Online Activism: Taking it to the Tweets

Patrick Ruffini wrote that “The Rightroots Needs Less Meta and More Purpose.” I’ve recently been involved in two Twitter campaigns which have convinced me that the proper combination of meta and purpose can lead to political success. 

Free the Hops

Free the Hops is an organization behind a recently successful bill to allow beers with more than six percent alcohol (98 of the world's 100 top gourmet beers contain over six percent alcohol) to be sold in Alabama. After a hard fought four year Internet-based campaign, the wildly popular bill finally passed in Alabama’s lower legislative chamber.

When the bill hit the state Senate, one senator decided to filibuster the legislation. Every time the bill came up on the floor, he’d irritate his colleagues by preaching about the evils of alcohol. After years of hard work by thousands of activists, it looked like the bill was going to die. That’s when we decided to take it to the Tweets. 

Using this article as a base for our Twitter operations, we provided the following:

Right now, the only thing we can do is to contact Senator Erwin.  He's been unresponsive to telephone calls and e-mails on the topic, but he's recently started a Twitter account. One way beer enthusiasts and freedom lovers can make our voices heard is to raise awareness of the issue and engage in verbal battle with Senator Erwin through Twitter. 

As a matter of fact, Senator Erwin has bragged on his Twitter account about filibustering the bill.

If you don't have a Twitter account, it's very easy to use.  Simply sign up here and tweet away.

For those of you already tweeting (and the rest of you once you sign up), here are the necessary components your message should contain:

@SENATORERWIN #alpolitics #fth (insert your message here)

Here's a sample of one possible message you can use:

@SENATORERWIN #alpolitics #fth Please let the Senate vote on Free the Hops

We ensured that the message hit the #fth (Free the Hops) and #alpolitics hashtags. Quite a few Alabama journalists, bloggers and politicians track #alpolitics. We also sent out messages designed to hit other obvious hashtags, such as #beer, #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) and #tlot (Top Libertarians on Twitter).

Because we used the #alpolitics hashtag, our grassroots base had expanded from people in Alabama actively supporting the legislation to politically active people throughout the state. We spread the word on a lot of national channels, as well. As previously mentioned, we hit #TCOT and #TLOT. We also spread the message to Ron Paul supporters at #C4L and freedom-minded women at #SGP. We also ensured that people at #beer got the word several times, too.

All of a sudden, one state senator with a brand new Twitter account was being targeted by activists from around the country, and in the case of some beer enthusiasts, from around the world. Had Twitter been around in their times, Sun Tzu and Baron von Clausewitz would have certainly agreed with our tactics.

The Twitter campaign gained the attention of bloggers and journalists throughout the state. It was brought up at several state center-right coalition meetings. We’ve heard that Senator Erwin was receiving some grief from senior state Republicans because of his actions. We’ll probably never know whether it was political pressure or bladder pressure which caused Erwin to eventually leave the Senate floor, but he did. The bill was quickly brought up for a vote during his absence and it passed.

The next issue was whether Governor Bob Riley would sign the bill or not. Since he’d already sent out some mixed signals, we thought it was time to apply a bit more pressure. As with the first message, we used a new webpage for the basis of this phase of the Twitter campaign and spread the word about the page. Then we used Twitter to directly contact the governor. A few days later, he signed the bill.

One thing to keep in mind is that some politicians may not keep up with their Twitter accounts. They may use it as an automated feed for their articles or blog entries. They may have a staffer in charge of it.

Also, politicians are notoriously bad about not responding directly to constituents using Twitter. While I regularly “talk” with a wide variety of political personalities on Twitter, I’ve yet to have one senior elected official return a tweet.

In most cases, the politician will still get the message. In this case, we targeted a state legislator who seems to handle his own Twitter account and a Governor who shares the responsibility with a staffer.

The Audit the Fed Bill

This federal legislative example differs from the Alabama example I just offered because the two legislative targets covered don’t have Twitter accounts. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (HR 1207) currently enjoys 207 cosponsors.  It “directs the Comptroller General to complete, before the end of 2010, an audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and of the federal reserve banks, followed by a detailed report to Congress.”

As before, a web page was used as a starting point for operations. I’ll let my Twitter tag-team partner Shelly Roche lay the groundwork:

An impromptu HR 1207 Call-A-Thon kicked off last week on twitter after I saw my rep (Kratovil) STILL hadn't co-sponsored the bill. Much to my delight, he co-sponsored first thing the next morning!! We're keeping it going this week over on twitter, but I'm starting this post so you guys can add your non-compliant reps to the target list. 

We'll hit a few a day, and see if we can get the 28 11 we need for a majority! Thanks guys!!

It took 24 hours for this tweet:

My rep still won't sponsor HR 1207: Frank Kratovil 202.225.5311 - anyone up for a call-a-thon? #tlot #c4l #endthefed 

…to turn into this one:

STUNNING CALL-A-THON VICTORY!! RT @LibertyMaven Kratovil is now an HR1207 cosponsor! #endthefed #tlot #tcot // Who's next target?

Using Twitter, I responded to Roche and asked her to let me know when Alabama congressmen were going to be targeted. She did, and I sprang into action.

The first order of business was a quick retweet of her message, but one which used the #alpolitics hashtag so I could inform local folks that we were attempting to persuade Alabama Congressman Jo Bonner to support HR 1207.

Next, we quickly posted an action alert for people in Alabama on the Internet:

On Friday, we asked Congressman Jo Bonner whether he’ll be siding with the rest of Alabama’s Republican congressional delegation or siding with the Democrats on HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. 

Today, we have some national assistance in trying to persuade Congressman Bonner to become the 191st cosponsor of the bill. Right now, folks are getting the word out on Twitter to give Congressman Bonner a call.

I’d like to ask you to do two things:

1. If you have a Twitter account, help us get out the word.  It just takes a few seconds. If you don’t have a Twitter account, it just takes a few seconds to sign up and help us out. Once you get there, please retweet the following message: Today’s HR 1207 Call-A-Thon Target: Jo Bonner 202-225-4931 Details: http://bit.ly/LtSuF #tlot #tcot #alpolitics
2. Give Congressman Bonner a call at 202-225-4931 and ask him to co-sponsor HR 1207.

These calls are already making a difference and we only need 28 more co-sponsors for a solid majority.

After this posted (which automatically generated another tweet, of course), I called Bonner’s office and made my pitch. Then I called a couple of local friends to ask them to help put out the word. By the time I had completed the second call, I received the message (via Twitter, of course) that Congressman Bonner had just signed onto the bill.

After calling off the dogs, we moved on to our next congressional target.

Lessons Learned

1. Twitter limits your call to action to 140 characters. It’s important to have a web page or blog entry for people to reference which provides the necessary details and reasons for people to use Twitter to help your political cause.
2. Hashtags work. They enable you to expand your base from just your personal followers to large groups of people who share similar interests.
3. One NY Times headline can win, or lose, a political war. Only under the most extreme of circumstances will a tweet  have the same impact. Concentrating a whole lot of tweets on a vulnerable target can work wonders, though.
4. It’s nice to have a lot of followers, but not critical. If even a small handful of people start tweeting about the same thing in an organized manner (and use hashtags), it will look like a movement and others will quickly jump on board.
5. Just because a politician doesn’t seem to be paying attention, he or she probably is. They are very sensitive to how people perceive them in public. And if they aren’t paying attention, folks around them are and they’ll get the word anyway.

Twitter is a great tool to keep in your online political tool chest. It’s not going to win most of your political battles, but it certainly can come in handy from time to time.