Urban Explorers

Over several years the idea of turning ones activist skills; climbing (rope access), boating, the ability to open locked doors quickly, into something as futile as poking around disused industrial sites has had a growing appeal. Finally I tracked down some forums devoted to such nihilistic activities in the form of the UK Urban Explorers Forum.

The link that I followed in was from an idle question about the tunnels under Imperial College, London. Plausibly some speculation about subterranean access to buildings in the area. In a different life I studied there and can attest that there is a range of tunnels running from what was Southside, under the V&A to Queens Tower and beyond. It was a handy shortcut (well a drier detour) to the bar and I can still vividly remember the Victorian brick staircase spiralling down beneath exhibition road, to Neverwhere.

The beginning of the week saw a bunch of us out on the boats, teaching media types (photographers and all) not to do anything stupid in the event of a high speed activity. We ended up out at the sea forts in the Thames estuary, the rusted remains of Red Sands towers, and what was once the lonely haunt of pirate radio stations.

So when time allows, I have some pictures to upload to the forums. Some currency to establish my place in the digital community and perhaps a hook to lure a few folk with the skills necessary to poke around disused industrial sites, to the idea that occupying more useful sites coal power stations and all) has more of a future.

Creative activism

A fair few years ago, various friends got annoyed when Iceland announced it was resuming commercial whaling, with the usual suspects being particularly quiet on the issue.

The creative friend, who used to work for Das Spiegel, pulled together some designs along the lines of ‘Only in Iceland can you eat a tourist attraction’, the practical friend with access to an office printer, turned the designs into A5 stickers, and closer to home the mischievous friend, mobilised some people, organised teams, and spread stickers across Icelandic tourist posters on the Underground.

2 weeks later an Icelandic MP stood up in parliament, to denounce whaling as bringing the country into disrepute, as evidenced by the wave of sabotaged posters he’d seen on his recent trip to London.

The example is not that subvertising works, or that a small group of passionate people can have an effect disproportionate to their numbers, the theme here is the alliance between creative types, perhaps ‘creativists’, and mischievous types, clearly ‘activists’.

There is a wealth of examples of creative brains playing with both campaign themes, advertising spaces, and in many cases simply aiming for a mind fuck. From adbusters, to Banksy, to the space hijackers. From the Billboard Liberation Front, to the Church of the Sub Genius and the Discordians, from the Reverend Billy to the Yes Men, there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

So the issue in mind, is how to connect creative types to the folk who are happy to risk arrest turning those creative ideas into subvertising, guerrilla or uncommissioned urban art. There are lots of design students, aspiring artists and bored graphic designers languishing at ad agencies, who I reckon would be up for doing the creative side. But is the existing activist movement, grassroots and otherwise, up for doing the dirty work – literally in the case of stencils and spray paints.

Perhaps an investigation into the communities that exist, the graffiti artists, the design forums, and the activists – well I know most the latter. Maybe a new tool, or better yet an organi online community, with some logistical support. Finally an idea or issue, to inspire, to generate a tidal wave of creative ideas something akin to deepwater horizon to mobilise both the creative and activist communities to jam the corporate mass media culture of advertising and marketing.

I have the skeleton of a project plan here, now I just need to find some cash, and some web developer time.

Email ends in themselves

Decision makers, especially political ones, respond to public pressure. Sending a lot of emails to an MP has an effect, even if they moan about it. Visiting them in person has a much greater effect, but few have the confidence to arrange that meeting, oh and MPs moan about that too. Taking direct action to stop the decision maker making the wrong decision has an even greater effect, but tends to get you arrested, which means that even if you have that confidence, you can’t do it every week. There’s lots of other activism in between.

Next week folk will be debating mobilisation strategies, and perhaps supporter journeys, for the upcoming campaign, and my question is will that debate be focused on email activism as an end in itself. Is the purpose of the campaign to generate a huge amounts of emails to the target, and to use those email participants to recruit more people to email the target, and then to reiterate ad nauseum, and to repeat with different emails to different targets until the internet melts.

An entire industry has grown up around email advocacy, using the tools of the marketer and one wonders why. My prejudice is that it’s a reflection of the over professionalization of the campaigning caste. That somehow by adopting corporate tools, key performance indices, critical path analysis and endless tracking we will effect positive change.

