Categories
Misc

Digital Campaigning in Covid-times, an example

This one is fun. I was in the running for a job, over a year ago. The job involved serving as a consultant to organizations around the world that do online progressive politics of a certain style (emails, petitions, ladder of engagement, etc). I love these organizations, and I think this would have been on the easier and more wholesome side of my options.

Ultimately, I ended up removing myself from the running. (I had a more interesting gig lined up). But the application process was really interesting! To advance in one round of the process, you were given a toy example of a hypothetical digital-first organization, and how it saw things change because of Covid. (This was around May 2020). Given this information, what advice would I give them?

A lot of people don’t really understand what digital campaigning and organizing is. I figure that sharing what I wrote might help. So here it is:

The challenge:

The prompt, edited down: A European organization experienced rapid membership growth since coronavirus hit, but their engagement levels have been dropping lately. What ideas do you have for retention? How can we help their long-term strategy of building member-focused power? Write your response as a 2-page memo.

My response:

My response, edited for clarity and mild obfuscation:

Hello! My name is Sahar, and I’m here to help you think through your membership retention today.

Below, I’m going to walk you through some hypotheses of what might be going on, and how you might validate them. If this is all obvious to you, I apologize. Feel free to skip it! 

I’ll also include 3 tactical ideas of what you might try. 

Through all this, I’m assuming some similarity with some other organizations: (e.g. “member” means “person on the email list”, a lot of work happens through member-driven petitions and email blasts, etc). Since I don’t have a full view of your operation, I must also assume that you *haven’t* tried out what I’m proposing. I imagine at least part of these simplifying assumptions are wrong, and I apologize in advance.

First, identify the problem:

I have two hypotheses for what’s going on. 

Hypothesis A: “Non-political” people are joining because Corona. Then, they’re getting follow-up for actions that are aimed towards existing membership. These new members didn’t think they were signing up for “politics”. So they’re tuning out.

Hypothesis B: People joined because Corona was a big huge problem. Now, it’s both less novel and more exhausting. People are generally tired of Corona-related actions and less energetic and generous. 

To prepare to check these hypotheses, I’d segment your members to find a cohort of “joined pre coronavirus” and a cohort of “joined during coronavirus” members. The former are those who joined in the short amount of time before the surge of membership, and the latter are those who joined in the last 2 months. 

Once you’ve done that, ask the data some questions. Do pre-Corona members have the same MeRa engagement metrics as post-Corona members? Have engagement levels of new members been steady until the last fortnight? Is this an artifact of how you measure? Does the response to member-initiated petitions look different than the response to the staff-initiated campaigns?

Now that we’ve done that, let’s try to validate each hypothesis. If Hypothesis A (apolitical people joining) were true, we’d see that the “pre coronavirus” and “post coronavirus” cohorts look very different, after normalizing for “time since signed up”, and other demographics (if you have them). Post-coronavirus people would tend sign on for relatively less ideological/political appeals, and “pre coronavirus” members would have relatively flat or increasing engagement rates. To sum it up: it would be the “during coronavirus” members that are driving the decline.

If Hypothesis A were correct, we might try treating new members differently for a while. We might exempt them from new email blasts, perhaps making sure to put them through a new ramp-up flow over time, acclimating them to the mission and values of your organization. We might even handpick the right petitions for them. In general, treat them as a separate population (with A/B testing targeted solely to them), as you gradually reintegrate them back into the main population of members.

If, on the other hand, Hypothesis B (Corona fatigue) were true, we’d see pre-and post-surge members acting at roughly the same rates, on both corona and non-corona related content. We’d see Corona related petitions doing worse or equal to others.

Next, execute new tactics:

I’ll address 3 tactics below that might help (and might help in hypothesis A as well.)

