Interesting phrase, isn't it? I first saw it in a book on World War II and it was attributed to Winston Churchill. I was fact checking this diary (how unjournalistic of me!) and I find that I am the only one attributing it to Churchill, but the phrase was used by others in discussion of World War II force deployment strategies.
Unremunerative adj. an investment or action producing no response or a loss.
Scatterization n. the dispersal of effort and/or resources, having neither positive nor negative connotation.
So, scattering of resources might have value, but to characterize the approach as unremunerative indicates the judgment that the approach is not successful.
This being said, let's talk about the million Progressive web sites, and the 1.5 million Progressives who populate this wasteland.
OK, I'll admit it, I'm guilty as hell. The Stranded Wind site got 150 real members before spammers made open registration intolerable and I never successfully modulated this group. I formerly owned, but never really developed DumbFuck.org, and regretted losing control of it long before McCain announced his running mate in 2008. And there were many more like it. I'm letting them all fade away as renewals come due.
I went a little crazy when I first got on Twitter – lots of fun names available. I have since settled down, pushing political figures and quality players in Progressive space, with only the occasional humor oriented diversions.
I've never been big on making Facebook groups and earlier this week I had a massive pogrom – if I didn't have the organizers name in my Blackberry I whacked my membership in other people's groups. I started with sixty plus and ended with just three that really do something.
I am also guilty of creating Google Groups over the last few days, but this is a natural progression for the Blog Workers Industrial Union, which is now seven months old and well past the infant mortality phase for such things. These groups have come about not from theory, but from the troubles that come from trying to manage a community of practice via email. It takes real work to bring a new person who wants to be active into a shared culture and then even more work to bring them up to speed. The Google Groups web interface can serve as a sort of shared memory/work space for small teams of very motivated individuals. And it's a great kindness for those of us with Lyme who are wanting to be more active, but dealing with cognitive issues.
The following groups met the required test – an existing group of people working in the area, a high likelihood that more motivated folk will present themselves, and someone other than Neal or Beth who is in a leadership role.
Health Care Reform – the recent bill is a nice start, but we know there is going to be more organizing and messaging work. This one has a verbal agreement that will bring the handful in it to a position where a great many are listening and taking action based on their efforts. I'm quite excited to see what happens next here.
Texas – we (PPST) are doing both paid consulting and pro bono (BWIUBS) work for political campaigns in Texas. Locals have turned up and are ready to get busy. I think each state may develop such a group as we progress along the path of greater affinity in our social networks.
Legal Team – we have a good number of attorneys about who are helping with various issues. Our top concerns include ensuring direct, personal painful consequences for any right wing operative who manages to slip through our vetting process, ensuring that if some member does get sued or criminally charged none of the rest of us get drug into the problem, and so forth.
Climate Issues – there is a tremendous astroturf problem with climate change issues and there are a lot of people working on it in their own ways. This group has not done so much yet as a team, but the members have all been very active on this front.
Wiki Editors – this has been a huge gap and I'm still not satisfied we have enough people. Wiki fiddlers (their term) tend to be solitary creatures with their own specific interests, while I hope what happens with this one is that we get a group who can move in force, picking out Progressive oriented Wikis and filling them full of good, current information very rapidly.
The Blog Workers Industrial Union recently crossed the two hundred member mark, but only about 10% of those people are truly active, initiating projects or taking on portions of things others have initiated. We really seem to be at a tipping point; there are enough people who'd have formerly been lone gun analyst/bloggers shouting in the wilderness that we cover a big slice of Progressive issues. There are a lot of people who've been watching it all, puzzling over what exactly this thing is supposed to do, and in the last ten days a number of them have spontaneously come forward and said "Hey, what am I supposed to be doing here?"
It's a bit funny, but I happened to be reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point during the time this increased involvement started. This is a funny little book about how some hip kids in the East Village revived Hush Puppies and how other social and fashion trends take off. I would normally return such a book (thanks, Spedwybabs!) or pass it on to someone else, but I'm really feeling like I need to read it again, taking notes on the various personalities and the progression of the Blog Workers Industrial Union.
So, that's a nice little story arc. Can anyone define why the BWIU is succeeding where many other similar efforts flounder?
The BWIU encapsulates the blogophere into a thing familiar to politicians. Bloggers? Wild & Scary! Union leaders? OK ... hey! These guys sound like real campaign workers - communication directors and field organizers, only they're netroots natives.
The BWIU is stateful, hierarchical, and meritocratic. We have people and systems who remember where we are and what we're supposed to be doing. We have a hierarchy both for command and control. One's merit in the organization is based on both one's particular skills and being able to work effectively in the organization.
The BWIU is a supportive, consolidating force. Each of those Google Groups above has a recognizable community leader who was chipping away at a problem largely on their own. Rather than contributing to the mess of Facebook groups and thinly populated web sites those who get involved in the BWIU pay attention to what leaders are doing and try to bring more hands and eyes to their appointed task.
The BWIU adheres to an American social contract view from half a century ago. We try to get 'work' for our members. This does not mean something that directly pays except in very rare instances – the benefits are to one's reputation as an activist, enhancing one's skills, and making new contacts. We want association with this organization to be something a Progressive organizer will be proud to include in their resume.
The BWIU practices Attention Conservation and couples this with the creation of a high affinity network. We're literally drowning in information, beset by it, unable to act on any of it. The BWIU helps shut out the noise, break through the endless, low value pointing and clicking, and actually gets people talking to each other on the phone.