Your Supporters ARE the Message
Karen Curry, ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union is almost ninety years old. In fact, it was founded in 1920, seven years before Philo T. Farnsworth invented the television and decades before people actually had one in their homes. In the early days, our message got out via print, radio, and rallies. How amazed our founder Roger Baldwin would be to see the warp speed with which our stories get out there now and how pleased he would be to meet Kenevan McConnon.
McConnon is a Colorado blogger. This May, having just gotten his rebate check from the government, he was looking around online for something to spend it on. When he realized that just about everything he saw had been manufactured somewhere else, he spotted his ACLU renewal form.
He had been putting off renewing, for no particular reason, but when he saw the notice sitting on his desk he had an A-HA moment. He realized he could spend his money on that most quintessential of all "made in America" items -- the United States Constitution -- and decided to send the entire rebate to the ACLU. He knew that this would stimulate the economy, protect the Constitution, and let him "invest in some good old American FREEDOM!"
And, as any true blogger would do, he wrote about this in his Daily Kos diary.
When we spotted the post, we reached out to see if we might enlist McConnon to help us spread this great idea to others. We quickly got a videographer to meet up with him in Colorado and he recorded a fantastic piece telling why he made his decision. He was a natural on camera and wrapped up the piece by putting the envelope with his check into the mailbox -- a lovely cinematic flourish.
Our membership department then did an email blast to our supporters, with the video embedded and with a link to his Daily Kos post. Talk about a grassroots moment! In what might have taken months, if it ever happened, word of this civil libertarian's novel idea came to us in the flash of a Google alert.
The ability to have conversations with members and supporters is the most exhilarating part of the new media landscape for advocacy groups such as ours. We no longer just shovel stuff out there, not knowing if it ever reached anyone or what they thought of it. Advocacy is now a multi-way street, with information coming in and going out and nuance being added to the message as it evolves.
The best way to communicate has always been through the stories of the people who make up an organization and its work. Lovely hand written letters were fantastic ways to spread the word for decades. Today, we can keep the intimacy and personal touch of those missives, but we use audio and video to literally give a "voice" to our clients and our supporters.
What better way to understand what it is like for a young child to be kept in a detention center just because her parents are undocumented, than to hear from the young girl herself on video? How better to understand the profound fear and loneliness that a brave librarian felt when he got a National Security Letter from the FBI, along with a gag order? He challenged the NSL and came to the ACLU for help. To hear him describe this in a podcast brings chills.
The ability to harness these new technologies to communicate to friend and foe alike, in such an immediate way, opens up the possibility of building cyber- bridges and hopefully protecting what we hold most dear, and what has been most threatened over the past eight years -- the United States Constitution. Hats off to Kenevan McConnon for helping us do just that.
