate, or make very stern faces for news cameras. The desire to stop something usually incites this type of masochism. Making protests/actions/organizing interesting in and of themselves might improve the saliency of their appeals. Someone in the audience tonight put it thusly: “we must be beholden to the value of human interaction” a fancy way of saying “talk with people like its fun to talk to them, not because you necessarily want them to do something for you.” This idea might also lead to the result of making every action organizations pursue an end in themselves – producing awareness or sparking new activism, even if their explicit demands aren’t met.

Last, the role of mass media. The screenwriter Pisker said something interesting in the Q and A (which was remarkable all around – he was engaging and thorough with every question, and showed a real regard for everyone in the audience). He expressed concern about a proposed ending to the film, which would have Warren Beatty’s character abandon politics to become a community organizer, as “too preachy.” This caught my eye because commentators (on the right in particular) level the ‘preachy-ness’ complaint against most celebrities/Hollywood types that become politically active. The fact that Fox distributed Bulworth created no slight ambivalence for the screenwriter as well – in response to a question I asked, he said that ‘if I wanted to devote my life to political change, I wouldn’t be in this industry’ – a comment that suggests difficulties for anyone trying to create a mass mediated revolution. From the perspective of a viewer, I’m not sure I agree with his dismissal. I think mass media entertainment products can create change within limited boundaries, while providing lessons to organizers who want to create more radical change. Here’s the lesson I took: organizers should make entertaining a priority as high or higher than that of a carefully crafted message, so that the message becomes relevant, popular and accessible.

Radical Organizing on the Web – Beyond the Netroots

Right now I’m pondering media and public relations strategies for two groups – Take Back NYU! and the Brecht Forum – and I wanted to put down here some of my thoughts on how to transition grassroots organizing onto the web without devolving into the ‘netroots’ inanity I’ve described before in previous posts about the drawbacks of net-organizing (political impotency, undue obsession with the internet as an organizing tool).

An idea tossing around in my head for a while is the idea of all-access, ‘open-source’ movement building. Essentially, I’d like to see grassroots organizations pursue their struggles while maintaining a constant presence on the web, turning their activities into content for blogs, video/audio channels and more. This idea stems from two trends: the rise of all-access TV and web content, and the development open-source software, both of which grassroots organizations can capitalize on to expand their support at their base, and in mass/mainstream environments.