3 Tactics for engagement:

I’ve done a short sweep of a subsample of [your] partners around the world. What are they trying specifically in a physical distancing / Corona environment? Some examples: distributing masks and stickers, holding signs in-person while waiting in lines at stores, phones out the window at appointed times blasting a message, twitter storms, petitions and email blasts, etc. While helpful, nothing seemed to stand out as particularly gripping. 

Here are 3 things I suggest you pay attention to, if you haven’t already:

One: Organizing “Get-to-know you calls” in neighborhoods. 

This isn’t a tactic attached to a demand or list growth, but instead builds longer-term relationships. You could make this as structured as you like: maybe give potential hosts facilitation training and a list of questions, or maybe just allow neighbors to find each other and then talk organically. This will neatly tie-in to the existing mutual aid efforts around them, and buy goodwill and deeper engagement in the future.

Two: Go anti-corporate. 

Firms, generally, are both less experienced with, and more vulnerable to, tactics that we generally use on politicians. Are there obvious corporate villains around? Can we pressure them (through petitions, emails, etc) to, for example, pay sick leave, not bust unions, etc? Members might find it a refreshing change of pace.

Three: Find existing online organized online communities.

As you know, digital campaigning was sometimes called “online organizing” in the past. The term fell out of favor, in part, because there are existing things — forums, facebook groups, subreddits — that are indeed organized online communities. Establishing more of a presence in Swiss-specific online groups of this kind not only can fuel raw growth and reach. It can also give members a constructive, fun thing to do. Imagine a tactic like: “Are you a member of one of these 10 subreddits? If so, apply to be a <your org> ambassador there”. 

These are just some ideas. No need to take them on if you dislike them! But I do urge you to pay attention to the analytics part of this one-pager. Understanding the situation allows you to identify potential ways to fix it. Without some analysis, you’re flying blind. 

Hope this was helpful, and thanks again. 

Sahar Massachi

Categories
Misc

Birthdays for adults that don’t suck (during a pandemic)

Adult birthdays are hard. There isn’t necessarily a built-in community of fellow students around. Even letting people *know* that it’s your birthday takes effort. The pandemic, of course, has made it worse. So, just as I’m on the lookout for better ways to have adult friendships, or date during a pandemic, I’m trying to think about how to birthdays.

There are three examples of how it went really well that I’d like to share and report back.

#1: Surprise voicemail

For my birthday this July, Sarah did a really nice thing. She set up an answering machine on Google Voice. Then she asked my friends around the world to call in and leave a 3-minute birthday message.

On July 26th, Sarah and I strolled to a nice picnic breakfast. Then, and also again over the course of the day, she played back the messages, a few at a time. It was one of the best birthdays of all time. I felt so happy, and loved, and it was a delight to hear from friends old and new. Close friends and distant acquaintances I was frankly surprised to hear from.

Try it!

#2: Playlist + Slideshow

For Sarah’s birthday, I knew I had to match her. But copying exactly seemed impolite. What to do? After a week of dithering, I figured it out.

I make Sarah a mixtape every month. This time, I’d ask all her friends to contribute music to a birthday playlist just for her. Ontop of that, I’d ask them all to send photos and notes to compile into a slideshow.

Figuring out how to ask people to do 3 different things was tricky. Eventually I settled on using one Airtable form and distributing one link. Worked like a charm.

Here’s the slideshow combining the notes, the songs, and the photos. It came out really well!

And here is the playlist. Or, if you prefer text:

