K Street Cafe

First published on Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

You know something has had an impact on you when you’re still thinking about it weeks after the fact. And what happened recently on YouTube got me thinking.

Members of Congress and their staffs have gotten used to a world where a constituent writes a postal letter or e-mail or calls the office and the office responds in written form to the citizen’s concerns. One of the challenges that social media creates for congressional offices is that they can no longer just wait for constituent communication to come to them. They now need to monitor external sources to capture it all.

As Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers said in our “Inside the Hill” web series, “the world has changed.”

What punctuated this for me was the flurry of activity around a Senate vote regarding the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. Regardless of what side of this sensitive social issue you come down on, something happened that should be instructive to Members of Congress, advocacy organizations, and citizens alike.

The Service members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is an organization dedicated to ending DADT. They recently enlisted Lady Gaga, of…well…Lady Gaga fame, to create and post a YouTube video asking her considerable fan base to call their Senators to request an end to the ban on openly gay service members. This video is interesting from a number of perspectives, not the least of which is that, when she calls her Senators live in the video, she never actually gets through to either one because the volume of calls to the Senate’s phone system resulted in a busy signal from one and an at-capacity mailbox from the other. What happens next is even more interesting.

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Written by Kate Kaye, ClickZ Politics & Advocacy

The tea party movement, and the social media activism horse it rode in on, are both facing skepticism from influential thinkers including Malcolm Gladwell.

To Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and “Outliers,” online advocacy and cause-related actions in social media are moot compared to activism that propelled social upheavals like the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Social media evangelists, he wrote in this week’s The New Yorker, “seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.”

As Gladwell dismissed “the outsized enthusiasm for social media” in his essay, another leading thinker ripped into one of today’s most-hyped social media activism stories – that of the tea party movement’s vaunted follower counts.

Micah Sifry, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and a proponent of digital and social technologies in politics, challenged recent reports claiming Republicans are trouncing Democrats when it comes to their social media followings. Sifry argued in a recent post on PDF’s TechPresident site, “while I don’t doubt that there is more enthusiasm on the right side of the aisle about the coming November election, I don’t think the online metrics are really so lopsided.”

To read the entire article on ClickZ, click here.

First published on Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

This August, just prior to a Tea Party march in Washington, DC, a blogger who claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party published the DC home addresses of some Members of Congress.  The posting was part of a “Visitors Guide” to Washington.  Last summer it was people bringing firearms to congressional town hall meetings.  This summer it’s an open invitation to conduct a demonstration at elected officials’ homes.  “Feel free to protest,” the blogger added.

The last few years have seen an explosion in interest in advocacy, and that is generally a good thing.  A Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) survey of citizens found that 44% of adult Americans had contacted Congress within the last five years.  While this increased interest in exercising constitutional rights has value, one must keep in mind there is such a thing as “bad advocacy.”

CMF firmly believes that good advocacy results in good public policy.  Citizen advocates who can passionately and thoughtfully articulate how a pending policy will affect them as individuals or a group has a constructive effect on legislative outcomes.  One House Democrat said it to me this way: “The most effective way to influence a lawmaker is for a constituent to talk to a legislator about how the policy will affect the person or a particular group.”

For years, some groups and individuals have relished the act of interfering with the process of government or otherwise offending elected officials.  Shutting down the Senate phone system and protesting at the congressman’s home were viewed by the groups who used these tactics as victories in advocacy.  But what did they really accomplish?  Shouting at a Representative’s kids does little to curry favor or influence the legislator to support the group’s issue.  In fact, it is more likely to result in the legislator’s long-lived disdain for the group which organized the protest.

CMF strongly supports the right of citizens to “petition their government for a redress of grievances.”  That is why we created the Partnership for a More Perfect Union, which seeks to enrich relationships between Congress and citizens.  The right to “petition” Congress has very few limits (a Colorado court recently ruled that it is a constitutional right for a citizen to leave a pile of doggie doo with a letter to a Member of Congress).  But that doesn’t mean extreme measures are effective or wise.

Civility in advocacy is more effective than annoyance.  Public officials respect those who respect them and the process they represent.  We encourage groups who seek to influence legislative outcomes to employ reasonable and proven methods; encourage advocates to politely and persistently persuade legislators; and refrain from tactics that appear malicious or violent.

President John F. Kennedy said, “So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.”  That advice is not just about politeness, it’s more likely to yield results.

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Originally published on PMPU.org.

Clay Johnson, formerly of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote in his blog recently that “online petitions are a sham.”  He even used some of our data about congressional mail volumes to help make his point.  While I think that he makes some really keen observations and puts his finger on some of the key challenges, not all online advocacy is the same.

