Kansas Labor Movement featured in Column: Social networking tools playing expanded role in politics.

This article appeared in the Topeka Capitol Journal and can be found in its original form here

BY RIC ANDERSON
April 11, 2009 – 8:56pm
For years, Jake Lowen told anyone who would listen that the minimum wage in Kansas was a disgrace.

He and others who supported an increase in the wage lobbied legislators to raise it.

They held rallies. They sent out news releases.

And they got nowhere. The wage remained stuck at $2.65 an hour, where it had been set in the 1980s.

“We thought we were really fortunate if we could get a committee hearing,” said Lowen, director of the Wichita Labor Federation and president of the Kansas Action Network. “We were coming up against a dead end.”

The proponents needed new tools to break through the walls of opposition and indifference in the Legislature.

This year they got them, Lowen said. By learning to use Twitter, Facebook and other social networking services to their advantage, he said, proponents helped push through legislation to raise the wage to $7.25 effective Jan. 1.

“Especially in a legislative session, this is the first time we’ve seen these tools transform from being used for social networking to being used for social activism,” Lowen said.

Lowen said the innovations allowed activists to reach new pockets of supporters efficiently and mobilize their network at a moment’s notice. Before spring break of the regular session, Lowen said, proponents were communicating regularly with 663 supporters on Facebook.

In previous years, organizers might have waited until a day or two before a key event, such as introduction of a bill or the start of a committee hearing, before sending a mass e-mail or mounting a calling campaign asking proponents to press lawmakers for support.

This year, proponents kept supporters engaged through frequent Twitter tweets, Facebook posts and other blog updates. Lowen said the approach generated regular calls and e-mails to lawmakers.

“Instead of saving your resources for one big push, which the legislators know is a push, it’s a constant stream,” he said. “We talked to a lot of legislators who were previously opposed, and in a couple of situations they said, ‘We had to support it because we were getting pressure from people back home.’ ”

Not everyone will agree that Twitter and Facebook made the difference. Some observers said the measure’s opponents had decided that since the state wage applied to only about 20,000 workers, fighting it was no longer worth the political flak they were taking over it.

But for political activists, there are clear benefits to using social networking tools. They won’t replace meetings, rallies and door-to-door campaigns, Lowen said, but they’re are an effective way to bring together like-minded people in pursuit of a common goal.

“I’m very adamant that you still have to form relationships,” he said. “But the question is, how are you going to maintain and develop those relationships? And that’s where these tools are so valuable.”

Ric Anderson, who invites readers to join him at twitter.com/ricander, can be reached at (785) 295-1282 or ric.anderson@cjonline.com.

Redefining Civic Engagement

The following is an article I wrote in 2004 that was published in a book called Storming the Polls: How to Vote Your Views and Change the Rules. The original article can be found online are Wiretap Magazine . It was obviously written in the pre-Obama youth voting revolution, so its kinda dated.

I remember very clearly the last time I sat in a principal’s office, being yelled at for acting “irresponsibly.” This had happened to me many times growing up, but I didn’t expect to have the experience again at the age of 24.

I am a community organizer working with inner-city youth in Wichita’s predominantly low-income northeast side. Those youth had recently fought the Wichita school district’s disproportionate minority suspension rate and had publicly forced concessions from Kansas’ largest school district. At one moment in the campaign, before a crowd of over 250 supporters, one of the youth leaders presented a list of demands and forced the superintendent, the deputy superintendent and several school board members to answer yes or no to each one. The mostly white school officials, already visibly uneasy sitting in front of a room of angry black faces and unable to resort to their long-winded we-are-experts speeches, squirmed.

Later that month, I found myself sitting in the superintendent’s office with five top school officials. They were pissed. Copies of the numerous articles our campaign generated in the press were spread out on the table. “How dare you put us on the spot like that?” they yelled. “You know there was no way that we could say no to your demands in front of all those people!”

