when we're petitioning we try to estimate the number of petitions in order to get a certain number of people ...say... to come to a meeting. you get 192 petitions signed - about half of those (96) will have phone numbers - about half of these numbers you'll be able to make contact with aperson (48) - of these, 24 will actionally talk to you. 12 people will say they'll come (to the meeitng). 6 will actually show up.
(ok, pause it. remember the scene in fight club where "jack" (ed norton) is on the plane telling an older woman the calculation that his insurance company uses to determine the safety rating of a car? (as we view a car that's been burnt to a crisp and listen to the workers joke about how the fat burned to the seat would be a good modern art exhibit...) "if a x b x c = x, and x is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." (are there a lot of these kinds of accidents? // you wouldn't believe) and she's like 'what car company do you work for?' and he says "a major one." i feel kinda like that about this law of halves calculation. just to set the scene.)
that makes sense, right? i can get (at low estimates) about 15 petitions signed in an hour - so it would take 10 of us just over an hour to get 192. this system of numbers is one of the main things we base our days around. the law of halves is something we almost live by as organizers. //this// is why i don't want to be an organizer. 10 people just spent about an hour and a half talking to more than 200 people and we end up forging 6 relationships where people are interested in coming to a fun event with free food. we 'accost' people in the street, see if we can grab their interest with one line ( i.e. "got a second for the environment?" (which i've never used, because i don't think "the environment" exists like that. that's perhaps a longer story) or "have you / are you interested / heard of global warming?" "would you like to sign a petition?" (said as you offer them a clipboard), etc.), get them to sign a piece of paper while encouraging them to write their phone number and check the box that says "i'm interested in volunteering" while saying "don't worry, we won't contact you in any way unless you check that box" and bating them with credit from the volutneer office at their school (yeah, we actually hooked that up). there. that's what i do most of the day. then...after we get back to the hotel, we count up all the checked boxes (notice: checked boxes...these are our volunteer's phone numbers.), divide them up and everyone starts calling people to see if they'll volunteer (we call this phonebanking).
i realize i'm being cynical and overly negative about this stuff. perhaps a bit overdramatic about it with the fight club scene. i guess i should admit that i don't //completely// loathe it. we do reach a lot of people and at least share the idea of global warming with some people who have never heard about it. we are making progress with the candidates, too. ron klein (the democrat) finally said he'd agree to the waxman safe climate act, the "global warming legislation" currently up for disscusison. jon (our leader/teacher/etc) and jack also got interviewed by the media. (oh, and i'd also like to semi-reationalize my cynicism by saying that maybe it's just a misguided questioning of the status quo/system/the man)
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Greenpeace IV: part 2
since when do we need anything plastic? since the marketing campaign? who runs these campaigns? what do they want from us? why do we listen to them? there was a guest speaker - we invited a professor - at our meeting last night - and she was really radical about endiong global warming. she said we never should buy another car, stop using plastic, become vegetarian, and only have 1 baby per person. i don't disagree with any of these - plus, she's bulidng an eco-community in belize - but she made me think about our completely unnecessary dependence on plastic, electricity, fossil fuels. yeah, we have those technologies, but they don't /need/ to be part of our everyday lives! also, during that meeting i talked to a guy who seemed to be buddhist or daoist, teaches qi gong and is raki certified. and he reminded me of some things i know but have been organizationally trained to forget or look past.
greenpeace
i'm in washington dc, florida, and amsterdam from sept. 18 to dec. 15 working with the greenpeace organizing term. here's the blog: http://arilikeairygot.blogspot.com/
enjoy at your will.
enjoy at your will.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Greenpeace IV: part 1
i feel like a lot of times the things we're doing aren't by choice. we aren't self-led. i think this is what's getting to me? having to fill this out or get people to do somthing or try and figure out how what i want works for people rather than starting from them and what they want. this gets to me. i don't feel like i've made any personal relationships outside of this group. it's hard working with people on that level. if people aren't the force i'm scared. petitioning is effective i guess; it gets people superficially aware and asks them to take an action.
i'm tired of people just trying to get what they want from me. i don't want to have that kind of relationship with others.