  • Lionel Richie – Hello
  • Cascada – Everytime We Touch
  • Club Drosselmeyer – Ginger Snaps *(This isn’t on Spotify)
  • They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul
  • The New Seekers – Free To Be…You And Me
  • Peter, Paul and Mary – Puff, the Magic Dragon – 2004 Remaster
  • Yola – Walk Through Fire
  • Yola – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
  • Yola – Rock Me Gently
  • Allan Sherman – Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max
  • Na Palapalai – Ke Anu O Waimea
  • Brigitte Bardot – Une histoire de plage
  • Brigitte Bardot – La madrague
  • Tanis – Ce N’est Pas Moi
  • Mazowsze – Dwa serduszka
  • Elton John – Skyline Pigeon
  • Stephen Sondheim – Company
  • Marvin Gaye; Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
  • Rozzi – Best Friend Song – Lemon Ice Mix
  • Lake Street Dive – You Go Down Smooth
  • Laura Marling – Fortune
  • Stevie Wonder – I Wish
  • Vince Staples; Richie Kohan – Home
  • The Neville Brothers – Sister Rosa – Live From Wolfgang’s Vault
  • 100 gecs; Charli XCX; Rico Nasty; Kero Kero Bonito – ringtone (Remix) [feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito]
  • Carly Rae Jepsen – Cut To The Feeling
  • Nina Simone – Love Me or Leave Me – 2013 Remastered Version
  • Edo Lee – Black Coffee
  • Trevor Hall – Everything I Need
  • Chromeo – Clorox Wipe
  • Silver Jews – People
  • Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’
  • The B-52’s – Love Shack
  • Matthew Thiessen & The Earthquakes – Forest
  • The Civil Wars – 20 Years
  • A Taste Of Honey – Boogie Oogie Oogie – Remastered

#3: A murder mystery on GatherTown

I hate zoom. And google meet. And the culture of meeting more than 3 people on a video chat structured as a set of boxes. Conversations need to be small! And breakout groups need to be fluid and user-controlled.

That’s why I’m so excited about two different platforms that try to solve it — gather.town and spacial chat. And, just the other day, my friend Giselle used gathertown to run a successful murder mystery party!

The day started out a bit normal – a brunch hangout of just a few (~5) of us friends from college. Then, in the evening, we all created avatars and moved around in gather.town! The scene was an 80’s themed prom. We each had roles in a murder mystery. Despite the mystery instructions being written years ago (and therefore assuming we wouldn’t be quarantining), gathertown made it all possible!

Try a murder mystery (or just some version of spacial chat or gather town) for your next birthday. You’ll be so much happier than an awkward 20-person zoom room.

The over-arching secret is the wingman

All these case studies had one common success factor: the wingman. These days, you need someone spending their time reminding your friends that the birthday is coming up, and then also directing them to The Plan.

And there does need to be a plan. Gone are the days where we can just spontaneously hoist someone on our shoulders and go to the nearest pub. Instead, the wingman (the planner) needs to lay out an idea, find friends, drive them to the link, etc.

For me, it was Sarah. For Sarah, it was me. For Giselle, it was our mutual friend Anna. For couples, it seems pretty easy to figure out who the wingman is.

But for single people? I don’t know. Must be tough.

Guess that’s one more reason I want to help people find love in my spare time.

Categories
Misc

Starcraft

A friend and I were playing Starcraft (o.g. Brood War) the other day. We were chatting with some strangers on multiplayer, and here’s what we found:

  • No more spamming of slurs. Seems like either Blizzard’s filters have finally caught up, or all the idiot teenagers are no longer playing a 20-year old game.
  • A lot of players (even in US leagues) are from south america, or Korea.
  • One comparatively longer conversation online was with a guy who said he couldn’t wait for the pandemic to be over. Cheekily, we said something like, “why? more time for starcraft”. He answered that he was a single dad working 60 hours a week. That dampened that conversation.
  • The people who play starcraft these days are really, really, good at it.

My first experience with antisemitism was through starcraft. In the cloud of slurs (anti-gay, anti-black, etc), was weirdly the word “jew”. It was clear from the context that it wasn’t meant as a compliment, or even anything specific. Just another way to insult someone you’ve never met before.

It’s kinda nice to finally be able to play this game without running into it any more.