“Yeah,” I replied, “that’s kind of the point.” Read the rest of this entry »

Social Network Activism Contributed to Kansas Minimum Wage Victory

There were many factors that lead the success of the Raise The Wage Kansas campaign.  First we were fortunate to have a dedicated group of activists who worked long hours to get the word out. We are also fortunate to have a remarkable team of elected legislators who helped to steer the issue through a very difficult process. We had a network of progressive organizations through the Kansas Action Network who all got the word out to their membership. We had a immensely talented staff in Heidi Zeller, and a lot of really smart people who did the research and set strategy.

All those factors were critical to our success, but there was one powerful new tool that emerged later in the campaign that really seemed to push us over the top. The use of social media tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook allowed us to reach a new audience and to quickly disseminate breaking news and information to an ever expanding group of social media activists. Once those tools were fully utilized we began to be able to generate intense grassroots pressure on targeted lawmakers at a moment’s notice. In fact several legislators dropped their traditional opposition to the issue only because of the pressure they were feeling from constituents back home. Pressure generated in part by a “Tweet” or Facebook group posting just hours before.

I was trained as an Alinsky style street organizer, I fervently believe that nothing can ever replace the power of traditional face to face relationship building in order to construct a sustainable and powerful organization. Once the relationships are established, the question becomes how well do you manage those relationships? Any organizer who is not using the powerful social media tools available are missing an opportunity to manage those relationships more effectively.

The Raise the Wage Kansas campaign succeeded for all the same reasons that any campaign succeeds, persistence and hard work, but it is appropriate also give significant credit to the organizers and activists who changed the world through the use of social media. We may in fact have witnessed the first awakenings of a powerful progressive awakening in Kansas organized through the use of social networks. Should this trend continue to grow, we will change Kansas.

My Home is a Hobo Free Zone

My daughter has a new hobby. She likes to scare hobos. Here is the story:

Recently my daughter netflixed (is that a valid verb now?) a movie called Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. IMDB summarizes it as:

A young girl named Kit Kittredge, based on the American Girl doll collection, is determined to do herself proud and become a newspaper reporter.

In the process of becoming a newspaper reporter she spends a lot of time hanging out with and befriending hobos. In the process she learns all about hobo signs. ( small markings that hobos use to communicate with each other.) Since watching this movie my 6 year old daughter has become obsessed with hobo signs and spends significant portions of time outside with sidewalk chalk sending messages to any hobos who may be passing by.

Unfortunately I don’t think we will get to actually meet any as the only sign that she can remember from the movie is the symbol for “DANGER!”.  Currently there are no less than 7 warnings in chalk on our driveway, porch, patio, and sidewalk. Any hobo who passes by will run like hell.

Americans for Prosperity support legalizing prostitution.

Well, I can only assume anyway based on their words..

“If one consenting adult agrees to work for another for $5 an hour, should the state step in and invalidate the agreement?” asked Derrick Sontag, state director of AFP-Kansas.

Well to be fair Mr. Sontag was speaking about the Kansas minimum wage in this recent Lawrence Journal World Article, but it seems to me that his logic would cross over to any work agreement between two “consenting” adults. After all if I agree to work for you or perform a service at a rate, why should the mean old gub’ment get involved?

I would argue that there is a very good reason to invalidate some such agreements. The reason that prostitution is illegal is that as a society we recognize that this agreement is more likely to be exploitative then not. The government has a responsibility to set regulations that protect the weakest and the most vulnerable from being taken advantage of.  Which brings us back to wages.

In Kansas the state minimum wage is $2.65 per hour. It is the lowest in the nation and the Kansas Department of Labor Estimates that over 20,000 Kansans earn less than the federal minimum wage. Derrick Sontag and Americans for Prosperity argue that increasing the minimum wage is bad because if Derrick Sontag wants to agree to work for $2.65 per hour then why should we stop it? (By the way, I assume Mr. Sontag earns a little more than that.)

The fact is that if you are desperate enough to agree to work for poverty wages, then you aren’t really in the situation to make a free choice. After all there is no real choice between starvation and being exploited. When you are in that situation, you do what you can to survive. The minimum wage must be raised to protect all Kansas workers.

If you support the idea of a just minimum wage, please check out RaiseTheWageKansas.org and get involved. After all, if two consenting adults want to join together to lift our state out of this national embarrassment, Derrick Sontag wont stop you.