Prorogue, Activism and the Power of Personal Networks

Stephen Harper has unleashed a whirl of protest in response to his deci­sion to pro­rogue par­lia­ment. Some 27,000 peo­ple across Canada ral­lied in com­mu­ni­ties large and small, their activ­i­ties and per­sonal val­ues cap­tured on social media like Face­book and Twit­ter. Mur­ray Dob­bins sug­gests that it has reju­ve­nated the move­ment for Cana­dian democ­racy that stalled in the 1990s. He argues that move­ments are sig­nif­i­cant because they cre­ate the polit­i­cal land­scape against which for­mal party pol­i­tics are shaped:

Polit­i­cal par­ties do not develop poli­cies and strat­egy in a vac­uum — they assess the con­di­tions, the para­me­ters of what peo­ple will tol­er­ate, the val­ues that peo­ple hold, and develop their poli­cies and strate­gies accord­ingly. From a pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive the best out­comes pre­vail when both sides of this for­mula are work­ing at their peak — when move­ments are strong and one or more polit­i­cal par­ties are smart enough, and share the same val­ues, to take advan­tage of the polit­i­cal space that move­ments cre­ate. It is no coin­ci­dence that the most pro­duc­tive period for good social pol­icy, the 1960s and early 1970s, par­al­leled the time when move­ments — stu­dent, anti-poverty, anti-war, labour, women and abo­rig­i­nal — were at their strongest.

The last polit­i­cal move­ment to cap­ture the hearts and minds of Cana­di­ans hap­pened in response to free trade nego­ti­a­tions in 1987 – 88. That move­ment was ini­ti­ated and funded by social jus­tice orga­ni­za­tions, labour and var­i­ous civil soci­ety groups. As Judy Rebick points out, this one involved “none of the usual sus­pects.” Instead, it evolved spon­ta­neously, unex­pect­edly from a dis­sat­is­fied stu­dent who set up a Face­book group.

It seems a triv­ial act to join a Face­book group, at least I used to think so. Can click­ing really trans­late to com­mit­ment or action? Yet, every­one I talked to at the Par­lia­ment Hill rally was part of or knew some­one who had joined the Face­book group. “You know when I’m at a rally,” said Trevor Strong of the Arro­gant Worms before he started singing, “some­thing has gone really wrong.” The power of net­works is a sub­tle, yet pow­er­ful force. The act of shar­ing with our net­works that some­thing has gone really wrong rein­forces our ties with them. For the longest time, our options for activism were lim­ited to join­ing labour, church and social jus­tice orga­ni­za­tions. Yet, “in most places,” Judy Rebick empha­sizes, “it was indi­vid­u­als rather than orga­ni­za­tions who orga­nized events.” The mes­sage is pretty clear: build­ing and mobi­liz­ing our own net­works are the new well-spring of polit­i­cal power.

Bridg­ing online and offline life. Roy Mitchell invites his friends to an anti-proroguing skat­ing party on Face­book. via Rea McNa­mara.

There is already a Face­book group on next steps. But the point of auton­omy is we can all do some­thing in our own way. “Don’t just join the Face­book group,” says Jesse Hirsh, “cre­ate your own secret group of friends and fol­low­ers, and go out and sur­prise us with your shenani­gans and savoir-faire!” But just how do you mesh hash­tags, retweets, blog posts and com­ments with offline acts? That, he says, is the “chal­lenge for the cre­ative class.” He explains fur­ther in an inter­view with Rea McNamara:

The point is to make it part of our lives rather than a sep­a­rate thing we can neglect and ignore. We take time to tend to our per­sonal health and we make that prac­tice habit­ual. Pol­i­tics needs to be regarded in the same light.

Decid­ing what we are going to do with the power of our per­sonal net­works, and devel­op­ing new skills and tac­tics that bridge online and offline activ­i­ties is one of the most vital dig­i­tal lit­er­acy skills.