Can we network a social revolution?

We can. The beginnings of the challenge are already before Filipinos who network despite Malcolm Gladwell who wrote in The New Yorker magazine (<http://www.new yorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?-current Page=all>) that we can’t because a social revolution is different from social networking. He writes that social revolution requires personal commitment and that does not happen in social networking. That may be so.

But supposing there was already some kind of personal commitment just waiting to be tapped and organized? It is happening now in the Philippines with so many dissatisfied with its politics and the kind of government it installs. They are also dissatisfied with the way media reports about politics and government. But you hear it every time and from almost everyone despite what SWS and Pulse Asia surveys report.

So I would not be so fast about putting down social networking as a tool for social revolution. I would wait and see what these young netizens can do.

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It can begin by taking lessons from Gladwell who says social revolution is beyond social networking.

“The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change — if it just wants to frighten or humiliate or make a splash — or if it doesn’t need to think strategically. But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy.”

I’ve talked to these young Filipinos and they would like to do more than debating or chatting in Facebook. But are they ready for what it takes to bring systemic change?

For example, those who want a more just and progressive Constitution for the Philippines than what we have now must realize that it will demand a lot of work and organization. (I am avoiding the use of Charter change which has now been so demonized that even saying it provokes resentment from the very people it would benefit.)

Advocates must work together with volunteers rather than expect help from the government that is a captive of the status quo. The first step is to recognize that any government that exists without the constitutional reforms envisioned will be against it. The government is the status quo. There are already many organizations out there that had worked one way or another on the three aspects of reform: shift to parliamentary system, evolve into federalism and a more liberal climate for investments. These should re-group and re-think strategies.

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On the hard work needed for pushing for systemic change Gladwell cites the Montgomery bus boycott of the civil rights movement in the US. It “required the participation of tens of thousands of people who depended on public transit to get to and from work each day. It lasted a year.”

“In order to persuade those people to stay true to the cause, the boycott’s organizers tasked each local black church with maintaining morale, and put together a free alternative private carpool service, with 48 dispatchers and 42 pickup stations. Even the White Citizens Council, Martin Luther King later said, conceded that the carpool system moved with “military precision.”

By the time King came to Birmingham, for the climactic showdown with Police Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor, he had a budget of a million dollars, and a hundred full-time staff members on the ground, divided into operational units. The operation itself was divided into steadily escalating phases, mapped out in advance. Support was maintained through consecutive mass meetings rotating from church to church around the city.”

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Maybe I exaggerate by comparing the task of bringing a reformed Constitution that would restructure government in the Philippines to the civil rights movement in the US. That is the first hurdle — to recognize that it is. It is crucial to our country but it has been put down so often, people have become inured to the idea that we should just accept the Constitution as it is and all its backwardness.

But to go back to the message of this column. Can we evolve a burning issue in Facebook for a just and progressive Constitution into a plan for action? That is the question and something we have to find out in the coming days. Certainly, Facebook and Twitter have made it possible for the popular will to challenge political authority with messages and texts. But how are we to get it done? What is the action?

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“Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice,” Gladwell adds.

“The students who joined the sit-ins across the South during the winter of 1960 described the movement as a ‘fever.’ But the civil-rights movement was more like a military campaign than like a contagion. When the sit-in movement spread from Greensboro throughout the South, it did not spread indiscriminately. It spread to those cities which had preëxisting ‘movement centers’ — a core of dedicated and trained activists ready to turn the ‘fever’ into action.”

“The civil-rights movement was high-risk activism. It was also, crucially, strategic activism: a challenge to the establishment mounted with precision and discipline. The NAACP was a centralized organization, run from New York according to highly formalized operating procedures. At the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr., was the unquestioned authority.

At the center of the movement was the black church, which had, as Aldon D. Morris points out in his superb 1984 study, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” a carefully demarcated division of labor, with various standing committees and disciplined groups. “Each group was task-oriented and coordinated its activities through authority structures,” Morris writes. “Individuals were held accountable for their assigned duties, and important conflicts were resolved by the minister, who usually exercised ultimate authority over the congregation.”

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Gladwell says Facebook is not organized for hierarchical duties and responsibilities.

“Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.”

“It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.”

Finally, for facebook activists for a just and progressive Constitution for the Philippines here is a quote from Gladwell: “Activism that challenges the status quo — that attacks deeply rooted problems — is not for the faint of heart.”