LIVE from Detroit: Workers Organizing Online: What We’ve Learned and What We’re Learning

This ses­sion at Net­roots Nation is led by Elana Levin who is Direc­tor of Online Orga­niz­ing at Make the Road Action Fund.

Ken­zo Shi­ba­ta began by speak­ing about the bat­tle he led against Rahm Emanuel’s tac­tics in attempt­ing to bust the teach­ers’ union in Chica­go. Shi­ba­ta cre­at­ed a video asso­ci­at­ing Emanuel with the Tea Par­ty in an attempt to embar­rass Emanuel over his anti-union tac­tics. The video cost very lit­tle but made a big impact.

Sara Stef­fens is speak­ing about work­ing in social media for an orga­ni­za­tion. Many involved in social media with­in an orga­ni­za­tion many times find them­selves becom­ing over­whelmed by requests. Typ­i­cal­ly only one per­son ends up han­dling all the social media for small­er orga­ni­za­tions. The key is to try to spread the respon­si­bil­i­ty and train oth­ers on it so that efforts do not become bot­tle­necked, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the respon­si­ble per­son is unavail­able due to unfore­seen circumstances.

Build social net­work­ing capac­i­ty by hold­ing train­ing ses­sions to teach oth­ers in your orga­ni­za­tion about hash tag activism (Twit­ter) and oth­er use­ful social media activ­i­ties. Take advan­tage of those in your orga­ni­za­tion who are active on Face­book and oth­er social media plat­forms to uti­lize their skills for the organization.

When run­ning cam­paigns or devel­op­ing a new web­site, include mon­ey in the bud­get for train­ing oth­ers in the skills to help sup­port the effort.

Levin brought up an exam­ple of orga­niz­ing low-wage bank work­ers. Online orga­niz­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Face­book, was much more effec­tive than tra­di­tion­al meth­ods, such as door­belling and phone bank­ing. It is eas­i­er to find who works for a par­tic­u­lar employ­er on Face­book because many share where they work on Face­book. Face­book pages cre­at­ed around a cause are still very effec­tive even though recent Face­book changes lim­it the posts that the page fans see on their news feed. Face­book pho­tos with memes are also very eye catch­ing and effective.

Email­ing plat­forms such as Sal­sa are very use­ful because they include track­ing of emails and records who opens the emails. You can eas­i­ly see how well your email posts are being read.