The problem is that this leads us to only do the things that can be tracked. You can split test an emails subject line, to see what maximises the open rate. You can test how likely people are to respond on a Friday afternoon, vs. a Monday morning. You can plot the frequency of emails, to achieve a saturation effect, than is proportional to your unsubscribe rate, but what you can’t do, is to do so with passion, imagination and the insane ambition that we can achieve change.

My prejudice is that sending lots of emails, is simply an excuse to find people who care that can be inspired into doing something more than just sending emails. The thinking is not unique, there are lots of ladders of engagement out there, but we don’t seem to resource putting this into practice.

How does one value offline activism, or deeper online activism, against the clear numbers game of Avaaz and 38 degrees. What is the value of blockading the Department of Transport – the charges have just been dropped – or having 100 conversations with others in your local community?



Email actions lead ultimately to fundraising leads, but as a tool to effect change they become less effective with every one you send. As decision makers become overwhelmed with standard emails, how long before they say enough is too much. One has to assume that donors think the same.

And if we maximise our ROIs measured about the KPIs set by the same digital consultants the targets are using, then it simply becomes the money game that we will surely loose. We are after all vastly outnumbered by the corporates.

So as a tool email gives me the reach to find people to do offline activism, or new things yet

Skeletons in the political closet

It’s cold outside, and for the sake of distraction I seem to be ploughing my way through the West Wing, and romantic tales of political skulduggery.

On Friday Chris Huhne resigned as Energy secretary, under the suspicion that he may have committed a crime 9 years ago. Yesterday 101 Tory MPs revolt against government policy on renewable energy, and the cause of dirty power surges ahead.

Now I’m not much of one for conspiracy theories, if for no reason than I think such things are difficult to keep secret, but I do believe in the establishment. A disorganised network of the great and good, who went to school and university with each other, who play golf, share lodges, port, cigars and the after dinner scheme.

I also believe in both political realities and the advantages of a journalist sitting on a good story, until it becomes worth something. Nine years is a long time for the police to consider whether a crime has been committed, especially when an MP is involved, albeit 9 years ago he was more of irrelevance to the political process.

So someone has been sitting on the story, and the case for 9 years, and now is the time they’ve decided to roll it out. Innocent or guilty, his reputation is tarnished, and the green agenda has suffered. The question is who? And why? And in the coincidence to the Tory MP rebellion is their a hidden hand of the big energy utilities, the nuclear industry? The fossil fuel lobby? Or simply that network of old chums looking out for one another.

I can’t really conceive why anyone would oppose a clean energy future, but that conspiracy exists. Someone, with money and power, orchestrated the hack on the University of East Anglia, and planned a media strategy around those emails in the lead up to Copenhagen. So if one conspiracy exists, perhaps there is some sanity to thinking the events of the last 48hrs, are the work of the same vested interests.

To conclude I’d hesitate to call Huhne a martyr of the energy revolution, but with a list of 101 MPs to play with, and a new list of marginal to consider, we know where the reactionary bourgeoisie might be found.

Blackout

The week before last, Wikipedia went dark, along with a great many other sites to protest against SOPA, and the threats to internet freedom. During various events of the Arab Spring (I wondered who coined that term), various states turned off the internet, and / or mobile networks. In China internet censorship is routine via the Great Firewall, and undoubtedly things will get worse. The internet will soon be anything but free.

Internally there is a strong rationale for using Facebook as the building block of our activist network. It is the tool people use, where people are at, better funded than our open source equivalence, and yet we hesitate to trust them. Meetup is a more palatable choice, and a more powerful organising tool, but it’s not where people at are – so it’s problematic.

We don’t want to trust our organising structure to a private company with differing interests to ours. The Guardian by-line ‘if you're not paying for an online service, you're not the customer; you're the product’, didn’t help and relying on any tool you don’t control to effect change, makes you vulnerable to the forces that can control that tool – or turn it off.

So in the debate between online and offline activism, if offline activism more robust against such interferences. Traditional freedoms, which may again change, protect the right to assembly, to meet others, to campaign etc. Public opinion is generally against bugging such meetings, police infiltration, and the paranoia of the security state, and instinctively these activities are more protected than my right to say setup a Facebook group to denounce Volkswagens lobbying against climate change laws.

