Acting Up On Line

The Internet lets activists reach around the world at little cost

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance faced its toughest battle ever when Congress was considering a bill to open up much of the state to road construction, mining, and other types of economic development that threatened to damage the environment.

The bill proposed setting aside 1.8 million acres of federal land in the state as wilderness — far fewer than the 5.7 million acres that environmental activists had wanted. The proposal was backed by at least four of the five members of the Utah Congressional delegation and the state’s Governor.

Faced with such stiff opposition, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance turned to the Internet. Starting with a national network of just 30 activists that it could count on to put pressure on Congress, the charity began building an on-line data base of environmentalists to whom it could send “action alerts” via electronic mail. Those on-line announcements eventually reached 30,000 people, many of whom wrote, telephoned, or visited their Congressional representatives to voice opposition to the bill and encouraged others to do the same.

The Utah Public Lands Management Act of 1995 never came up for a vote in the House. The reason: Its Congressional backers realized that they did not have the votes to pass it.

“We were able to stave off what was seen by many as absolute, certain, slam-dunk defeat — and we did that because of the Internet,” says Tom Price, who coordinated the alliance’s on-line advocacy effort from the Washington office of the Salt Lake City group. (Its Web site is at http://www.suwa.org.)

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is one of numerous charities that have seen their ability to mobilize constituents and influence legislation made much easier and more effective because of the Internet. While much of the hype about cyberspace has focused on potential new avenues of fund raising for charities, the most dramatic implications so far have been for advocacy. On-line technologies such as electronic mail and World-Wide Web sites have given non-profit groups the ability to get in touch with people around the world almost instantaneously — and at a much lower cost than through traditional media like mail or the telephone.

In recent weeks alone, Christian activists have used the Internet to mobilize their constituents to support legislation that would allow voluntary prayer in public schools; anti-war groups have urged advocates to join a “caravan” from New York City to Mexico to promote peace in the southern town of Chiapas; human-rights groups have rallied activists to seek the release of political prisoners in Nigeria; and environmental organizations have gathered people to protest a proposed oil pipeline in central Africa paid for by the World Bank.

Perhaps the most successful harnessing of the Internet to push political change has been the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The campaign used e-mail to help coordinate the activities of hundreds of non-profit groups in dozens of countries. Its work culminated in the signing of a land-mine ban by 123 countries last year (The Chronicle, October 30).

Non-profit groups have also turned to the Internet recently to defend their right to lobby Congress. Last week the House dropped a provision in a campaign-finance bill that would have required unions and other non-profit groups to get permission from their members before spending money to lobby. The Let America Speak Coalition, which was formed by Independent Sector, OMB Watch, and the Alliance for Justice to protect the advocacy rights of non-profit groups, used electronic mail to circulate a letter opposing the measure. In less than a week, more than 450 organizations had signed the letter to show Congress their opposition to the measure.

Such electronic alerts are “not a replacement by any means for snail mail, for telephones, or for other ways to communicate,” Mr. Price says. “But it’s tremendously effective for giving people a greater level of involvement and for being able to respond very quick ly.”

Many non-profit officials warn, however, that the Internet is not a panacea. On-line communications cannot replace traditional advocacy tools such as protests and in-person visits, they say. Experts also note that even as e-mail becomes a standard form of communication for many people, politicians and government agencies have been slow to embrace the new technology. Consequently, many government officials do not take electronic feedback from citizens as seriously as they do faxes or phone calls.

On-line technologies have made the most dramatic difference to small non-profit groups. In the past, the costs of bulk-mail appeals or telephone calls limited the number of people those organizations could reach. But the Internet has in many ways reduced those barriers, and a handful of advocacy groups have sprung up to take advantage.

Women Leaders Online (http://www.wlo.org) was started in 1995 to support a feminist agenda on issues like abortion rights and domestic violence. The group has two part-time employees and an annual budget of just $25,000.

Through its “action alert” e-mail newsletter, Women Leaders Online is able to keep more than 8,000 readers informed on issues of importance to feminists. In turn, many of the recipients pass the newsletter on to friends and to on-line discussion groups. After the January bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., for example, Women Leaders Online encouraged readers to contact news organizations such as The CBS Evening News and Dateline NBC by e-mail and implore them to im prove their coverage of the serial bombings.

“It is efficient, it is effective, it is quick, it is inexpensive,” says Rhonda Lees, deputy director of Women Leaders Online. “If I wanted to send a mailing out to a thousand people, what would the cost of that be?”

The Internet has also proved to be an extremely effective tool for advocacy organizations that already have a strong grassroots following. The Christian Coalition, a conservative religious organization in Chesapeake, Va., is one such operation. The organization has used e-mail and other on-line communications tools to improve the way it distributes information to its network of activists spread throughout thousands of churches across the country. (The group’s site can be found at http://www.cc.org.)

“All I need to do is get it out to our state leaders, and they can blast it out to all their county leaders, and the county leaders can blast it out to the grassroots,” says Jeff Kwitowski, the non-profit group’s grassroots liaison. “The information gets out in droves.”

The Christian Coalition can also use its e-mail network to focus on a single region of the country. For example, when a bill that would allow voluntary prayer in public schools was being debated in the House Judiciary Committee last month, the Christian Coalition sent out an appeal to its constituents in Indiana to support the measure because two Republican Congressmen from that state, Reps. Stephen E. Buyer and Edward A. Pease, sat on the committee.