Categories
Misc

What to expect when you’re expecting a crisis

Imagine a city, on a beach. Relatively bustling. Prosperous — more or less. At least, the parties are really fun (for those allowed in). And the art and food is really good (for those who can afford the best food and have the money for art). Sure, sometimes people disappear, never to be heard from again. Sometimes strange ritual chanting rings out at night. But the chanting never hurt anyone — at least, not one of our people. And the disappearances, well, they’re not of anyone important. Or at least, anyone disappeared is no longer important. The city endures. The city thrives.

Then, one day, a tsunami hits. Trees are uprooted. Sand and dirt are blasted away. The city comes together to save itself. Heroes reveal themselves.

But, so, too, does something horrible. In the midst of heartwarming cooperation, the citizens realize a truth. The entire city was built on the site of an old temple to the mad god Bel-Shamharoth. The mayor was a vampire the whole time. Those parties were also recruiting sites of the more refined cults.

There’s a crisis to deal with, sure. But, in the apocalypse, the veil has finally lifted. No one will quite look at each other the same way again.

What foundations have been exposed by the tsunami we are now facing? Now that the dirt and cobblestones of “normal times” are being ripped away, what truths stand stark, bold, and naked?

It might be too early to be certain. But I have some hunches. Keep an eye on these storylines in the times ahead:

I’m also watching some other things:

  • China. It’s authoritarian, it’s scary, and it’s exporting its model. We haven’t been taking it seriously enough.
  • Fights between the white-supremacy-curious faction of the conservative movement and the “let’s loot the country” faction of the movement.
  • We’re going to see a lot more strange bedfellows and left-right alliances between people of different parties.

What stories are you tracking and predicting?

Categories
Misc

TrumpLiedAboutCoronavirus.com

We saw it, for weeks, with our eyes. Trump, Republicans, Fox News, the conservative movement — all lying about Corovirus. Calling it a hoax, downplaying the threat, saying that the left was hyping it as “second impeachment.”

We saw the absolute, morally criminal lack of preparedness. The the hospitals not prepared, the population not distanced, the mocking of anyone who took this seriously.

We saw the clownish press conferences, claiming that “it’s only a flu”, that everything was under control, etc. The sort of obsequiousness to Trump that would be laughable if it wasn’t so scary. We saw Fox News hosts downplay the threat. Even in the last we saw Trump shaking hands during a press conference about the virus.

The propaganda onslaught from the right is coming. They’re going to try to pretend it never happened.

I bought the rights to TrumpLiedAboutCoronavirus.com and RepublicansLiedAboutCoronavirus.com. What should we do with them?

Right now I’m pointing them both to this post by James Fallows: 2020 Time Capsule #4: Trump Is Lying, Blatantly.

Instead we could point them to this video timeline of trump downplaying everything by The Recount. Or maybe this video tracking Fox New’s lies and sudden reversals about coronavirus created by the Washington Post.

Or a microsite! Or something else entirely. If you have a great idea for these domains, or even a bad one, let me know!

Categories
Misc

Life in a time of Coronavirus, March 17, 2020

Has anyone else noticed this? Taking a walk yesterday, neighbours were actually pretty bad at keeping a full 6 feet away, but they were very intent on not making eye contact.

It’s as if, I don’t know, people can’t look each other in the eye without coming close? Or their instincts are muddled and they do the wrong kind of social distancing.

It’s strange.

Sarah is working hard. Maybe today she will finally finish her draft. We’re running low on vegetables. 54 eggs left.

We took a walk around town yesterday. Restaurants closed and hurting, but still putting a brave face on it. A local tenants union has been trying to form for a while, it seems. (Go go Boston DSA!)

There’s a new group in town: MAMAS: Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. They have google groups, google docs, etc. They have a website with overlays of “neighborhood pods” where a pod captain is meant to coordinate everyone in a roughly 3-block radius.

Like this:

I hope it works.

Meanwhile, there’s a battle between the democracy/civil rights orgs who say: “absolutely never delay elections, this could set precedent for very bad things”, and others who say “are you insane? Crowding election places run by elderly poll workers is a recipe for needless death”. Maybe both are right.

