Community Campaigns – UK government experiments with online advocacy
Try to imagine a government interested in encouraging local online citizen activism. In fact, not just saying they will receive the output from online campaigns, but going so far as to support the online infrastructure for citizens trying to organise other citizens to solve a problem or asking government to change its priorities. Pretty radical.
In the UK, the e-Innovations Fund of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is supporting the Community Campaigns project (their blog) to produce the easy to use CampaignCreator tool, a local activism guide, along with support for a couple of pilot community campaigns using the tools and advice.
Over the years, I’ve scanned the e-advocacy scene. To be honest NIMBY (”not in my backyard”) campaigns led by a particularly upset citizens dominate the local scene with virtual pitch forks. What if you democratize e-activism by making easy to use online tools more accessible to a diverse range of community campaigns? I am keeping my eye on projects like the BBC’s Action Network and the open source CivicSpace platform in the U.S. along with this new UK project.
Anyway, the other week, the UK project, led by staff including Stephen Hilton and Kevin O’Malley with Bristol City Council asked me to help facilitate the online portion of their advisory group. So I am.
I am on the hunt for those involved with a few more UK-based community campaigns, like this one about the Mogden Sewage Treatment Works, and others around the world with direct experience with online activism/advocacy efforts interested in sharing a bit of additional advice. The more local the better, although global tips for local campaigners are welcome.
Simply add blog comment with your top e-activism or “off-line” local community campaign tips here and I’ll pass them along to the project. If you put some effort into it, perhaps you can join us. I will be recommending a few more inspired folks for online participation in their advisory group in early November.
Finally, those with links to the best starting points for guidance for starting or run a grass roots campaigns – both online and offline – add links to the Activism wiki page on DoWire.
P.S. If you want to debate whether or not government should help citizens increase their local influence through online campaigning (versus potentially allowing those interests with the greatest resources or political energy to dominate the agenda in a free and independent way), check out the discussion on David Wilcox’s important Designing for Civil Society blog.
October 31st, 2005 at 11:15 am
Hi Steven,
Glad to see you on board the project. Here are a few of the campaigns that we found in the research we did when bidding with Bristol for the e-innovations funding. It seemed to me thaat some of these campaigns had some decent design and programming support whereas other campaigns (often not online at all) lacked it and that was what originally led us to propose the Community Campaign Pack.
http://mastaction.co.uk/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.fiveroadsforum.org/about_us.htm
http://www.ealingcycling.org.uk/index.htm
http://www.goldplanet.co.uk/
http://www.savecamphill.org.uk/
http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/letters_residents2.html
http://www.stoptheextension.com/
http://www.mountfield.net/
November 16th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
Surely, thishas implication for, & could only be greatly enhanced by an internet application:
(A Perfect Marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition & Modernity, & a REAL Solution to Terror)
Because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting,
RB is “top-dead-center-counter-extremist” & more anti-terrorist than all the recent
retrenchments combined. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real
power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of potential tribal-civil war,
as in Iraq. Unless the Parliament comes to select its Prime Minister by RB, it
may not hold, & the world will be in danger of going to war over some oil well,
or multi-ethnic city. RB would be equally useful for all other parliamentary
&/or presidential systems, cooperatives, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties & associations as well. Because it gives the minorities a real say in which majority member gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead to support of any plan more than inadequate confederation. Because it gives all combinations of programs, not just parties, an equal chance, RB is the only thing that’s truly just. Because it provides real-time alternatives to all proposals, from wherever: market, coop or social, RB has brakes, reverse, 3D, hyper-drive & goes sideways. It will result in “phantasmagoric subtlefactionâ€. Both more liberty and justice can be found in RB than in any ideology. Help put this idea, in time (before “clockwork orangeâ€, “1984†or “category sevenâ€) to as many as possible. The $15,000 cost of a single full-page ad in USA Today, enough to put RB to virtually everyone involved on earth, would be repaid in a year & a half at the pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family.
We imagine running on the single issue of RB, allowing a citizens’ advisory
board based onâ€Organized Communications” (”OC”, small randomly assigned
discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher levels by means of RB til one
small group, exactly in the middle, remains) to guide us in the rest. You do
the same, from the most local on up. (Ten to the power of ten, ten levels of groups of ten, would be sufficient to organized & unite all mankind.)
The “additive” form of RB is first choices being counted & then, if noone has
50 %(+), the next choices being added in, & so on, until someone finally does. RB
is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of the Preferential (as it’s called in Robert’s Rules of Order) Ballot Party, the only practicable third party. How can we ask it of others if we do not have it ourselves? Please see http://www.preferentialballotparty.org. Gotta be in somebody’s interest.
“Zoe” Norman Zidbeck
realzoe@hotmail.com, preferentiality257@yahoo.com,
POB 38245, Albany, NY 12203
December 6th, 2005 at 8:31 am
[...] As I noted earlier, I am helping facilitate the online portion of their advisory committee. [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 8:52 pm