Community Organizing Online: Future Opportunities and Challenges
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by Ed Schwartz
When I first became aware of the Internet in 1994, it didn't take long to recognize what a contribution this new technology could make to community organizing. Even without seeing the World Wide Web, which became operational several months later, I saw the enormous potential of email lists—listservs—to permit many-to-many communication within communities, throughout the country, and even throughout the world. This was unprecedented. Organizing is about bringing people together. Listservs made this possible quickly and easily in a way that no prior technology could do. I started my first email list that summer—civic-values—and have been managing lists ever since, including several on YahooGroups in Philadelphia where we have built a network of more than 1,200 community activists and City officials who communicate with each other every day.
The Internet has given us powerful tools. Web sites and email lists have been thoroughly integrated into all aspects of our lives. The relative newcomer—Blogs—has made it possible for a new generation of writers and activists to gain national attention just by transmitting their thoughts in writing on the Net every single day. I'm sure new tools will create new opportunities, especially in the area of online conferencing, another invaluable tool for organizing.
As a result, the most serious issues related to online organizing aren't technological, they're political. As I anticipated twelve years ago, the Internet does give ordinary citizens the ability to communicate with one another, acquire information, and connect with elected officials at every level of government.
Since it is also possible for national groups with even greater resources at their disposal to use this technology, their developments have tended to eclipse local efforts in attention and clout. MoveOn on the Left, and the Christian Coalition on the Right have built strong national networks with hundreds of online chapters and thousands of members around the country. In the case of MoveOn, a handful of people in the Bay Area meeting decide the issues that they choose to support on their web sites. They do seek feedback from their members on the major causes that they ought to be supporting. But there's no discussion here, as would be the case in a democratic organization or even a listserv. It's done by polls.
Clearly, while we have made great progress in using the Internet for organizing, there are major issues facing us as we wrestle with how to use this technology in the future. Here are a few that come to mind:
1. Bottom Up Versus Top Down. As an activist functioning primarily at the local level—Philadelphia—I was especially excited about a technology that made it possible for us to build alliances and movements throughout the country with groups that we otherwise would never have been able to reach. That happens frequently now around specific campaigns and events beyond MoveOn, but it has yet to become the major focal point for groups attempting to influence policy on a continuing basis. National groups connect with their members and supporters through mass online emailings. Local groups don't know enough about their counterparts everywhere to reach out to them. The result is that the potential of the Internet to enable local activists to connect and then influence policy and politics on a much broader scale has yet to be realized. This would have to be the major challenge facing grassroots organizing, since building power from the bottom up lies at the heart of what we do.
2. Many-to-many versus one-to-many communication. This is a tough problem, whatever the level of organizing might be. Discussion listservs have the greatest potential to strengthen relationships among active participants, but the more dialogue on a listserv, the fewer people have time to participate. A mass mailing email list, on the other hand, can reach thousands of people, but list members have no connection with one another. How these distinct tools can fit together is a tactical question that any group engaged in organizing needs to address.
3. Social Versus Political Organizing. By definition, community organizing is the process of bringing people in a community together. Saul Alinsky's Reveille for Radicals is still recognized as the seminal book in this field. To Alinsky, however, organizing was the means by which citizens gained power in relation to government. A number of organizations are working to strengthen relationships within communities without regard to government. A block club can exist to deal with trash pickups and building code violations, or it can focus on ways that parents support each other in raising their kids. Both are possible, of course, but a group should be clear from the start what they hope to accomplish in building community online.
4. Strengthening Relationships between Government and Citizens. The Internet now permits significantly greater contact between citizens and government than in the past, but there remains enormous room for improvement here at every level. Even elected officials who have web sites—and most of them do—give little thought as to how they can be used to make ongoing connections with their constituents. Even active citizens, in turn, are often unaware of what they can accomplish on their City's web site and how they can reach their elected officials online. A central goal of any organizing project in the future should be to build capacity among their members in this area.
5. Training. Training in the use of online resources by community activists is sporadic at best, but needed if the process is going to work. In Philadelphia, even block captains who have been active participants in our email lists are surprised by the links and resources available through our PhillyNeighborhoods.org web site, even though we are in contact with them via email every day. After more than a decade of building our online systems, we have decided to embark on a city-wide training program aimed at helping grassroots activists learn how to use it. Our experience suggests that if we want people to take advantage of what we've developed online, training is essential. This is an area where CTCNet affiliates could be especially useful.
These, then, are five critical areas that we need to address if using the Internet in community organizing is to reach its potential—bottom up vs. top down online organizing; many-to-many vs. one-to many communications; social versus political organizing; strengthening relationships between citizens and government; and training. These will be our ongoing challenges in the months and years ahead.