we should never sacrifice humanity, emotion, personality, character, for effectiveness. this is not for me. screw the details about how many petitions to get, i love people, people are the power, the movement. screw any movement that doesn't utilize this. this is why i prefer consensus over majority. i will and need to be more creative about entertaining minority views. majority is clearly more effective, but if that was the case with movements, why would the minority ever stand up? it seems like, in a lot of cases, the numerical minority is the ethical/moral majority. ...or that, perhaps most interestingly, the minority actually is the majority but we just can't see it because of how a particular issue is framed. (this, i hope to explore after we finish the book we're currently reading: don't think of an elephant by george lakoff)
if no one likes phonebanking, why aren't we more creative about them?
i'm tired of people just trying to get what they want from me. i don't want to have that kind of relationship with others.
we should never sacrifice humanity, emotion, personality, character, for effectiveness. this is not for me. screw the details about how many petitions to get, i love people, people are the power, the movement. screw any movement that doesn't utilize this. this is why i prefer consensus over majority. i will and need to be more creative about entertaining minority views. majority is clearly more effective, but if that was the case with movements, why would the minority ever stand up? it seems like, in a lot of cases, the numerical minority is the ethical/moral majority. ...or that, perhaps most interestingly, the minority actually is the majority but we just can't see it because of how a particular issue is framed. (this, i hope to explore after we finish the book we're currently reading: don't think of an elephant by george lakoff)
if no one likes phonebanking, why aren't we more creative about them?
Friday, October 20, 2006
Greenpeace III
Hey.
I know - it's been a while since I last sent out a mass email about the state of my being here in DC. I guess it's been busy - I mean, like we all are, of course, a.k.a. I just haven't made time to sit down, think about what's going on in the context of my other lives, and then tell everyone about it. It's a little weird, feeling like I'm addressing some large audience, at the podium.
But nonetheless:
We've been doing a lot of "phonebanking" lately - calling numbers in Florida to ask people to put a (free) sign in their yard that says "Stop Global Warming" and asking them to call their Congressional candidates. It's kind of hard to have someone hang up the phone or say "no" when I ask if global warming is something they're concerned about. ...repeatedly. Phonebanking kind of helps me connect in my head how an individual can make a difference. It feels really good to get one person to call and tell their congressman that they care about global warming. It's something so small but when done on a mass scale it does make a difference. I called one of the candidate's offices and the secretary said that a lot of people had been calling for the same reason and if I thought there was some kind of campaign...it was pretty sweet that we were having an effect at that office.
A lot of us, though, are like, "What the crap? Global warming is a giant problem, what good is it to make a few calls?" It's easy to get defeated because of the scope of the problem and most people's inability to care about the it. That's what I think it is -- an inability -- because people simply can't relate to the phrase 'global warming.' We just finished a memoir from the civil rights by John Lewis and a few hours ago had a book discussion. It's really interesting to compare the two movements. In the civil rights movement, the "enemy" (or the target) was obvious - all the time people were exposed to overt racism, violence, sheer brutality, in the face of nonviolence. Seeing a white cop beat the crap out of a black citizen is powerful, you can feel that. You are actually /affected/ by the problem.
But something like 'global warming.' Does that, honestly, conjure up any tingly feeling at the back of your neck, goosebumps, or stir your stomach? Maybe, if you're really in touch with a global view of the problem - maybe if you've seen a polar bear drown, coral reefs bleached, indigenous peoples starving, similar powerful images, maybe then you can feel it. But probably not. Probably you're not viscerally affected by the idea of renewable energy, photovoltaic cells. You're probably not smiling, excited - finally, our people will be liberated from the oppressive regime of...coal power. Nah.
After our first phonebank, I was not in a good mood. "How could people /not/ care about global warming?!?" As I calmed down and was waiting in the subway station I began to see a different question -- "How do you even talk to people about global warming?" I started talking to the woman next to me about it -- "Do you believe in global warming?" is what I started with I think. She told me a lot - she says that she thinks why people don't act is because they don't know how, or don't have the capability. Well I've been thinking about how to approach people about global warming for about a week now...and I have no answers, because I think the question's unclear and doesn't promote a solution. This morning I realized that the question is more like "How /can/ people care about global warming?" My job as an [organizer] is to show people how they care, because I believe they do. And I must. I feel that for every second I don't believe people care, that the American public (or humans across the world) are lazy, apathetic, and simply do not care -- for every second of this thinking -- that second is wasted. That second is frittered away fighting something that's not real. But when I think that people do have some capacity to care, to act, they have potential, a speck of truth - somewhere - and this is what I need to start speaking to. This is what inspires people.
And inspire people is what I'll do.
But I knew this already.
