Shirkying Civic Engagement
By Ian Storrar
Posted on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 01:31:27 AM EST
Will There Be A Peabody 2.0?
Watching the Colbert Report last night I was pleasantly surprised to see Clay Shirky make a guest appearance to talk about his new book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. I happened to have finished the book yesterday and heard him speak at The New America Founation a month ago. Shirky's thesis is that revolutionary social change happens when technology becomes widely used and accepted, which is what we've seen in the last 5 years with the internet and new media. The challenge to traditional institutions, as you can see from the subtitle of the book, is to see the power of the people in creating change for themselves, not having it made on their behalf.
The banter on The Report last night led Shirky to challenge Colbert's fans to do something interesting with his Dorito Peabody Award stickers, not just go around sticking them on bags of tortilla chips in the gorcery store. Reading his book, I learned that the first flash mobs were designed to make fun of hipster culture, similar to Colbert's original challenge. Later flash mobs have been used to stand up to the police state in Belarus.
What does all this mean for Common Cause?
Common Cause started in 1970 with a call to join together as civic activists to change the way government works - by putting the citizens back at the center. We had a remarkably successful start, with hundreds of thousands of people clipping out coupons from the paper and joining, then acting together. We helped pioneer the use of patch-through calling to connect citizens to their elected representatives, direct mail to keep members informed as well as ask for financial support, citizen lobby days to connect the grassroots work to the grasstops, and we created (organically - we didn't know this would happen) a network of chapters with state and local agendas to compliment and support the national effort. For almost 40 years Common Cause activists and staff have lobbied for and organized around critical reforms and checks on power.
The development of the internet and the ideas that Shirky and the Netteligentsia (I mean that in a very good way) promote mean profound changes for Common Cause and the entire reform community. Work coming out of the Sunlight Foundation is a good indicator of where we should, and I hope will, go. Professor Lawrence Lessig's work to start Change Congress offers exciting tools to citizens who want to organize around money in politics. I hope to see Common Cause share and develop some of these ideas and tools in our work on public financing, election reform, media reform and ethics and transparency in government. I think we'll also see many more ways to put the tools to change America and the world in the ordinary citizen's hands (or mouse-clicking finger).
These changes will, as I've said, change Common Cause. This is a huge challenge to all its staff, volunteers and members. We can't do it all alone, or overnight; I think it's also a challenge to everyone else. Common Cause started with a call for coming together because "everybody's organized but the people". We've done a lot together over the years, but we can do more. We don't all have to move mountains but we do all have to give one action at a time which will create a movement for a better democracy. Fortunately for everybody, it's a lot easier today than it ever was.
Tags: Web 2.0, social networking, civic engagement, clay shirky, colbert (all tags)
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