|
What's up friends? I'm back from Houston where I spent 2 1/2 days knocking on doors as a volunteer for Beto O'Rourke's senate campaign. Long days. A lot of unanswered doors. Some good conversations. Sometimes, we set up clear plans to vote - so important.
What sticks in my mind more than anything, though, is the campaign's need to turn out Latino voters. Most of the people I visited (or was looking for in homes where nobody answered the door) were registered non-voters in a low-income Latino neighborhood. Walking the neighborhood and talking to people makes clearer the hurdles to voting (time, trust, intimidation) and generalized disconnect between candidates and voters. This is especially true of people in communities marginalized by income and race.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a story about the Beto campaign's strategic use of transparency to build name recognition and trust. Beto is all over social media with well over a thousand Facebook Live videos. The campaign plan is online as is a detailed statewide map of field organizing goals and progress.
But does campaign/candidate transparency help voter ID efforts, GOTV and, ultimately, turnout? The answer for Beto's campaign is awaiting election day and endless post-election analysis. I don't see how it can hurt but transparency can't be an "every four (or six) years" strategy.
The more important question seems to be whether (or how) transparency helps defeat voter indifference. What kinds of information, data, communications will bring marginalized communities that don't see government and politicians working in their interest to the table?
If the Beto for Texas campaign's "radical transparency" offers lessons for nonprofits and advocacy orgs, these need to be strategies and tactics that help inform, engage, and inspire supporters while increasing trust over the long haul.
Radical and Overwhelming
1. One reason its so important to reconsider how we think about membership. America underinvests in its social infrastructure. Meanwhile, people want places and time for connection. I think it's one of the reasons coffee shops, food halls, brewpubs and similar venues have sprouted up in cities around the country. We don't talk about it but we're disconnected from our communities. But coffee shops and breweries don't bring together people of different incomes and races. Organizations need to think about their role in weaving together community.
2. How social media, YouTube and messaging apps are radicalizing politics everywhere. Ryan Broderick of BuzzFeed has been reporting on the intersection of politics and the internet from almost every country. His latest sums up the impact of a global reliance on Silicon Valley's social and video platforms:
There are deserts of information where normal people are algorithmically served memes, poorly aggregated news articles, and YouTube videos without any editorial oversight or regulation.
3. But are seemingly radical social media conversations simply reflections of a nation's broken journalism and media environment? There's been a lot of discussion about the ability of rumours and false stories to travel far and fast on WhatsApp and Facebook. And with sometimes deadly consequences. See Sri Lanka, India and Brazil for examples.
Yasodara Córdova, a fellow at DigitalHKS, a center at Harvard’s Kennedy School that examines the role digital technologies play in government, has a different view based on her recent work with Comprova, a fact-checking project monitoring social media sites during Brazil's election.
What's unique to (and a problem for) WhatsApp and other social media is their reach and ability to accelerate information. Hyperbole and misinformation are already baked into the country's political dialog and weak media instituations, says Córdova: "the problems on WhatsApp in Brazil were mainly a function of the country’s broken political and media environment."
4. “O'Rourke's campaign says it has recorded over 25,000 volunteers since its get-out-the-vote program launched Oct. 5.” Take a look at what may be the largest volunteer driven single state GOTV program ever. Story via The Texas Tribune.
5. Last minute GOTV ideas for the political campaign in your life brought to you by the always on point Colin Delany and epolitics.com. The advice here (e.g. "your supporters are your ambassadors") should be utilized by advocacy groups and others looking to turn people out to events and actions any time of year.
6. The overwhelmed person's guide to activism. Start by knowing that you're not in this alone, you don't have to do everything at once, and every action matters. I love how Clio Chang acknowledges that it can seem to many like being an activist is for a certain kind of person - that it's an exclusive group. Organizations, campaigners and people who do lots of actions would do well to remember how intimidating activism can seem to most people.
Hey, a huge high five to new subscribers from Unlock Democracy, Oxfam International, CallHub and Percolator Consulting. Great to have you along! Please let me know what you think about Bright Ideas.
|