In Illinois, it seems like the workers took charge: they just didn’t show up to the election places. Polling locations are closed all over chicago, I hear.
There is weird stuff happening in national politics. Trump is saying one thing “checks for everyone!” while his negotiators are trying to get the opposite. Some D senators have good plans, some R senators have good plans. But R senators are also trying to make things worse. Seems like a mess of confusion.

I begin to hate group phone calls or video calls even more. An event I’m helping plan is transitioning to becoming a long conference call that is also a passover seder.

Will it work?

Friends are beginning to host social events online. Live concerts. Trivia times. Webinars. The concerts are fun to listen to. Everything else takes more participation energy than I want to give. I can’t stand staring into a webcam any more.

Last night, I got into a long talk with my dad about social insurance, pandemics, and taking things seriously. Thankfully, it seems like he’s isolating correctly. I’m not too worried about them: my whole life, there’s been a stockpile of food in my parent’s basement. My mom reminds me that she stayed home before, during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Instead of leaving home and getting sick, the danger was leaving home and getting shot. Ah.

Except for that one cold walk, I haven’t left the home in days.

Categories
Misc

It’s History Time

We are now in a special kind of time. “Revolution time”. “History time”. “Disruption time”. Whatever you want to call it.

Every day, huge events are happening. Things that seemed impossible now are a matter of course. Right now I’m watching a speech from the president of Serbia attacking the EU and throwing himself onto the arms of China. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Fox news) is proposing a much stronger (and equitable) response to the crisis than Nancy Pelosi. The Fed just took most of the 2009 playbook and deployed it in one big go yesterday.

In History Time, the rules are different. Opportunities arise. And the knives come out. For example: Right now the US airline history is asking for a $50 billion bailout because they “have no cash”. They just spent the last decade spending their cash on stock buybacks. Stock buybacks used to be illegal.

We have to be aware of the disaster profiteers. Not the small time chumps selling Purell at markup from their garages. I mean the titans of industry that will grab as much free money as they can.

In History Time, ideas that used to be laughable are now on the table. After 9/11, the FBI took out their wishlist from a filing cabinet, bound it up on one bundle, called it the Patriot Act, and dared congress not to pass it. After the 08 crash, banks started even more mergers and paid their executives even more money, and dared congress to stop them.

Now it’s History Time again. Will we cede the field to the white collar criminals? Or will we step up with our suddenly reasonable demands? Remember, right now Tom Cotton is to the left of Nancy Pelosi on the crisis response. Anything is possible.

(How do we do it? As a first step: Start organizing your literal neighborhood. As a second step: join a local political group that has dues-paying membership and democratic control by its members. As a third: let me think about it and get back to you)

Categories
Misc

How to be a citizen in a time of Coronavirus

What can we do in the present crisis? More interestingly, what can we do with it?

I’m not talking about purchasing a bidet and stockpiling pasta sauce and medicine. Instead: as citizens, how can we rise to the occasion? As organizers, how can we seize the moment to put in place some needed social change?

When life starts looking like a movie, the extraordinary becomes inevitable. Either for good, or for ill. Back in 2008, we on the left were a bit overconfident. The basic analysis was there: we cited Naomi Klein and talked about how we needed a “Reverse Shock Doctrine”. Even Rahm Emanuel was on TV saying “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste”

It didn’t go to waste — for the bad guys. The crisis helped the Tea Party rebrand the conservative coalition after Bush, it funneled trillions of dollars of free money into banks, and it raised the concentration of industry even higher.

So let’s not let the crisis go to waste, before the enemy does.

That’s the challenge. These next few days and weeks will be qualitatively different than normal. We have an opening to try things (and get people to sign on) that would be strange and hard to pull off before. That’s the challenge: What opportunities can we seize now, that might have important effects in the future?