The so-called Religious Freedom Amendment was approved by a 16-to-11 vote of the Judiciary Committee, with both Indiana Republicans voting in favor of it. The amendment goes next to the full House.

“What e-mail is going to do is, it’s going to level the playing field between powerful interest groups and citizen groups,” says Gary Marx, field director of the Christian Coalition of Indiana. “It’s giving one person the ability to throw a large stone in a pond, rather than just dipping their toe in and making a small ripple.”

There is little doubt that organizations like the Christian Coalition have influenced political debates through their on-line advocacy work, but non-profit officials are divided on how effective e-mail is as a means of communication with elected officials.

Some experts say that advocates can force legislators through sheer magnitude to take heed of e-mail, while others contend that e-mail is yet to be accepted as a legitimate means of communication by many on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures.

“Unless you’re the representative for Silicon Valley, or the kingdom of Microsoft, you’re not going to care about e-mail,” says Mr. Price of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Ed Schwartz, president of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values, in Philadelphia, and author of Net Activism: How Citizens Use the Internet, argues that activists should send e-mail only to their own representatives if they hope to make a difference. “Telling people to send mail here, there, and everywhere is not only ineffective, it’s destructive,” Mr. Schwartz says.

A case in point is the experience of Rep. David Dreier, a California Republican. Mr. Dreier initially posted an e-mail address so that people could send him their views electronically. But the Congressman’s mailbox became so jammed with junk mail that he decided to shut it down after six months.

“Literally 99 per cent of the messages were spammed e-mail messages from outside of the district and the state,” says Vincent Randazzo, legislative director for Mr. Dreier. “It was just a complete waste.”

Because such episodes have made legislators wary of the Internet, many non-profit officials say that on-line advocacy can only work when it is intertwined with real-world activities such as protests and in-person Congressional visits.

Audrie Krause founded Net Action (http://www.netaction.org) in San Francisco in 1996 to help non-profit groups take advantage of on-line advocacy opportunities. She was spurred in part by the failure of Internet activists to halt passage by Congress of the Communications Decency Act, despite vigorous on-line protests. The legislation — which was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court — made it a crime to publish “indecent” material on the Internet.

Ms. Krause believes that if on-line activists had spent a little more time off line, the legislation might never have passed.

“It’s a battle we could have avoided,” Ms. Krause wrote on the NetAction Web site, “had we stepped away from our computers long enough to try a few oldfashioned organizing tactics — like making phone calls, handing out flyers on street corners, speaking to community groups, organizing rallies, knocking on doors, and building coalitions with other constituencies.”

To avoid seeing on-line protests fall into this cyber-void, many organizations have found ways to tie their Internet efforts to other activities.

The Rainforest Action Network, in San Francisco, is known for guerrilla tactics like unfurling banners from buildings and chaining activists to cars. But the group has also used its Web site (http://www.ran.org) to besiege such adversaries as Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electric with faxes, and it has even incorporated its on-line fund-raising efforts into its action campaigns. For example, the Web site notes that a $400 donation will help Rainforest Action Network “pay for a giant banner, perfect for hanging off a skyscraper,” and that a $200 contribution will “help fund the equipment needed to lock two activists safely and securely to the side of a ship or building.” The group brings in as much as $1,000 per month from the site.

20/20 Vision, an advocacy group in Washington that urges its members to spend 20 minutes each month attempting to influence federal policies on peace and environmental issues, has used the Internet to help infiltrate talk-radio shows — often a haven for conservative opinion makers. Through its “Vigilant Visionaries” e-mail network, 20/20 Vision distributes potential topics and questions for advocates to raise on local call-in shows. (Its site can be found at http://www.2020vision.org.)

For instance, last month 20/20 Vision sent out a “Roots on the Radio” alert to activists in nine states encouraging them to call radio programs on March 23. That was the six-month anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate has not yet voted on.

As on-line technologies continue to change on an almost daily basis, so do the opportunities for activists.

One such tool is “portable document format” files. This format allows data to be posted on Web sites exactly as if it came from a printer. Visitors can then print out high-quality posters, flyers, or brochures directly from a site and not incur any costs other than the price of paper. For charities with chapters throughout the country, the technology offers a fast, efficient way to distribute materials to constituents.

The American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org), based in New York, has used this technology to distribute its “bust card” to constituents. The “bust card” lays out the rights of citizens who are stopped by the police on the highway, taken in for questioning at the police station, or visited at home by officers. The A.C.L.U. hopes that people will print out the “bust card” and carry it around with them.

“I’m not sure that this is going to become the killer application for advocacy, but we’ve been able to try some things that we otherwise would not have given serious consideration to,” says Lynn K. Decker, coordinator of on-line programs for the A.C.L.U.

The A.C.L.U. and other organizations are finding that each new program or piece of software that is developed presents new opportunities for advocacy groups to advance their missions.

“The Internet is a tool that people with advocacy backgrounds can easily adapt to their efforts,” says Ms. Krause of NetAction. “But it’s not a substitute for other forms of outreach. It’s not in and of itself going to solve any social problems.”