european collective action to help refugees

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/29/volunteers-travel-hundreds-of-miles-to-fill-gaps-in-refugee-crisis-response.html

"In between nervous refugees and the frustrated policemen stepped volunteers clad in orange vests, calming people down, reuniting family members and generally oiling the wheels of a clunky and frequently changing system."

"Major aid agencies like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, are mounting relief efforts, but some of the quickest responders along the Balkan route have been civilian volunteers.
In addition to locals who have helped out in their cities or areas, young Europeans are venturing across the region to provide urgent, direct and sometimes essential help to struggling refugees.
For some it is an extension of activism at home, often with human rights, anti-capitalist and environmental groups. For others, it is a response to what they have seen and read about the refugee crisis. And for a few, the decision to help came when they were in the Balkans and could no longer look away."

"Along the Balkan route, they not only offer food and drink but also help set up Wi-Fi hot spots and places to recharge cellphones, using their technical savvy to offer cheap and quick solutions to refugees who rely on smartphones for information, communication and navigation.
As different bottlenecks and crisis points appear along the refugees’ route, volunteers coordinate efforts and direct one another to where they are most needed, using social media and interactive maps."

this is pretty cool. Mostly young people using modern technology to reach out to people in need.

Maybe collective action at the national level doesn't work so well (EU)

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/this-is-not-an-eu-immigration-crisis-it-s-an-eu-collective-action-crisis-1.2343200

 

"Its [the refugee waves] solution would be straightforward in the presence of a central authority empowered to take decisions. But this is not how the EU works. It works through co-ordination and harmonisation – through fiscal rules, banking regulation and neighbourhood policies. But none of them prevented the crisis, and none of them helps solve it. The problem was never a lack of rules or policies. It was the simple fact that certain things in life cannot just be co-ordinated.

Nor are member states big enough to act on their own - not even Germany. Angela Merkel is, for once, on the right side of the argument. But Germany does not have the capacity to absorb all the EU immigrants.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, produced a good rendition of the mindset that gives rise to collective action problems. He said last week this was not a European crisis, but a German crisis, since all the refugees wanted to go to Germany. Germany, I would add, acted in a similarly cavalier fashion during the euro zone crises.

The collective action problem is nobody’s fault in particular. It is hard-wired into the system. The EU’s job is not to prevent financial crises, or to save children from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea."

This sounds like when every individual [nation, in this case] wants to adhere closely to its own agenda and ideas, collective action falls flat.

Collective action leads you open to abusers? Wikipedia

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html

"Hundreds of small British businesses and minor celebrities have been targeted by a sophisticated blackmail scam orchestrated by “rogue editors” at Wikipedia, The Independent can reveal.

The victims, who range from a wedding photographer in Dorset to a high-end jewellery shop in Shoreditch, east London, faced demands for hundreds of pounds to “protect” or update Wikipedia pages about their businesses. A former Britain’s Got Talent contestant was among dozens of individuals targeted.
Wikipedia has taken action against what it described as the 'co-ordinated group' of fraudsters by blocking 381 accounts. An investigation had found that the accounts were controlled by Wikipedia users offering to change articles about companies and private individuals in exchange for payment.
In some cases, the requests for money amounted to blackmail, Wikipedia told The Independent."

this is sad, but must be considered in all uses of collective action.  what happens when you have a loose nut screwing up your collective efforts?  How should you handle it?  This should be thought through before you even begin your action.

When your government has lost its heart, you step up

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/5/volunteers-defy-hostile-leaders-to-welcome-refugees-to-europe.html

"With hundreds of volunteers and more than 22,000 Facebook followers, Migration Aid offers food, water, medical help and information to refugees who each day cross Hungary by the thousands, even as Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his populist right-wing government wash their hands of them.

All along the Balkan route to Western Europe — through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary — volunteers are stepping in to help refugees, defying their leaders’ indifference or hostility to the new arrivals.
As a solitary train left Budapest’s Keleti station on Thursday, crammed with refugees who thought they were going to Austria, Orban was telling top European Union officials in Brussels that the crisis was 'a German problem.'”

 when government officials have lost their hearts somewhere along the way, citizens can step in and make things better.  This is one place where collective action can make a huge difference.

A How-To for collective action

http://www.mobilisationlab.org/training/moblab-live/open-campaigns/#.Vci_z62nBJk

"Key Learning: Elements of ‘Open-source’ Principals
Principles that can be applied to campaigns and movement building:

1. Action Worthy Problem & Solution: Does it matter to enough people? Is the solution you propose realistic and effective?
2. Replicate > Repeat > Innovate = Anti-fragile: Instead of sticking to a multi-year strategic plans, establish an initial plan of action and create room for experimentation, even failure and error.
   
3. Tiered Decision-Making: Recognizing specialization, respecting local leadership and decentralized responsibilities.
4. Clear Purpose: Open-source campaigns function best with clear purpose, frame, values that serve as basic parameters.
5. Point of Entry: Network weaving provides points of entry to the bigger picture and broader objectives beyond the local context or immediate policy demand (i.e. a national message or national/ international day of action)."