I know - it's been a while since I last sent out a mass email about the state of my being here in DC. I guess it's been busy - I mean, like we all are, of course, a.k.a. I just haven't made time to sit down, think about what's going on in the context of my other lives, and then tell everyone about it. It's a little weird, feeling like I'm addressing some large audience, at the podium.
But nonetheless:
We've been doing a lot of "phonebanking" lately - calling numbers in Florida to ask people to put a (free) sign in their yard that says "Stop Global Warming" and asking them to call their Congressional candidates. It's kind of hard to have someone hang up the phone or say "no" when I ask if global warming is something they're concerned about. ...repeatedly. Phonebanking kind of helps me connect in my head how an individual can make a difference. It feels really good to get one person to call and tell their congressman that they care about global warming. It's something so small but when done on a mass scale it does make a difference. I called one of the candidate's offices and the secretary said that a lot of people had been calling for the same reason and if I thought there was some kind of campaign...it was pretty sweet that we were having an effect at that office.
A lot of us, though, are like, "What the crap? Global warming is a giant problem, what good is it to make a few calls?" It's easy to get defeated because of the scope of the problem and most people's inability to care about the it. That's what I think it is -- an inability -- because people simply can't relate to the phrase 'global warming.' We just finished a memoir from the civil rights by John Lewis and a few hours ago had a book discussion. It's really interesting to compare the two movements. In the civil rights movement, the "enemy" (or the target) was obvious - all the time people were exposed to overt racism, violence, sheer brutality, in the face of nonviolence. Seeing a white cop beat the crap out of a black citizen is powerful, you can feel that. You are actually /affected/ by the problem.
But something like 'global warming.' Does that, honestly, conjure up any tingly feeling at the back of your neck, goosebumps, or stir your stomach? Maybe, if you're really in touch with a global view of the problem - maybe if you've seen a polar bear drown, coral reefs bleached, indigenous peoples starving, similar powerful images, maybe then you can feel it. But probably not. Probably you're not viscerally affected by the idea of renewable energy, photovoltaic cells. You're probably not smiling, excited - finally, our people will be liberated from the oppressive regime of...coal power. Nah.
After our first phonebank, I was not in a good mood. "How could people /not/ care about global warming?!?" As I calmed down and was waiting in the subway station I began to see a different question -- "How do you even talk to people about global warming?" I started talking to the woman next to me about it -- "Do you believe in global warming?" is what I started with I think. She told me a lot - she says that she thinks why people don't act is because they don't know how, or don't have the capability. Well I've been thinking about how to approach people about global warming for about a week now...and I have no answers, because I think the question's unclear and doesn't promote a solution. This morning I realized that the question is more like "How /can/ people care about global warming?" My job as an [organizer] is to show people how they care, because I believe they do. And I must. I feel that for every second I don't believe people care, that the American public (or humans across the world) are lazy, apathetic, and simply do not care -- for every second of this thinking -- that second is wasted. That second is frittered away fighting something that's not real. But when I think that people do have some capacity to care, to act, they have potential, a speck of truth - somewhere - and this is what I need to start speaking to. This is what inspires people.
And inspire people is what I'll do.
But I knew this already.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
one of the lectures today was from a guy called kieren mulvaney who primarily works with the antarctica campaign. he said that greenpeace is unique because it is "prepared to make people uncomfortable, and to say what people don't want to hear"
...so i asked him...if the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change, a division of the UN) basically said that Americans need to make lifestyle changes to stop global warming, why is greenpeace not stepping up and saying this, rather than taking a fairly roundabout way of pressuring candidates to pass renewable legislation...?
his answer:
global warming "seems like science fiction"...in light of this, if greenpeace says, climate change is occuring, ice is melting in the arctic, so, pump up your tires and change your lightbulbs, there's a bit of a disconnect. lifestyle change and global warming are on different scales...so greenpeace is also good at beating up on the big guys; we're out to level the playing field to pave the way for the changes that need to be happening on the large scale.
...so i asked him...if the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change, a division of the UN) basically said that Americans need to make lifestyle changes to stop global warming, why is greenpeace not stepping up and saying this, rather than taking a fairly roundabout way of pressuring candidates to pass renewable legislation...?
his answer:
global warming "seems like science fiction"...in light of this, if greenpeace says, climate change is occuring, ice is melting in the arctic, so, pump up your tires and change your lightbulbs, there's a bit of a disconnect. lifestyle change and global warming are on different scales...so greenpeace is also good at beating up on the big guys; we're out to level the playing field to pave the way for the changes that need to be happening on the large scale.
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