Multi-Roots Activism: An Integrative Approach to Community Organizing

California State University Monterey Bay

Division of Social, Behavioral, and Global Studies.

Political Economy, Anthropology Concentrations

Senior Capstone

Capstone Advisor(s): Dr. Angie Ngoc Tran, Dr. Juan Jose Gutierrez

Capstone Facilitator: John Klien

Submitted by:

Martin Wilson

Graduation Fall 2013

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ContentsAcronyms list...............................................................................................................................................2

Abstract.......................................................................................................................................................3

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3

Literature Review........................................................................................................................................5

Grassroots...............................................................................................................................................5

Non-Profits in the Grassroots/Netroots..................................................................................................9

Theory Section - Space of Flows, Repertoire of Contention, Affordances.................................................11

Methodology – Mixed Methods................................................................................................................19

Results.......................................................................................................................................................22

Case Overview – U.S PE Cases – Students for A Quality Education........................................................22

Overall Strategic Approach - Online and offline praxis..........................................................................24

Global Cases – Your Siblings and LIN – Space of Flows..............................................................................33

Global Cases with Development Goals – Your Siblings and LIN.................................................................35

Data Analysis - Similarities, Differences, and Degrees of Success in Political Resistance...........................45

Similarities, Differences, and Degrees of Success in International Development......................................48

Conclusion: Organizing in the Multi-Roots................................................................................................52

Works Cited...............................................................................................................................................55

Appendix:..................................................................................................................................................57

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Acronyms list

BoT: Board of Trustee’sBfG: Bronies for Good CFA: California Faculty AssociationCOINTEL: Counter Intelligence ProgramCSUMB: California State University, Monterey Bay CSULB: California State University, Long BeachFAQ: Frequently Asked QuestionsFB: FacebookLDC: Less Developed CountryNGO: Non-Governmental OrganizationNPIC: Non-Profit Industrial ComplexNPO: Non-Profit Organization PR: Public relationsRoC: Repertoire of ContentionSiC: Said in ContextSM: Social MovementSQE: Students for a Quality Education VDN: Vietnamese DongYS: Your SiblingsWTO: World Trade Organization

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Abstract

In this capstone, I analyze 4 case studies of political organizations and NGOs. I situate my

analysis within Castells “Space of Flows” theory, which focuses on the manifestation of post-

industrial capitalist society. I critique and expand on the “Space of Flows” through inclusion of

the “Tarrows” State while incorporating Tilly’s, “repertoire of contention” and Earl and

Katrina’s “affordances” theories into a wider model for understanding strategies and tactics

utilized within what I’m referring to as “integrative” organizing. Ultimately, this study will

conceptualize IO and analyze the factors and conditions that make these organizations successful

in their campaigns.

Introduction

Successful bouts of activism and civic engagement from the liberal or radical left has

historically involved the utilization of the systematic “grassroots” organizing paradigm. This

paradigm is commonly held by numerous political and community organizations to be the

method to organize and campaign for a cause. The paradigm encompasses tactics and strategies,

such as leafleting, tabling, protest actions, or political rallies that organizers utilize to carry out

their campaigns. For most of the existence of American democracy, this paradigm has been

standard practice for those ambitious individuals or groups who have worked together to launch

and sustain transformative community organizations and social movements. However, the recent

advent of the digital age and mass social networking technologies has now lead to the

development of a completely new organizing paradigm known as “Netroots”.

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“Netroots” is an organizing paradigm that involves political community-based activism

that originates from and exists primarily within the virtual communities. Virtual communities,

generally speaking, are communities formed from disjointed physical actors in order to interact

or interrelate via online social networking mechanisms. For organizers in the virtual sphere, tools

such as websites, blogs, online forums, video sharing, social networking, and online

conferencing software allow individuals and organizations to inform and mobilize virtual

communities to action for various causes. As such, integrative organizing can be described as the

merging of both grassroots and netroots, where all related procedures within the organizing

process unfold simultaneously in both physical and virtual contexts.

Thus, this capstone seeks to explore the range of IO strategies and tactics within four

organizations involved in political resistance and developmental efforts. To guide this study, I’m

focusing on the following questions: What allows these organizations to most effectively

undertake organizing campaigns for equity and justice? What factors are critical for

understanding how and why an organization utilizes a given strategic approach? My intent with

these questions is to determine the optimal strategies and conditions for success in organizing

campaigns. The criteria for my analysis will be situated in a multi-layered theoretical framework

based around Castells space of flows. The Space of Flows illustrates the structure of globalized,

networked capitalism, where society is organized primarily into networks of individuals, groups,

and institutions which interact with programmable and repeatable social, political, and economic

processes called flows. These flows are part of the dominant Nation and global state-capital

complexes of society that facilitate the directions of the flows, which also serves as the points of

contention within the system. To explore the strategies and tactics employed at these sites of

contention, I use Tilly’s repertoire of contention and Earl and Katrina’s “affordances” theory,

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which elaborate upon the historic patterns of organizing paradigms and technological re-

appropriation, which serve as the basis of the ongoing evolution the IO paradigm of the RoC.

