Community Organizing by Email: Needle Exchange Mobilization Example

Last week's events around needle exchange provide an example of how email can be used for political mobilization--and suggest ways to use this medium effectively.

On April 21--the day after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced its finding that needle exchange was effective in preventing HIV transmission without increasing drug use, but that Federal funding of these programs would still be banned--USA Today conducted a reader poll on the funding issue, through its Web site (http:www.usatoday.com). Such polls are clearly unreliable for estimating public opinion (even when, like this one, they have software to prevent people from voting repeatedly). But they do show the effectiveness of each side in getting its supporters mobilized, which can be at least as important.

Early in the morning only 25% of 4500 votes supported needle exchange, with almost all of the rest opposed. Throughout the day a flurry of emails went out--we received 20 (not counting duplicates), even though we are not on needle-exchange lists--and by late evening the vote had completely turned around and was more than 68% in favor.

Apparently no one involved had any advance notice, and yet this entire mobilization took place within a single day. The first email, as far as we can determine, was sent in the morning by Project Inform's Treatment Action Network (TAN), which heard about the poll from a member who saw it in the newspaper or on the Web; this alert went to about 350 members who tend to be very active, and who forwarded it to others.

At about the same time the AIDS Action Council sent its alert on the poll to a fax list of several thousand AIDS organizations. Fax alerts may not work as well as email, because it is much harder for recipients to forward them to their own lists; but in this case the document was short, because those involved already knew the issues, so action alerts could easily be typed from the fax into email, with no need to re-enter long background papers.

An analysis of the changing vote during the day suggests that after the emails were out, the Yes votes outnumbered the No by about seven to one--compared to three to one the opposite way before the email mobilization.

Here are some conclusions we drew:

* What makes email work is people, not software or massive mailing lists. Almost all of the email we received was from persons or organizations we knew, which made it compelling. Just automating the process and sending to strangers produces spam, not effective mobilization.

* Several individuals who emailed us also sent their entire list of recipients. That is often a bad idea, because people can get unwanted email if the list goes astray. But in this case it showed us that many of the individuals had personal activist lists consisting of several dozen (mostly people, but also including organizations, and addresses of specialized email lists which would further distribute the messages to persons unlikely to have received it already). And the fact that these senders still included their personal activist email list with their message suggests that those involved know and trust each other.

* The structure of this one-day, decentralized, effective mobilization was as follows:

- The issue was particularly important to many people.

- It was well known to them, so it needed no lengthy background paper (which would stop many busy recipients).

- There was an easy way to act--without needing to compose a letter, without spending money, and without any illusion that one must be some kind of expert in the subject in order to respond.

- The first organizations and individuals to get the word out were able to move rapidly without advance notice.

- Then other organizations and individuals (often with personal lists of dozens) carried out the main part of the mobilization, usually quoting the earlier emails but also including their own messages urging their friends and colleagues to vote. Established email distribution lists like AIDSACT allowed further conversation, including those who did not have large activist lists of their own. [For more information on AIDSACT, send email to listproc@critpath.org, with "info aidsact"--without the quotes--in the first line.]

- All these communications were between people who know and respect each other, who already had working relationships.

- The result is that thousands of interested individuals each received many communications from friends and colleagues urging them to vote that day in the poll. And thousands did vote.

[Any email action alert should have an expiration date, so that copies will not keep being redistributed indefinitely, long after they are useful; here the USA Today poll was only for one day, so the expiration was implicit. Also, requests for a Web or email response should include the entire computer address--which will provide a "hot link" in most email software, allowing users to vote or otherwise respond without leaving their email session.]

The bottom line is that to respond so effectively on such short notice, the community needed two things. First, one or more major organizations (or possibly unaffiliated individuals) must be paying attention, be able to move quickly, and have large lists of constituents so that they can reach many interested people immediately. Second--and at least equally important--there must be many individuals and organizations who can personalize the message and pass it on to their friends and colleagues.

This whole mobilization had essentially zero financial cost. Therefore there were no delays to approve spending, and when an organization could not make a decision immediately, people could act on their own. Without spending any money, thousands of people across the country were mobilized to act together--in less than a day.

Here is a way for communities to defend themselves in a world of big money, power, and institutions which are often deaf or corrupt, and repeatedly run amuck. Committed individuals are central, not machinery. No matter where they live, individuals and small groups can make a difference through building their own constituencies on issues that matter to them.