Shake the Pillars || digital campaign innovation

A movement-building moment is taking shape today in Canada as a broad group of environmental, social justice and progressive voices are united for a single day of online protest against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

BlackoutSpeakout is a coordinated online action to raise awareness and speak out against new regulations for advocacy organizations being put forward by the ruling Conservative Party that #blackoutspeakout partners believe are a serious threat to Canadian environment and democratic values. Hundreds of websitesof of nonprofits, activist groups. alternative media and left-leaning voices have gone dark, and thousands of tweets and status updates are filling the social media channels today to support the campaign.

This sector-wide, coordinated action in defence of environmental and social justice values coincides with  a resurgence of the political left which has seen Canada’s traditionally 3rd place socialist party (NDP) on top of public opinion polls, and could be a watershed moment for a united and reinvigorated progressive left in Canada.   The path ahead, though, will have to be carefully navigated.

This action first emerged from a small group of leading green ngos with a narrow focus on threats to environmental protection legislation, but as the movement gathered momentum last week the scope has broadened to accommodate the expanding list of partners, each with their own demands (Amnesty International joined after negotiating the inclusion of a reference to human rights).  This has allowed the movement to grow quickly, but has also muddied the focus and risks turning the #blackoutspeakout tight manifesto for action into a shopping list.

There are echoes of Occupy here, and other recent social justice campaigns that achieved a wide public appeal but then ran into stumbling blocks around clarity of message. I read an interview recently with Glen Tarman, one of the original organizers of the Make Poverty History (MPH) movement in the mid 2000′s in the UK (and elsewhere) in which he identified one of the big mistakes they made with MPH was in making the campaign too broad, and not deep enough.

For #blackoutspeakout, today’s results will speak loudly — a powerful mobilization moment for opponents of the Harper government. The challenge for the organizers will be to maintain that broad appeal while deepening the engagement and moving toward specific campaign outcomes.