However the near impossible challenges we face, preclude the safe options of robust organising offline, and dictate the risks involved in using commercial social media structures to reach more people, to mobilise more people to bring down the institutions that are herding civilisation to destruction. Risks I’m bound to deliver on, but unhappy about.

Close encounters with activism

At some point in every activists journey, there comes a point where one makes the transition from a nagging concern, or even anger, about the state of the world, into the act of doing something about it.

For most, there’s a period of individual activism, sending emails, writing letters (Amnesty style), making comments on Facebook etc, but then one day you walk into an encounter with a whole load of other people, that to an extent, feel equally annoyed..

Then you run screaming. Or chicken out when they're hard to find, and go to the pub. Or get bored, don't talk to anyone, decide you're not sure why you're then, and then go to the pub. Or perhaps you come back?

Marches – I reckon the first bit of offline activism people do is go on a march. Ben Elton did a stand up performance once that's distorted my thinking ever since (they are mainly crap), but everyone still seems to do them.

A whole generation of youth, was disempowered by the big Stop the War march (the war didn't stop - and god knows where they are now), a whole generation cut their teeth on the big CND marches of the '80's, CaCC still persist in organising December marches (bloody freezing) and the Unions still march for any excuse. Oh and Make Poverty History, after the Bono coup, claimed victory, mobilised loads of people and then achieved very little.

So if a million + people meet activism at a march, how do we rescue them? And should we be organising related events to give us the opportunity to rescue them?

Hippy on a stall – this might be my first. You're at a festival or a fair, and you see some folk campaigning on something you've read in the paper – that's been nagging you to do something. You hang around the stall, ruffle through some paper, they ignore you, and then you go home with a soggy leaflet. Or a band you like tells you go talk to the hippy on the stall, and the experience is much the same.

Or on a sunnier day, someone friendly – and pretty, talks to you, you sign something, give your details and maybe they email you, or more likely someone from the parent organisation phones you up asking you for money.

So again if hundreds of thousands of people are willing to sign something at the stall, and tens of thousands do so pro actively, to the point where they might do more, how do we inspire them to take the next step, either with a better soggy leaflet, or something sparkly – and maybe digital.

The meeting – or this might have been my first, walking into a big Reclaim the Streets meeting stuffed with undercover cops and journalists. Someone made a joke. Or later walking into a tiny Stonehenge meeting, of hippies getting stoned - not that I'm complaining but... Or for newer folk, day long climate camp meetings with lots of wiggly fingers. Kill me now.

How do we engage new people, without hunting them down. Where's the new persons 'trauma' guide to your first activism meeting, or the hotline 'help get me out of here'. Is it reasonable to ask them to do something, to participate, or simply to commit to coming back.

Genuine email asks – my experience is coloured by my involvement on the cusp of the digital age. Most of us now get dozens of emails asking to do stuff, often as covert fundraising asks, ladders of engagement leading to a fundraising ask, clever forms of data capture and often-times campaign asks generated by the marketing / fundraising department. Oxfam leap to mind.

Occasionally though there are real emails. Come do this locally, come meet us – we're nice, this action will actually mean something, come have fun, we'll look after you – but how do these emails stand out against the noise.

Finally the outreach – this cynicism was inspired by a BBC story about young people visiting Occupy London, and the true cannibal in me, suggested going to where the new people are, and stealing them. Or at least intervening to turn what might be a haphazard first encounter into something that leads onto something else.

Then I pondered the resources invested into outreach. Should we be out there, in schools and colleges, parachuting into citizenship classes, working with teachers (and saving them a lesson plan), organising events and trainings (mass NVDA) simply to light the spark on enthusiasm.

And if we do so, without a plan for what to do with that enthusiasm, or a campaign victory to offer (not a war), do we raise false expectations and risk disillusionment and disempowering paths. Or is it fine to spark the touchpaper and step back.

Cynical values

This blog dates from a personal grump with the idea that winning campaigns is something achievable by lots of clicks, and that old forms of activism, should go the way of the Dodo. However it’s turned into a bit of a quest, complete with mythic overtones, to figure out what is possible online and offline to change the world. As an aside, many of the characters I’ve met so far, have been bright shining folk from the new world, and as a precursor to every conversation I warm them that I am a cynical old Brit. A really cynical old Brit, with goffic tendancies.