I haven't digested this yet but some good ideas here.

With collective action, is one simple goal enough?

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-33729241

In his own critique of the Hong Kong protests against limited public voice on elected candidates, activist Joshua Wong said:

'"First, we did not have any clear goal or roadmap or route for democracy. We did not deliver the message to the general Hong Kong public," says the university student, over lunch.
'Secondly, not enough people were willing to pay the price by protesting. We did not have enough bargaining power with the Chinese authorities.
'Say, for example, during the Umbrella Movement, if two million Hong Kong people had occupied the streets, along with labour strikes, and if this had continued for more than two months, we would have had enough bargaining power.'"

So, not a clear goal, and not a large enough protest.  I want to discuss the first part.

The Arab Spring was actually quite successful. The clear goal in most of the countries was one thing; get rid of the dictator.  And they succeeded in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere (but not, unfortunately, in Syria).  But what then?  This, I think, is part of the complaint Joshua Wong is making. Even if a protest succeeds in it's main goal, what is the plan after that?  I think this is a weakness in most collective actions.

It is easy now using social media to create a large collective action. Anonymous showed this against Scientology.  The Arab Spring showed this against dictators.  Having one clear simple goal makes it easier to bring people together and keep a cohesion in the ranks.  Back to the article...

"But Mr Wong is looking far ahead. He wants to rectify the mistake of not presenting a viable plan to the public.
He says that by 2030, the democracy movement needs to present a clear roadmap spelling out how it can achieve a legally binding referendum on the city's future."

Wong sees what I see. A protest needs not only a short-term goal but at least some sort of vision for where to go once your goal has been met.  But this is a 2-edged sword. On the one hand, once you succeeed, you're not floundering around wondering "what now?"  But on the other hand, the discussion about what to do after the simple goal is met means more things to argue about, more time to work things through, more time for factions to develop.  I see no solution to this.

Ants work both individually and collectively

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/ants-have-unique-ability-to-switch-between-individual-and-collective-action-says-study-10425367.html

"Ants have an almost unique ability among animals to switch between individual and collective action, according to new research which uncovers the mystery behind their impressive teamwork.

The insects are able to transport objects such as food that are much larger than themselves by intuitively understanding when to be part of the collective muscle and when to play an individual 'scouting' role for the group, researchers found.
Experiments using the Cheerios breakfast cereal showed how groups of a dozen or more ants working in unison could haul much bigger items by pushing in the same direction. But crucially, when the group moves off-course or trouble looms, the ant who first realises the problem transforms into a highly individualistic leader."

This is pretty cool. There is really no leader. there is one ant who is in the best position to give directions at that time.

Anonymous is bigger than most thought

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2015/0708/How-big-is-Anonymous-Maybe-bigger-than-you-thought

"The analysis looks at Facebook pages connected with Anonymous to gain insight into its international prowess. Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a graduate student in the school's sociology department, examined 2,770 Anonymous Facebook pages that generated a collective 22.2 million 'likes.' This is just the 'absolute minimal size' of the entire global Anonymous network, Mr. Golovchenko explained in an interview.
The point of the study was to 'show the enormity and connectivity of the Anonymous movement at a global level,' he said. The end result revealed a network greater than he expected. It was even 'a lot bigger than my Anon informants thought it would be,' said Golovchenko."

Anonymous still in the news too!

"the rich and poor social networks did not overlap"

http://civicmediaproject.org/works/civic-media-project/the2013protestsinbrazil

"Even though the people facing digital inequalities in the marginalized areas came late to the protest, Facebook still provided a platform so the residents of Gurigica, São Benedito and Itararé could organize and manifest their demands in the street protest. But the social divide that takes place in Vitória affected the way information flowed, impacting the civic engagement of the poor. The organizers of the first protests belonged to an upper class that did not overlap with lower classes, online and offline, the marginalized came in late to the streets and their voices and requests were not privileged as the ones shouted by the rich."

This is an interesting study in how class divide prevents larger protests.  Something for organizers to think about in the future.

Looking back on the Arab Spring

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/fallen-leaves-arab-spring-150310060732982.html

"No matter what the current state of different Arab uprisings, this much is certain: That where the people once loudly demanded the downfall of certain regimes, many now want order and security before anything else.

Hassan Hassan, an Abu Dhabi-based Middle East analyst and a co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, says there are no visible gains for the people so far as conflicts and insurgencies in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt continue to cut a swathe of destruction through the region.
'All that ordinary people are looking forward to is an end to the violence, and stability at some point,' he told Al Jazeera."

Sad article.  The Arab Spring succeeded in toppling dictators. But then what?  That is the question.  And can such a revolution be preparing for a smooth transition at the same time as it is toppling a government?  Personally, I think not.  And I don't know the solution to that.