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Literature Review

In order to better understand what factors are responsible for making organization led

campaigns for justice and equity successful, we must examine the literature on grassroots and

netroots activism. This includes the following considerations: The semi-virtual post-

globalization context that organizations now face and the transparency of organizational

structure; accountability on the grounds of collaboration with their constituencies, fiscal

responsibility; decision making mechanisms, and the formation of solidarity. For political

resistance in social movements, the theoretical basis for this activism involves understanding and

interpreting solidarity, coalition building, relationships of power, and the institutions of

oppression. For community organizations and non-profits, in both civil and cyber society, the

emphasis involve two key aspects. The first is the exploration of the non-profit structure as one

of the primary mechanisms for institutionalized social services and activism. The second

involves the transparency of organizational structure, accountability on the grounds of

collaboration with their constituencies, fiscal responsibility, and decision making mechanisms.

With regards to netroots, the main focus lies on the construction of virtual networks through

digital means of communication, which accommodates community formation and cultural

expression.

Grassroots

Within the literature, the grassroots approach to organizing a campaign in the resistance

context involves the development of organizational frameworks, human networks, and capable

organizers. In terms of understanding resistance, one helpful framework is offered by

Brofrenbrener (2007). Her focus, known in the literature as the Comprehensive Resistance

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Campaign for labor unions involves generating a diverse campaign strategy that follows a set of

ten conditions that incorporate all resistance assets in comprehensively applying pressure on

multi-national corporations. Unions that meet at least six of the conditions have had greater

success campaigning than those who did not. To illustrate this concept, Brofrenbrenner brings in

the example of a Unite Here resistance campaign, which fought against the food catering giant

Aramark, because of their numerous labor violations perpetrated against their workers.1

Before beginning any action, local union chapters embark on the training and development of

knowledgeable organizers, who are not only capable of executing specific tactics during actions,

but are also able to train in worker and supporter network building, organizational support, and

campaign planning.

A more radical exploration of anarchist grassroots organizing strategies for social change

is provided by Tom Knoche.2 The emphasis in this instance is focused on mobilizing and

empowering low income individuals and communities to engage in organizing efforts that grants

greater opportunities for change when crisis is present within system. This form of organizing

emphasizes decentralized, collective, and cooperative forms of organizing which increase the

degree for the exercise of agency, ferments counter-culture and strengthens social-communal

bonds. Criteria for success and operational guidelines in this realm of organizing are also

indicated to provide organizers with the mechanism that maximizes the potential for success.

These indicators of success include independence, a healthy balance of service and change

projects, relation of operations within a broad political vision, and the minimization of internal

factionalism and participation in electoral candidate campaigns.

1 Bronfenbrenner, Kate, ed. 2007. Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-border Campaigns . Ithaca: ILR Press/Cornell University Press.2 Tom Knoche, "Organizing Communities," Social Anarchism Journal (1993): 1-21,

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  For any sort of organization or broader movement to be successful in this context,

solidarity must exist. The solidarity that the literature primarily focuses on involves the moral

values and conditions that allow solidarity and empathy to develop. This entails contrasting

conditions that underpin local solidarity, such as shared experience in collective action and

collaboration that helps build attachment and community toward fundamentally inclusive non-

ideological values. This may evolve into the challenges of fermenting a global consciousness that

translates into solidarity action and support.3

Another key concept present throughout the literature is the role of politically orientated

community organizations. Unlike their institutional counterparts, these organizations serve as

vehicles for social or political transformation. Operated by citizens, exploited populations, and

community organizers, they are geared for an explicit political objective outlined by the analysis

of the relationship between its members and the given system of domination that they are

challenging, such as patriarchy or imperialism. Members then take on a program of change-

making (consciousness raising, direct action, or other forms of political engagement) to actualize

their visions. Participation undertaken by the members of these affinity organizations directly

supports the building of solidarity in both civil society and resistance movements. And as any

student of social movements understands, solidarity is crucial to the sustaining and eventual

escalation of the struggle. Examples in social movement literature illustrate how these affinity

organization help organize the localized actions that serve to either catalyze or amplify global

student and labor movements or other culturally specific movements, such as the Zapatistas

movement in Mexico and the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East.4

3 Cray, Charlie. 2000. Global Village or Global Pillage? Multinational Monitor. 21, no. 4: 29.4 Amoore, Louise. 2005. The Global Resistance Reader. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Pp. 19-27

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        The literature that I've sampled on netroot's activism however takes a different dynamic

to political organizing. Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport in Digitally Enabled Social Change

present an exploration of how change-making in America is drifting to a new form of online

activism known as “flash activism”. Flash activism involves spontaneous and autonomous bouts

of involvement by individuals and groups that are not necessarily drawn to longer-term

affiliations with movements, causes, or groups. It illustrates, from a quantitative perspective,

how individuals are engaging in e-activism through the use of online e-tactics derived from

fellow individuals or organizations. Their work points to the emergence of a digital “repertoire of

contention”, where means of web-based technologies - online petitions, e-bulletins, online

forums, email and fax templates, and online voting evolve as a new means from which to

approach organizing campaign efforts. It also attempts to theorize how traditional concepts in

social change activities such as co-presence, transform into looser notions of collective action,

where conjoined actors with varying resistance pedigrees in vast autonomous networks.  

