Rootwork Powering grassroots networks from the bottom up

Those groups that have found advocacy success on Facebook tend to adopt an approach that USES the one-on-one nature of the site. As one small example, I spoke to a group of pro-choice activists a few weeks ago, many of whom work with students on college campuses. When I asked how Facebook fit into their work, the overwhelming response was that it was essentially an email replacement — they employed Facebook messages to reach individual supporters or small groups of supporters when they were preparing for events or promoting a particular message. The Genocide Intervention Network demonstrates a much more comprehensive and strategic approach but the same basic idea: as Ivan Boothe wrote last year.

Note that Ivan is describing something very different than traditional mass communications: he’s talking about working closely (no doubt frequently one-on-one) with people on Facebook and other networking sites over a long period of time to help build a cadre of very committed activists — something that most electoral campaigns (and even most issue advocacy campaigns) simply can’t do, whether because of lack of time or lack of resources.

Ivan Boothe, for example, says his organization's goal is to "involve people who are active and educated about the issue who become leaders as members. Our members are not just a mailing list. GI-Net is all about giving up control ... Organizations need more than a membership card. We are creating a permanent anti-genocide constituency."

The group ... uses social networking to call its members to action. A targeted campaign of Facebook messages in Indiana netted a large number of students willing to call Sen. Richard Lugar's top donors (a list of which was uploaded from opensecrets.org) and ask them to pressure the senator to approve a bill on Darfur he was holding in his committee.

Our experience, overall, has been that local people are really out in front on organizing [the anti-genocide] issue, and we're just creating the tools, putting the tools in their hands, and giving them the resources to take action. For instance, the 1-800-GENOCIDE Hotline, the Darfur Scorecard, things like that are giving people the resources to take action.

In our experience, they're already out there doing a lot of stuff. I know when we began a couple of years ago, and were just sort of starting our outreach on Facebook, we found there were already dozens of Facebook groups around the issue and working on these issues. It was just about networking them, giving them resources, giving them support in the work they were doing. That's what we've been trying to do since then.

I'm also highlighting this because it is a terrific example of using social news sites like Digg and Reddit to promote a cause ... I had (wrongly) assumed that getting to the top of social news sites was a matter of dumb luck or that if something went viral. But there's strategy involved and a tool to help you execute it.

Offering concrete ideas for how to solve a seemingly insurmountable problem can give people a sense that they, as individuals, have a stake in an issue. The Genocide Intervention Network links to a list of "ten things you can do to stop genocide." Ivan Boothe argues that these steps, broken down into easily digestible chunks, give people an easy way to participate. Although they also link to the Genocide Intervention Network's main web site, that isn't always the point. "A number of these steps aren't even within our organization," Boothe says. This sort of advocacy is similar to bottom-up, open-source collaborative projects like Wikipedia, in which no one group has proprietary ownership over an idea or a product; instead, the goal is a constant generation of awareness and ideas. A MySpace page, says Boothe, isn't simply an advertisement for an organization, "it's a tool for mobilizing people for different kinds of action."

This weekend, tens of thousands of Americans will rally in front of the U.S. Capitol — and in dozens of other cities across the country — to send the message to Congress that it's time for America to step up and help end the systematic slaughter of more than 400,000 civilians in Darfur.

Yesterday, we caught up with two dynamic leaders at the forefront of this movement — Mark Hanis and Ivan Boothe of the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net). Hear how GI-Net is using technology to rapidly mobilize hundreds of campus leaders and thousands of college and university students across the country.

And find out why celebs like Nick Kristof, Angelina Jolie, and Oprah are all asking their their audiences to head over to GI-Net to take action.