solanasaurus.com

Bravo to Ricken Patel for his performance on BBC’s HardTalk. The questions were intelligent and fair, and some of the answers are necessarily inconclusive. I only wish social justice activists could find that kind of airtime and well-prepared journalists in the United States. Can Avaaz really claim to know what the world’s “silent majority” is thinking? If they involved members in the nitty gritty of policy on the Middle East would they still find such strong consensus?

It’s true that pretty much everyone (including depots at the UN) would agree to more peace, freedom and human rights. But Avaaz is one of the few organizations that actually pushes back and asks for those promises to come true. Ironically, they somehow end up reverting to representational democracy, even when the promise of internet activism is to put power in the hands of individuals across borders and party lines. Their true power will lie in gaining the trust of people to make decisions for them. How many people signing their petitions really know what would be best for Pakistan right now? Or even Burma?

As Ricken himself says, their target audience is an average mother checking email at home after a long work day. Short attention span, rather than (but not instead of) thousands of engaged activists, deeply involved in the formation of the campaign. I think Avaaz will find acceptable legitimacy in numbers of people who support them, but I still have hopes that even more democratic, and perhaps more decentralized, models for change through global online people power will take shape in the next years.