Busting my own bubbles
May 28, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , trackback
If you are like me, you get half a dozen of email messages a week, asking you to sign petitions for environmental justice, poverty relief, children’s health protection, etc., etc.. What do you do? Sign them? Ignore until later? Delete right away?
It all started when I received an online petition that intended to stop inhumanely hunting down gray wolves. Being a softie with almost all animals, I gladly signed it without asking how my signature would be used and where the petition would go. Afterwards, vaguely I felt that I did something, not sure what.
Then mysteriously, my petition email messages started to multiply themselves. I must have made the mistake of hastily hitting a submit button. Remember all those little checked boxes? They often put you on the list of other petition lists.
It has gotten to the point that I get one everyday. Now you ask, how long does it take me to sign a petition? Truthfully, no more than five minutes if I don’t bother reading in detail what I am signing for. Fifteen minutes if I am diligent enough to get some background information. A few hours if I want to understand the whole story from various angles.
Naturally few people have a few hours to spare every day to research the details about any given petition. So I became an “armchair petitioner”, without remembering a whole lot about what I was advocating for. Again, I have a vague notion that I am minimally potentially doing something useful. Whatever it maybe it is probably worth 5 minutes of my time every day.
Then last week, I received a petition on protecting right whales. I have seen right whales frolicking close to a beach. As far as marine mammals are concerned, they are slow pokes and easy to hunt. That’s why they’ve been driven to the brink of extinction. Clicking, I was ready to sign another petition. But this time something caught my eye.
The petition was to “Dick Cheney, Vice President” And the target number of signatures was 10,000.
Seriously?! THE Dick Cheney who famously said, “so?” when he responded to the fact that majority of the Americans now opposed the Iraqi war. ‘Ya think he cares about saving right whales? ‘Ya think 10,000 online signatures would impress him to sign some sort of protection agreement?
Please! This is when I started thinking about the effectiveness of online petitioning and its merits and drawbacks.
Obviously the primary reason online petition is so popular is its ease of implementation and ease of gathering online signatures for the originators. On the receiving end, the option of e-petitions offers people like me who want to “fix” the imperfections of the world in the comfort of my home.
A few clicks, I am on my way to be outraged about an unjust situation and demand a solution. However as an old adage often reminds us, this is probably a case of “no pain no gain”. I put in little effort, in return the results are likely to be close to negligible.
To start out, are petitions effective instrument to enable social changes? The assessments tilt toward no-so-much. When it comes to leveraging the online community, the scale seems to tip even more to the ineffective end. The e-petitions are taken less seriously because email addresses are fairly easy to forge by petition originators. In addition, petitions, including internet petitions, seem to only gather a bit of steam when the number of signatures gets to a certain level. 10,000 emails do not begin to call anyone’s attention.
Another cardinal rule I have so far completely ignored is the petition recipient. Is this right person? Dick Cheney is clearly not the right person to sympathize with right whales. Is this person a decision maker? A powerful influencer? Otherwise the petition will lay waste in someone’s inbox.
Then I also need to ask for the outcome from petition originators. After signing a petition, do I receive a report on what the originator does with the signatures? What is the outcome from the petition?
Once I asked myself these questions, I realized that 90% of my “armchair activism” was unfortunately a waste of my time (no matter how little time) and the internet bandwidth. One of the hidden objectives of online petitions is to raise awareness of the recipients. For most petitions, that is the only objective accomplished. Surely the right whale originator did not expect to move Cheney. The petition has only served to raise the awareness that these gentle giants are in trouble.
So what do I do next time I get a petition email? In fact I have a few in my inbox right now.
Rather than vaguely feeling that I may accomplish something (and now knowing that little is accomplished), I am planning to focus on one or two a month, understand the issues and ask for the outcomes from the petition originators. I will write personal letters and make personal phone calls. Yes, they take more time and I can advocate far fewer issues, but the results are likely to be more effective.
Truthfully perhaps the rethinking of online petitioning is a call for real action – participate in my city environmental planning and events to enact local changes.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
Cindy, great idea. Calling or writing your own personal email or letter is FAR more effective than signing a petition.
Plus, blindly signing petitions is problematic. I do it too, and sometimes it’s too my detriment. For example, one organization might send you an email being like, “Save the pig!” and tell you about how these heartless people are about to kill the pig population on some island. So you’ll sign the petition because like, you like pigs. But then you’ll find out that the reason the pigs are being killed is because the pigs are killing all the birds eggs on the island and the birds are an endangered species.
The point is, sometimes there’s more to a story than meets the eye. That’s why we have to do our homework.
Great post Cindy - this is definitely what I’d call moving from “action” to action! One of the hardest things I find to do is to focus on just one or two things and do them well, instead of spreading myself so thin that all I have time for is online petitions and the like, which don’t have much of an effect.
I think if I were a legislator I would wonder if the same 10,000 people were signing everything, since the lists are computer generated.
IMHO, the worst part about online petitions is the illusion they create. Rather than becoming real activists, people may think that they have done their part and can therefore sit back. The reality is that 99% of the time, online peitions don’t accomplish a thing.
Okay, I might have changed my mind a little on this one. I was inspired by your post, so today, I called my rep in the US House for the first time. The person who picked up the phone never took my name, nor asked my address, nor seemed to care if I was or was not a constituent. Since it was a call, there will be no record of what I said. Does she keep a record of the calls that came in and what they are about? Maybe, but who knows. And who picks up the phone? Probably a really low level assistant, right?
So I’m thinking maybe calls aren’t really that useful. Maybe email and regular mail is the best way to go. Just personalized email.
Also? Calling your legislator is very scary. Not sure why, but my heart is still beating fast.
Calling is really scary. I did phone banking before and always hoped that no one was home. So bravo for trying!
I still think that a phone call received by a lowly assistant carriers way way way more weight than an online petition.
I wish some government policy insider could write a “tell-all” memoir on how public voices are heard and how the voices are weighed.