1. Make a neighborhood group

This is an excellent time to make a Facebook group for your block. Maybe just the 40 or so homes in your street. In a few weeks, you might need to start babysitting each other’s kids, or sharing advil, or pooling risk to send exactly one person to the store to buy supplies. In a few weeks, you might be grateful that you dug this well before you drew from in. You might be saving lives by performing errands for your elderly neighbor.

And, in the months and perhaps years to come, you’ll reap the benefits of a tighter neighborhood network. You’ll be happier, more communal. And maybe when you’re trying to convince your neighbors to go to a meeting, to vote, or to consider your perspective, they’ll listen.

Tomorrow, I’ll put this in practice. I’ll knock on doors nearby, and leave a flier. I likely won’t use the term “mutual aid”, or “solidarity network”. Why bother using words that confuse people? But hopefully we will get the rudiments of a community network set up to start being generous, helpful, and kind to each other.

2. Be decisive

In times of crisis, the flailing defer to the decisive. Be decisive.

Delta flight attendants have gotten a huge boost to their union drive in the last few days:

“I have not seen interest this high. Not even after the merger with [Northwest] who was already represented by AFA at the time, or during the recession or the Ebola scare of 2014,” says Cheryl, who has worked at the airline for more than a decade. “The threat of involuntary furloughs and layoffs has been a big motivator. We are scared and freaking out because we don’t have any language in our policies for this.”

The Coronavirus Is Jump-Starting Union Organizing at Delta (by Mike Elk)

If months happen in days, then start grabbing that bounty of time and confusion to push your agenda.

You can start by small things. Advocate for this your neighbors to buy gift cards from local restaurants and cafes they’d normally go to every day. It’s a short term loan to businesses and a way to help them stay afloat. Can you do it through a Facebook page or Action Network petition? After the crisis, you can use that organization and credibility to start talking about other ways to help local businesses, like localist economics or raising the minimum wage or unionizing.

If you can, use the crisis as an excuse to cut out middlemen: can you pay service workers (instead of service businesses) directly? Can you convince your neighbors to do so as well? In the cloak of solidarity you can start laying the groundwork of a worker-owned business.

3. Be Local

Nationally, the Dems are gonna Dem. I’m sure they’ll disappoint us. But there’s a lot of ground you can seize locally.

Organize your neighbors around demands for your town or state. Ones that will save lives. Things like: Stop evicting people during a pandemic! Or “Free Broadband for everyone!”. Or “don’t cut off people’s access to utilities!” Or “give the prisoners free soap and water, for God’s sake

“Jails and prisons are often dirty and have really very little in the way of infection control,” said Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex. “There are lots of people using a small number of bathrooms. Many of the sinks are broken or not in use. You may have access to water, but nothing to wipe your hands off with, or no access to soap.”

When Purell is Contraband, How Do You Contain Coronavirus? by The Marshall Project

You might very well save lives.

Also, I expect that when you start asking your friends to call their city councilmember, or to sign a petition, about these things, you’ll get a different response than you normally get. People who normally tune out politics will be suddenly paying attention to this large shock in their lives. Get them hooked on advocacy. Get them comfortable with the democratic process. This will yield dividends later.

4. Don’t wait for Republican Party to collapse on its own

The conservative movement survived stealing a presidency, lying us into Iraq, failing into Katrina, looting the public after the 2008 crash, gutting the voting rights act, lying to the Supreme court about gerrymandering, and nominating a sexual assaulter to the presidency. It can survive this.

For the last two months, Trump, Fox News, etc have been downplaying the crisis at best, actively sabotaging efforts to handle it at worst. Starting in about a day or so, they’ll try to pretend that never happened. Don’t let them get away with it.

(I wrote a whole thing about it here)

5. Further reading and examples

Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville

COVID-19 Full List of Actions You Can Take Right Now

How To Start A Social Street

BRANDEIS mutual aid for first-generation and low-income students affected by COVID-19 updates