Here’s a fashionable theory of campaigning, which inspires that cynicism, value based segmentation.

Maslow has been dead for 40 years or more, and yet his hierarchy of needs still has huge credence in psychological circles. It’s one of many theories of motivation, and names I recall include McClelland and Herzberg, and Maslow to seems intellectual simplistic. It seems to deny the ability of people in dire situations – who should be motivated by physiological needs to do great and ‘higher’ things, clearly motivated by self-actualisation.

Campaigning, beyond the world of elite level lobbying and report writing, online or offline depends on mobilising people to do something, involving your audience in the debate, and understanding that audience. To that end perhaps there is space to characterise the motivation of such folk, but I am uncertain that one can do so as neatly as the marketers suggest, into a world of settles, prospectors and pioneers – and I see no realistic prospect of collecting the data to make such a crass assumption. If you wish to understand your audience go talk to them, if you want to shape your communications to be appropriate, go ask them how.

In any case beyond the intellectual inconsistences as to how to split our communications 80/20 between prospectors and pioneers, are we really ready to write off the 60% of the population who are settlers – if such is people’s bias, and the theory holds true.

More so, the constraints of campaigning in an organisation where decisions, and the veto, rest with the policy people, the report writers and the elite level lobbyists, it’s hard enough to get one appropriate campaign ask out of the door, in a language people can understand, let alone different asks and different languages for different motivational segments.

So while the work of Chris Rose, and others on the band wagon, remain intellectually interesting, one has to assume they mainly appeal to the prospector organisations, i.e. those fascinated by new shiny, trendy ideas. My hope is that we stay true to the vision of a pioneering organisation trusting in our sense of what’s right and wrong, remaining self assured, and having the courage to talk truth beyond such academia.

Twelve sons of Odin

Ragnarok is approaching, and to fend off the giants, we wish to marshal 250,000 UK citizens to hold fast against the darkness. Or at least twelve is a good number, and there must be twelve good examples of successful online campaigns (or at least 12 seriously large mobilisations), that together can mobilise that many people. This list may evolve as I think of some more.

1. Argentinian forest law – bloody minded persistent, lots of TV coverage, celebrity endorsements, complete organisational buy in, strong digital aspects in a country not used to such things, persistent repetitive emailing, friend gets friend asks and arm twisting, and some relentless offline campaigning to get 1.5 million signatures
2. Airplot – the big wow factor, based on a cool idea, that’s instantly communicable. Oh and funny. I remember the meeting where we talked about the ‘fuck you’ moment which we kind of failed to capitalize on, but still we managed near 100,000 Beneficial Owners, of which 40-50,000 were UK citizens.
3. Protect the Human – a powerful idea that resonates, promoted everywhere from badges to comedy gigs. Cool graphics, friendly faces, persistent consistent comms over several years, and somewhere near 230,000 sign ups (maybe internationally)
4. Make Poverty History white bands – for a while they were everywhere, a clean distinct image, and something worth belong to. A fashion necessity, huge amounts of celebrity endorsements, TV advertising and 43.7 million apparently took action on world poverty day.
5. The Big Ask – relentless climate change campaigning, with an impossible, then an achievable end game, celebrity endorsements, cross party support and lots and lots of hard core offline campaigning, to get 130,000+ sign ups to something we won.
6. Stop the War march - the moment was right, the coalition including everyone – esp. faith groups, transport was well sorted, the police tried to stop it, 250+ cities contributed bodies, not to mention it becoming the cause celeb of many of the good and the great. Probably 1 ½ million (police estimate 750,000, organisers 2 million) - ok not very online here, but seriously big numbers
7. Nestle viral videos – a neat concept, a cool video, and an enormous social media gaff, compounded by the video they tried to ban. Total views 1.5 million, and a couple of hundred thousand emails, which would have been more impressive if they’d been time.
8. Fuel taxes and road pricing - 590,000 sign a house of commons petition, protestors threatening to shut every refinery in the UK, part orchastrated by big buisness, part by campaigners, and in the main about as grassroots as you can get.
9. Volkswagen Jedi game – a last minute idea, a growing light sabre, rewards for spreading and signing people up (friend get friend again), and some neat online prizes leading to a real life prize – again this could have, or perhaps could be so much more, 490,000 Jedi and counting.
10. Save our Forests - 38 degrees getting big numbers on an e-petition, 540,000 ish, capturing the moment, but hard to quantify the impact. Opotunistic democracy can work but there's more going on here

To be continued – I need 4 more ideas, and to distill the very essence out of these.

