Internet and organizing: the example of Coalswarm
In the continued debate on the role of the internet in organizing activism, Mark Engler intervenes in the debate by mentioning a few examples, such as Coalswarm:
” The CoalSwarm site documents and supports efforts around the country to close coal-fired power plants, which are leading sources of CO2 emissions. Nace has persuasively argued, in his book Climate Hope among other places, that Internet listserves and websites have done an important service in allowing organizations fighting specific plants to coordinate their efforts with others, gain resources and strategic insights, and overcome a sense of isolation in their work.
Nace recently wrote me:
I worked in the anti-coal movement before the Internet. People in one part of the country had very little idea what was one going on in other places. Appalachian Voices’ project with Google Earth did a lot to show mountaintop removal to the world. Social media allowed decentralized anti-coal activists to connect across the country. It has cut the previous isolation that limited local groups, and it’s allowed much more information to get passed around than would ever have been possible “back in the day.”
The results of this Internet-aided organizing have been significant. Nace states, “By late 2009, following two years of intense mobilization, opponents had derailed at least 109 proposed plants, bringing the coal boom to a sputtering halt.”
At the same time that I find it exasperating to read a lot of high-tech boosters—especially those with roots in marketing and business management—spread hype about the world-shattering implications of the Internet for social change, I am genuinely excited to see savvy organizers get their hands on new tools and new technologies and come up with innovative campaigns. I look forward to profiling more of those in the future.
As a last thought, I believe Jamie McClelland, one of the tech whizzes over at the May First/PeopleLink collective, makes an interesting suggestion when he argues that the Internet is not merely a medium for activism, but that it is important enough that it should simultaneously be a subject for organizing. He supports shifting from the question of how we “should use the tools of the Internet” to a debate about questions like “what is our role in the development of Internet?” and “how do we support and develop the revolutionary potential in the Internet” in the face of efforts by corporations and governments to control and monitor how we operate on this new digital terrain?
It is a fair concern, and I hope that—as much as high technology—the tried and tested art of person-to-person organizing will be brought to bear in addressing it.”
