Ruminations:
I’ve been banging my head against a wall for several years, involved in
web and blog campaigns that have not succeeded at their highest level
objectives: stopping the invasion of Iraq, electing Howard Dean
president, and stopping the genocide in Sudan. By campaigns, I
mean not just the high traffic blogs that are often
highlighted, but the entire community movement, blogs at all traffic
levels working together.
I’m not alone, these campaigns engaged millions of people in caring about and becoming active to try to achieve these goals.
So I keep wondering: Did we fail, or succeed? Or more subtly–how did we do either, and what are the lessons?
My hypothesis today is that we succeeded at establishing new memes and
new meme-based worldwide communities–and that to the extent our memes
were picked up and “established” as topics in the major worldwide
media, as well as continuously supported in the blogosphere, we
actually made successful social change.
We did not make social change to the extent we hoped, but we did establish important beachheads that can now be built upon.
Perhaps change takes at least these
stages: 1. create shared awareness of the problem, and
pressure for action, 2. demonstrate the lack of responsiveness in
established institutions, 3. create such shared awareness of the
lack of responsiveness in established institutions that there is
pressure for institutional change, 4. support true reform
movements, as well as creative competition, and start to change the
status quo, 5. build shared support–super buzz–for the new
developments planted in #4, such that these become realities on the
world stage.
Perhaps a major value of the blog
campaigns for Iraq, Dean, and Sudan was to put problems on the
table The stop-the-invasion-of-Iraq campaign, the Dean for
America campaign, and the stop the Sudanese Genocide campaign all took
issues that had a constituency but little voice, and created a larger,
activated at-critical-mass-constituency, and lots of VOICE.
At the start of each of these web campaigns. there was little
integrated voice for the community. With time, the blog
community achieved much more than voice, and establish particular memes
that became a central part of the media landscape. The campaign
against the Invasion took the nation FROM a one-sided jingoistic rush
to war, abetted by established members of the Democratic party TO a
nation with–at least–a dialogue about the wisdom of the war.
The Dean campaign made it exciting and authentic to be a Democrat and a
Liberal again, and helped people experience their own grassroots
political power. The campaign for Sudan took a little-noted far
away genocide and put it in the front of our consciousness, and has
also helped to highlight the problems of the UN, to those who might
previously have been inclined to give that organization the
benefit of the doubt.
These campaigns accomplished stage 1
and 2 of the change process. We do have the power. The
worst thing we can conclude from our work is that it did not
help. I think it did help. The people developed
voice. The fact that we did not get farther is simply that–we
did not, yet, get farther.
Now we need to find ways to move to stage 3–demonstrate lack of
responsiveness in established organizations–and stage 4–support
creative new initiative.
In addition, there are other memes that we can use our power and
knowledge to put on the table–that should be given the stage 1 and 2
treatment.
Indeed, one of the ways we can be
successful as a meta-campaign is for the blogosphere to begin to
develop four or five or six major memes to put on the table, so we
start to change the meme landscape.
One I think warrents such a campaign is China’s sphere of influence,
and its support for governments that enslave their people and abuse
human rights: Sudan is a Chinese client state–supplying oil to
China. Burma is, as well. And you wonder how these nations
thrive despite “international” sanctions? Because China–the world’s
fastest growing trading state–supports them.
And note that China is expanding its relationships in Southeast Asia,
the Middle East (”hey, Saudis, if you don’t want to be dependent on the
US, how about hooking up with us, China?”), Africa, and South America.
This IS the new red tide. Not communism, this time, but
genocidal, human rights abusing state capitalism write large.
This is the new Chinese economic ecosystem, ecosphere. Hmmmmm.