Dream of a thousand cats

The threat of climate change to human civilisation is obscene, and the most powerful argument for inaction is that it’s now too late to save our species from drought, famine, floods, water shortages, war and nuclear Armageddon.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ve not been Jensen’ed yet, it’ll be a while before I head to the highlands, and I’m confident we could bring global emissions under control. It’s just that it’d take an international effort akin to World War II, and I don’t see politicians with the guts to deliver.

Still on occasion one sees a glimmer in a campaign plan, a sense of insane ambition that is passionate enough, if popularised, if shouted loud enough, could bring everything else into place. The promise of a collective dream, that if it came into being, would prove that humanity can do anything.

So how many people do you need to create a collective dream. There are 7 billion of us living on this rock orbiting the sun, of which perhaps some are too young to breathe life into their dreams. 1% of humanity controls nigh on more wealth than the 99%, and their collective dreams have become the paradigm. So if an equal number of free thinkers imagine enough, perhaps we can evolve the superstition of wealth into something sustainable.

OK so I want 70 million people to believe in something, to believe so hard, they are prepared to do something, to create the change they want to see, and to make reality out of such clouds, before things go truly Malthusian.

Google reckons 27% of the population is online, so what 1.9 billion people, which has promise. And whatever your belief about online and offline activism, perhaps these people have the power to spawn that dream. So my numbers change to maybe 4% of the world’s digital generation, or closer to home, 2.5 million UK citizens.

In Argentina (pop 40 million), in the world of the clicktivists, 1.5 million people signed a petition for a forest law. The campaign did so, by doing everything, by making everything subservient to the campaign, and by making the engagement and inspiration of people core to everything they did. This is possible here, we can do this, we just need the internal courage, not so much of the militarists of WW2, but of the Argentinian dreamers.

As a campaign the measly internal, and international, goal of 5 million defenders, still inspires, empowers and would allow us to rethink who we are, and how we do things. If our leaders had guts, we could do this. Or we can dismiss such goals, and the dreams behind them, as unrealistic, implausible and outside the scientific method of campaigning.

We can dream, the dream of a 1000, a million, 100 million or more and we can believe….

Dawning of the fifth world

Welcome to 2012, the conclusion of the 13th B’ak’tun of the long count of the Olmec / Mayan calendar, and perhaps the end of the world (Dec 21st 2012). But don’t panic this is simply the fourth world, which began back in 3114 BC; there is undoubtedly a fifth yet to come.

Or perhaps 2012 is the end of Kali Yuga, the degenerate age of vice, which began back in 3102 BC, when Krishna left the earth, and it’s going to be a year of climate impacts, before the rebirth of the golden age.

When flowers will be begot within flowers, and fruits within fruits, then will the Yuga come to an end. And the clouds will pour rain unseasonably when the end of the Yuga approaches." Then Lord Vishnu in the form of infant Krishna on a leaf will come to earth and again everything will start producing from the beginning

For me 2012 is the year that I can put some of these new ideas for online and offline activism into practice. It’s been several years since I’ve felt that I’ve been at the cutting edge of campaigning innovations – not since the days of the Big Ask, and if those ideas work, then perhaps that hope will return.

Equally so much lies outside my control. Inspiring offline activists to do more online, while safe, tried and tested, takes time, and lacks the Chutzpah the powers that be respect. Online to offline activism, looks like a shining path, and the idea of campaigning hubs is sound, but the process of moving more online activists offline, may be futile without the campaigns to mobilise them. Finally the new world of deepening online activism, of campaigning bloggers, raiders and online organisers is new, may well fail, but could just about possibly herald in a new (fifth?) digital world of activism.

In any case, I’ve been at the campaigning grindstone for a solid six, or nine years now, so I need to reconnect with why I’m doing this. A Mesoamerican sabbatical to explore ancient sites, rainforests, new cultures, and to wait for the return of Quetzalcoatl may well be the inspiration I need to build these new ideas. Or the rehabilitation plan to while away some redundancy money if they fail.