The Congressional Management Foundation has done research with both the senders (citizens) and the receivers (congressional offices) and majorities of both believe that advocacy campaigns are good for our country.  In fact, 73% of internet users who had contacted Congress in the last five years confirmed that they thought advocacy campaigns were good for Democracy.  On the Hill, 53% of the congressional staff that responded to our survey confirmed that even they (the ones on the front lines of helping Members manage communications) thought that advocacy campaigns directed at Congress were a good thing.

What’s more, our survey of internet users found that interest groups played an integral role in how citizens learn about and communicate with Congress.  Citizens join interest groups, visit their websites, and participate in their online petitions to learn about the issues they care about and to take collective action.  However, interest groups need to realize that they occupy a key role in the connection between their activists and the Members of Congress who represent them.  With that role comes responsibility.  On the Hill, congressional staff do not have the tools that they need to quickly distill meaning from the overwhelming volume of communications that they receive on any given day.

Clay is right that there are bad actors that don’t have the facilitation of genuine dialogue as their primary motivation.  However, we can’t let a minority of interest groups negate the critical and valuable—both to citizens and Congress—role that interest groups and grassroots advocates play.  He’s also right that there are currently some significant obstacles to meaningful communication.

It is specifically because there are these challenges, that we recently launched The Partnership For a More Perfect Union to help improve the relationship and communication between citizens and Members of Congress.  Through the Communicating with Congress Project we are seeking ways to improve the channel of communication between citizens and their elected officials because it’s good for citizens, Members, and democracy.

The online grassroots community has wisely begun a discussion of ethics lately. A February forum at George Washington University was a solid kick-off to the dialogue. An ethical examination would be a healthy exercise when one considers the strategies, tactics and motives surrounding the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle to fill the seat of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

The recent opening on the Supreme Court, and the anticipated grassroots battle over the nominee, raise an ethical question for grassroots organizers. Groups on both the left and right see a Supreme Court nomination battle as an opportunity to rally troops, raise funds and bolster their causes. However, many political observers have suggested that President Obama will probably nominate a non-controversial candidate, seeking to avoid a bloody and partisan nomination fight so close to the 2010 mid-term elections.

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How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
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Ever tweeted on Twitter? Congratulations, your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

10 Books to Seize What is Happening with Grassroots, Communications + Marketing (Advocacy 2.0)
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From Stephanie Vance, Advocacy Guru:

I want to let you know about an important upcoming event that may have the potential to change how you conduct citizen-based advocacy campaigns. On Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 from 8:30am to 12:30pm, George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management will be hosting a forum on the ethics of grassroots. In light of recent advocacy-related events, including the sending of fake “grassroots” letters to Capitol Hill, angry citizens yelling at members of Congress during town hall meetings, and policy persuasion campaigns based on inaccurate or misleading information, this forum will address the question “is it time to consider an ethical code of conduct for grassroots advocacy practitioners?” As one of the organizers of the event, I can tell you that we want and need your opinions on this topic. You can view a draft code of ethics at the registration site, which is www.gspm.org/ethics. Attendees will have an opportunity to review the proposed code and share their views before, during and after the forum — as long as you do it nicely with no yelling .

Among the sponsors are ASAE, the Public Affairs Council, Women in Government Relations, the American Association of Political Consultants, the Congressional Management Foundation and a host of others. Speakers include Dave Wenhold of the American League of Lobbyists, Brooks Jackson of factcheck.org and Frank Sesno of the GW School of Media and Public Affairs. In addition to an interesting topic discussion, this event will offer government relations practitioners the opportunity to network with others in the field and get up to speed on the latest developments in the field of grassroots.

Anyone involved in the practice of grassroots advocacy should plan to attend this event. It is free and open to the public and will be held at the Jack Morton Auditorium at 805 21st Street NW in Washington, DC. Again, there is more information at www.gspm.org/ethics.

We hope this will prove to be a groundbreaking conversation and we sincerely hope you’ll be a part of it.

This morning at the Public Affairs Council’s National Grassroots Conference, former Member of Congress J. C. Watts spoke on what makes an effective grassroots advocacy strategy. Obviously, every Member of Congress has their own unique perspective, but it was helpful to hear from someone on the “inside” who advocacy organizations are trying to influence.

One interesting point Watts made was that he and his staff took notice of the volume of communications from constituents on any given issue:

“When I ask my staff, ‘Have we heard from constituents about an issue?’ and they say that we have received 47 calls, that does not impress me. But, if we receive 547 calls, then everyone sits up and takes notice. I think there must be something legitimate going on. We need to take notice.”

And then later, during a question and answer period he said:

“When the staff tells me we received 721 communications on an issue it makes me say, ‘Something is going on here – we need to find out more and take notice.’ ”

Watts then outlined some tips for Grassroots practitioners who are trying to influence Congress. He spoke about the good, the bad and the ugly:

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