One Big Rally?
A couple of years ago, I attended the 20th anniversary dinner of the National Union of Students, all over the doors as people entered the hall where it was being held there were posters of past campaigns that had been run over the years, almost all of them dealing with government policy. I found this to be a bit of a dampener because as I looked at them, I realised that not a single campaign had achieved its stated aims.
One of the other things they all had in common was that they had all been organised along the same lines – set piece rallies that had had their direction and usually their dates set at the national conference of the Union and often this is mirrored in boarder campaigns outside of student politics. As the saying goes – nothing is more stupid than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different outcome.
Having been to more than my fair share of student rallies in my time it has to be noted that most of them are small in the numbers they attract, even at what was by far the most pressing issue for the National Union of Students in recent years, the then Howard government’s introduction of voluntary student unionism (VSU), there was a clear reduction in the numbers of students attending the rallies as they wound on. Usually however the rallies are far smaller, Sydney and Melbourne would be doing well if they got 1000 students to come out and in other cities in Australia even 200 people would count as a great success, often in some cities the numbers were less than 100. One has to wonder why it is that so few students attend rallies. Of course there will be those who oppose the campaign behind them and there will those who are simply apathetic but a few points stand out.
Before embarking on any campaign, activists need to ask:
Is it widely felt?
Is it deeply felt?
Will people act on it?
They also need to do a SWOT analysis and at the end of the campaign, whether they succeed or failure they should sit down and come up with a written debrief on how things went, what worked, what didn’t (and why) and the lessons learned. All of this sounds too obvious for words but often in student politics preplanning is just not done and people launch into campaigning based on a resolution passed at national conference or their own (or their faction’s) ideas.
The rallies are often timed to be around lunch time, whilst some students are on campus and can spare a few hours to go protest something, a lot of them are either in class or at work, and so why have a rally at a time when many people who support the cause may not be able to come? What’s wrong with a weekend especially if you can get the media to come along and get the message out?
Success is often measured in how ‘correctly’ the campaign was run or how many people came to the rally rather than whether it achieved its aims, this has the potential to turn off many people who would otherwise get involved, what’s the point of campaigning the ‘correct’ way if it doesn’t work?
The campaign, its message and strategies are all decided either at national conference/education conference or out of head office in Trades Hall in Melbourne by a handful of people. Surely if a campaign seeks to engage large numbers of people, it has to empower them to make them feel that they have a personal stake in the campaign. Witness the way that the Obama campaign relied on grassroots campaigning and activism, there were flyers up in cities all over the US asking for people who wanted to help organise the campaign instead of leaving it to just a few party apparatchiks.
In essence, the method of organising we see in student politics is the same one that has been used since at least the time of the Suffragettes. Whilst their campaign had right on its side and was ultimately successful, I don’t think it can be said that it engaged working class women, perhaps women would have got the vote sooner if more of them were active on the campaign to get it. Similarly, the vast majority of students are either completely unaware or only slightly aware of the campaigns being run by NUS (or indeed of NUS itself) and the great majority remain unengaged.
So what can be done?
Rather than leaving it to the professional activists, aka campus/state/national office bearers to spread the word by handing out leaflets, lecture bashing and talking to students, why not try virally marketing it using Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in addition to these things? This method changes the dynamics of organising considerably from where they are now.
The focus of how campaigns are organised needs to shift from a top-down “the leadership has called on students to assemble at the following time and place” to a bottom-up one where people are going because they feel a sense of ownership about ‘their’ campaign and have at least some personal investment in it. We need to be empowering people to speak out for themselves rather than just listen to activists give speeches, hence communication must change from being basically bilateral (leadership talking to the students) to multilateral (students talking to each other and talking to the leadership). Whilst there does need to be leadership that is capable of speaking for the movement, a top-down approach to a campaign set away from the mass of the people it is hoping to engage clearly is not effective and activists should always be open to disruptions to the certainties of their role and the niche they’ve carved out for themselves.
Alternative methods of campaigning need to be considered – it’s not a matter of just handing out more leaflets or putting more posters, not everyone wants to go to a rally but they will sign a petition, fire off an email to their local MP or the like. These can be used to build awareness during a low cycle of political activism on a subject and provide useful databases of people who should then be asked for some sort of follow-up action – “thanks for signing our reformisty petition, now how about sending an email to your MP/Senator or coming to the rally next Saturday?” These databases can also easily keep people informed about what’s happening with the campaign. Rallies can be useful as a show of strength at key times in a campaign but they aren’t the only method for campaigning out there or always the right one. The problem is student politicians can be remarkably doctrinaire about how to campaign, in my experience, ironically the further left you go on political spectrum, the more doctrinaire they are. Radicals thus become conservatives when it comes to running campaigns. Reformist campaigning tactics may not have all the heady excitement of large groups of people marching, chanting slogans and carrying banners but they are useful tools to build campaigns
The direction of the campaign must be flexible, responsive to developments and shift depending on how the campaign is going – if something isn’t working, why keep doing it? Try a different approach.
Build on the successes you have, last year for instance, the NUS Queer Department got 30,000 people to sign a petition calling for same-sex marriage in Australia, if there had been follow up, perhaps asking if people wanted to be kept informed about the campaign, future Queer Officers would have had database of tens of thousands of people who would have been prepared to make some sort of stand in favour marriage equality when things picked up on that front – a figure that would totally eclipse the roughly 3000 supporters of the Australian Christian Lobby, it was a shame that something so obvious was not done.
Finally, whilst it’s always helpful to have the government on side, the success or failure of campaigns should not depend on who’s in office but on the power of the movement they create in society.
