by Jo Lee

Jo Lee at Sept PSO

I recently gave a talk at the 2006 CTC Vista Project Orientation. I was prepared for a total disaster. My presentation followed Wendy Cohen from Media Matters. She showed these awesome laugh-out-loud and tear-jerking short films that moved the entire room. How could I possibly follow that act? All I had to talk about was how a small group of activists used a free email advocacy service called CitizenSpeak to battle a multinational railroad company. Much to my surprise the room, full of VISTA members and supervisors, lit up in response to the opportunities afforded by CitizenSpeak.

CitizenSpeak is a free, grassroots, e-advocay service. It is designed to enable individual activists or small grassroots organizations to launch move-on-like email campaigns. By doing so, small grassroots orgs – which may be just a couple people organizing around a kitchen table - can identify a constituency, promote a cause, build capacity, and ultimately lobby their representatives more effectively. To service small grassroots, CitizenSpeak is designed to be as easy to use as possible with minimal bells and whistles.

Free Schuylkill River park account on citizenspeak.org

To get a better sense of what CitizenSpeak is and how you might use it, let me tell you a story. Last year, a $14 million pedestrian pathway was built along Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Upon its completion, Philadelphia residents in the Schuylkill River District prepared to take their bikes for a spin on the new pathway. One problem. CSX Railroad, one of the largest rail networks in the United States, announced that it was going to close existing crossings that allowed Schuylkill River Park residents to cross over the company’s railroad tracks to get to the new path.

To the surprise of many, the powerful railroad company found itself forced to rethink its plans due to a small band of residents that used the Internet to organize disaggregated constituents and elected officials into a dynamic force called the Free Schuylkill River Coalition.

Free Email Advocacy Tools

For their first action, the residents launched an email advocacy campaign to see how many people they could get to email the Governor objecting to the grade closings. They used CitizenSpeak (http://www.citizenspeak.org) to launch their campaign. Creating their account, they filled out a form that asked for the text of the email letter and the email address of the Governor.

CitizenSpeak automatically generated a unique web address specific to their campaign. The coalition emailed this link to 50 people in their neighborhood, for whom they had email addresses. The results were overwhelming. Thanks to CitizenSpeak’s “Tell-a-Friend” feature, which allows participants to easily forward messages to their circle of contacts, their neighborhood network grew from 50 to over 150 people in the first week. Using CitizenSpeak’s reporting functions, the Coalition was able to download the 150 participants’ contact information and their personal statements.

An overwhelming percentage of participants provided personal statements in their emails, which helped refine the group’s issues. Personal statements resulted in a broader list of demands that were reflected in a second email campaign that netted a 30% increase in the group’s list of supporters, once again, at zero cost.

The Blog

Free Schuylkill River Park Blog

In the text of their email advocacy letter, the coalition invited readers to link to their newly created blog (www.freetheriverpark.org.) The blog provided additional information about the campaign, including pictures of grade crossings in other cities that refuted CSX’s liability concerns.

To create their blog, the coalition used TypePad (www.typepad.com), a low-cost and easy-to-use hosted weblogging service that gives users a rich set of features to immediately share and publish information. With TypePad, it’s easy to create photo albums, add text, invite and manage comments, add trackbacks, and monitor weblog stats. No HTML skills required.

Constituent Mail

To keep in regular contact with their growing constituency, and to maintain high levels of interest and readiness to participate in future actions, the Free Schuylkill River Park Coalition signed up for Constituent Mail (http://www.constituentmail.com) – an affordable and easy-to-use online email management service that lets organizations maintain and segment a database of users for personalized, HTML email communications with click through and open tracking capabilities.

The coalition used Constituent-Mail to email their list of supporters and invite them to attend the First Free Schuylkill River Park Presidents’ Day Rally. The email directed them to the blog where visitors could download flyers to promote the rally and learn more about their cause. Despite freezing temperatures, more than 100 people turned out for the rally. Reporters were on hand from KYW Radio, three TV stations and the Philadelphia Inquirer to help spread the word about their cause.

Campaign Outcomes

As a result of integrating various internet tools with traditional organizing strategies, the Free Schuylkill River Park Campaign has multiplied their list of supporters ten-fold, averaged over 40 hits on their website a day, totaled over 4,000 hits on their blog’s photo album, and most importantly forced CSX to agree to address the Schuylkill River Neighborhood’s need for railroad crossings.

Well, that’s my story. It may not have moved you to tears or laughter but hopefully it gave you some ideas about using online tools for more effective mobilizing. One more thing before I go, CitizenSpeak is available as an open source module on the Drupal content management system. Good luck with your organizing and please contact me if you have any questions about using the CitizenSpeak service or module at jo_lee@citizenspeak.org.