E-Campaigning Forum Take-aways

I had the chance to attend the E-Campaigners Forum in Oxford last week. I spent two days in workshops learning all sorts of exciting things about the world of online campaigning today. There were loads of things that looked really exciting and which I hope I’ll get to use someday, but I’ve written this with a focus on low-cash situations.

Sowing the seeds: Tax is Liberating

Its the 6th birthday of Graham’s Grumbles today! To celebrate, I’m posting something here which I wrote for Student Christian Movement‘s blog series leading in to their Seeds of Liberation conference.

Tax has always been a contentious topic. In 1773, Britain tried to force American colonists to pay taxes on tea imports. In an act of civil disobedience, crates of tea worth nearly £1million in today’s money were thrown off ships and into the harbour. What became known as the Boston Tea Party became a rallying cry for many on issues of who gets taxed, by whom and at what rates.

Citizens, Subjects or just Ordinary Folk?

In all forms of campaigning, there is a need to explain a common identity that motivates people to action. Whilst some campaigns automatically have an identity to appeal to (Black, Queer, etc.) and some groups make specific appeals (faith groups, for instance), the way we define generic collective humanity is important.

Tax Star Distraction

Read all about it: People You’ve Heard Of undertaking Massive Tax Fraud. We’ve had Jimmy Carr and a bunch of other stage figures out-ed as tax avoiders, or maybe even evaders. The problem was right on the end of our noses – our TV screens – all along. Is this a real story? Yes. Is it the real story? No. Its barely significant.

#RadFem2012: Exposure doesn’t make the media your friends

Its possible that far too much has already been said on the issue of the RadFem conference to possibly contribute anything more. Too many things have been taken and twisted beyond recognition and too few have said anything that really adds to what is becoming a very entrenched shouting match (though here lies a brilliant exception). But I think the analysis of this situation has lacked one critical perspective: the role of the media.

By their petitions shall ye know them…

I’ve been hearing a lot about petitions doing the rounds over coffee after Church services lately. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. But the choice of petitions often leaves a lot to be asked of a church’s priorities and a recent article on the Guardian site showed that this trend is spreading into other church-run activities, like playgroups.

Kony 2012

An awful lot has already been said about Kony 2012, the campaign to draw Westerners’ attention to a hitherto rather forgotten warlord in Africa. Its covered the internet, and has received its share of criticism, primarily its reliance on white people to tell an African story, the focus on lobbying US senators not Ugandan diplomats, and the connections with military interests. But where has this campaign even come from? Who’s actually asking us to give them a voice? Who’s paying the piper and thus calling the tune?

Too young to know?

Last Saturday I was out protesting against the Government’s Workfare program. It was, all in all, a good protest, though I have plenty of thoughts on strategy for the campaign in future. One incident stuck out to me – a scene of about five seconds that massively wound me up, in which a mother demanded I not give her daughter a flier. I responded as best I could, but her final words on the matter were “can’t you see she’s only 14?”.

Surviving life in two cultures

One of the debates about the Church and Christian life that recurs in Soul Survivor is the difference between trying to expand Christian Subculture and actually taking Jesus’ messages of love, justice, forgiveness, etc to the people. Its a critical debate on one level, especially for a church so laden with its own peculiar culture that is butting up against many other cultures.

Phone Hacking: a crisis of agency for the rest of us

The unearthing of a hacking scandal at NewsCorp and the massive media circus of Murdoch ‘on trial’ before the commons select committee provided a spectacle that held what felt like the whole population in some sort of trance. It felt as if the whole of the establishment was just about to cave in on itself. The problem, and the reason I found the whole episode so difficult to deal with, was the impossible task of finding a way to do anything.