I don’t pretend that I’ve just outlined all the answers for the problems facing students (and indeed others) campaigning for social change but since stand on the shoulders of others when it comes to the changes we shape in the word we would do well to from learn from past failures and past successes.
One of the other things they all had in common was that they had all been organised along the same lines – set piece rallies that had had their direction and usually their dates set at the national conference of the Union and often this is mirrored in boarder campaigns outside of student politics. As the saying goes – nothing is more stupid than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different outcome.
Having been to more than my fair share of student rallies in my time it has to be noted that most of them are small in the numbers they attract, even at what was by far the most pressing issue for the National Union of Students in recent years, the then Howard government’s introduction of voluntary student unionism (VSU), there was a clear reduction in the numbers of students attending the rallies as they wound on. Usually however the rallies are far smaller, Sydney and Melbourne would be doing well if they got 1000 students to come out and in other cities in Australia even 200 people would count as a great success, often in some cities the numbers were less than 100. One has to wonder why it is that so few students attend rallies. Of course there will be those who oppose the campaign behind them and there will those who are simply apathetic but a few points stand out.
Before embarking on any campaign, activists need to ask:
Is it widely felt?
Is it deeply felt?
Will people act on it?
They also need to do a SWOT analysis and at the end of the campaign, whether they succeed or failure they should sit down and come up with a written debrief on how things went, what worked, what didn’t (and why) and the lessons learned. All of this sounds too obvious for words but often in student politics preplanning is just not done and people launch into campaigning based on a resolution passed at national conference or their own (or their faction’s) ideas.
The rallies are often timed to be around lunch time, whilst some students are on campus and can spare a few hours to go protest something, a lot of them are either in class or at work, and so why have a rally at a time when many people who support the cause may not be able to come? What’s wrong with a weekend especially if you can get the media to come along and get the message out?
Success is often measured in how ‘correctly’ the campaign was run or how many people came to the rally rather than whether it achieved its aims, this has the potential to turn off many people who would otherwise get involved, what’s the point of campaigning the ‘correct’ way if it doesn’t work?
The campaign, its message and strategies are all decided either at national conference/education conference or out of head office in Trades Hall in Melbourne by a handful of people. Surely if a campaign seeks to engage large numbers of people, it has to empower them to make them feel that they have a personal stake in the campaign. Witness the way that the Obama campaign relied on grassroots campaigning and activism, there were flyers up in cities all over the US asking for people who wanted to help organise the campaign instead of leaving it to just a few party apparatchiks.
In essence, the method of organising we see in student politics is the same one that has been used since at least the time of the Suffragettes. Whilst their campaign had right on its side and was ultimately successful, I don’t think it can be said that it engaged working class women, perhaps women would have got the vote sooner if more of them were active on the campaign to get it. Similarly, the vast majority of students are either completely unaware or only slightly aware of the campaigns being run by NUS (or indeed of NUS itself) and the great majority remain unengaged.
So what can be done?
Rather than leaving it to the professional activists, aka campus/state/national office bearers to spread the word by handing out leaflets, lecture bashing and talking to students, why not try virally marketing it using Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in addition to these things? This method changes the dynamics of organising considerably from where they are now.
The focus of how campaigns are organised needs to shift from a top-down “the leadership has called on students to assemble at the following time and place” to a bottom-up one where people are going because they feel a sense of ownership about ‘their’ campaign and have at least some personal investment in it. We need to be empowering people to speak out for themselves rather than just listen to activists give speeches, hence communication must change from being basically bilateral (leadership talking to the students) to multilateral (students talking to each other and talking to the leadership). Whilst there does need to be leadership that is capable of speaking for the movement, a top-down approach to a campaign set away from the mass of the people it is hoping to engage clearly is not effective and activists should always be open to disruptions to the certainties of their role and the niche they’ve carved out for themselves.
Alternative methods of campaigning need to be considered – it’s not a matter of just handing out more leaflets or putting more posters, not everyone wants to go to a rally but they will sign a petition, fire off an email to their local MP or the like. These can be used to build awareness during a low cycle of political activism on a subject and provide useful databases of people who should then be asked for some sort of follow-up action – “thanks for signing our reformisty petition, now how about sending an email to your MP/Senator or coming to the rally next Saturday?” These databases can also easily keep people informed about what’s happening with the campaign. Rallies can be useful as a show of strength at key times in a campaign but they aren’t the only method for campaigning out there or always the right one. The problem is student politicians can be remarkably doctrinaire about how to campaign, in my experience, ironically the further left you go on political spectrum, the more doctrinaire they are. Radicals thus become conservatives when it comes to running campaigns. Reformist campaigning tactics may not have all the heady excitement of large groups of people marching, chanting slogans and carrying banners but they are useful tools to build campaigns
The direction of the campaign must be flexible, responsive to developments and shift depending on how the campaign is going – if something isn’t working, why keep doing it? Try a different approach.
Build on the successes you have, last year for instance, the NUS Queer Department got 30,000 people to sign a petition calling for same-sex marriage in Australia, if there had been follow up, perhaps asking if people wanted to be kept informed about the campaign, future Queer Officers would have had database of tens of thousands of people who would have been prepared to make some sort of stand in favour marriage equality when things picked up on that front – a figure that would totally eclipse the roughly 3000 supporters of the Australian Christian Lobby, it was a shame that something so obvious was not done.
Finally, whilst it’s always helpful to have the government on side, the success or failure of campaigns should not depend on who’s in office but on the power of the movement they create in society.
I don’t pretend that I’ve just outlined all the answers for the problems facing students (and indeed others) campaigning for social change but since stand on the shoulders of others when it comes to the changes we shape in the word we would do well to from learn from past failures and past successes.