Joss Hands5 expands on this exploration by incorporating an analysis of dialectical power

relations and discursive ethics within the engagement of communicative-information technology.

Specifically, he focuses on how social change interlocutors combat the inoculative tendencies of

mass media and the tension between commodification by private enterprise and liberation

through autonomous agents of social change. He postulates on the existence of quasi-

autonomous recognition networks (QARN). QARN’s, conceived within the schematic of power-

law, are broad units of social organization which, “expresses the combination of combination of

the dynamics of networks with the discourse-ethical perspective…”6 In essence, QARN’s

5 Hands, Joss. 2011. @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture. NewYork: Pluto Press. 6 Hands, Joss. 2011. @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture. NewYork: Pluto Press. Pp. 167-168.

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represent the sites where ethical notions are formulated and acted upon by individuals, who can

then become coordinated in mutual sets of conscious commitments such as resistance. These

broad networks therefore encompass the an extension of the autonomous “commons”, where

critical thought and action can take place against capitalist functions.

        Aside from select cases however, most literature pertaining to the netroots paradigm of

organizing takes on a cosmopolitan perspective, which glorifies the role of online social

networking tools and their role as the catalyst for social movement and the mechanism from

which the movement unfolds7. What is most often excluded, however, is the human factor, or

those organizers who have trained in the art of fermenting and executing those community

organizing campaigns. There is also a general focus on the general concept of cyber-society that

encompasses numerous government welfare institutions, non-governmental organizations, and

non-profit institutions that play various roles in organizing for charity, social justice, and citizen

participation. The literature regards cyber-society as a sort of ideal scenario for citizen

participation in open forum discussion, providing transfer payments that support such

organizations, and soliciting a vehicle for the expansion of independent media outlets.8 This

conceptualization assigns online social networking tools as an organizer’s tool for expanding and

advancing the movement, and the common citizen’s vehicle for becoming involved in the

resistance.

Non-Profits in the Grassroots/Netroots.        

7 Earl, Jennifer , and Katrina Kimport. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age . London, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011. Pp. 1-266

8 Benmamoun, Mamoun, Morris Kalliny, and Robert Cropf. 2012. The Arab Spring, MNEs, and Virtual Public Spheres. Multinational Business Review . 20, no. 1: 26.

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Organizing strategies for nonprofits remain predominantly absent from the literature. The

main body of available literature focuses on how to navigate through state legitimization

procedures and how to maintain them. More critical texts explore key structural considerations

for non-profits, such as the relationship between them and their stakeholders, their funding

sources, and limitations which they face. One of the main sources of critical literature, the

Revolution will not be funded9, focuses specifically upon the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

(NPIC) of the United States. The NPIC is a multilayer complex orientated to the provision of

specialized social services to victims of pervasive social ills in the United States. The NPIC was

originally developed during the post-civil war period to support the work of charitable

organizations that served mostly as welfare institutions what were considered to be impoverished

populations. As an unregulated and relatively young industry, NP’s allowed elites to channel

their earnings into tax-exempt foundations that simultaneously afforded them protection from the

state’s taxing mechanisms and provided them with the capability to indirectly manipulate public

discourses on activism. This initial basis, which has grown into a structure encompassing

hundreds of thousands of NP’s, foundations, and state organizations has formulated the purpose

of the present day NPIC which Andrea Smith describes as a “set of symbiotic relationships that

link political and financial technologies of state and owning class control with surveillance over

public political ideology, including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social

movements”10. Through the selective appropriation of funds and institutionalization of Non-

profits via the 501-C3 label and other methods, the NPIC has historically served to stifle the

militancy and revolutionary potential of social movements in the U.S. through the absorption

minority movement leaders and organizers into the NPIC, selective funding, and by supporting

9 INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. 2007 The Revolution Will Not Be Funded Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge: South End Press.10

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surveillance institutions such as COINTEL that effectively eliminated critical political

perspectives from social movements or nonprofits that embodied them.

The NPIC has professionalized community organizers from grassroots organizations,

turning them into grant writers, administrators, or fundraisers who remain a part an isolated

organizational hierarchy. Another aspect within the literature, pertaining specifically to NP’s,

includes the managing and allocation of financial assets in efforts, forms of democratic decision

making, and accountability mechanisms to stakeholders.11But with reference to concrete

grassroots and netroots strategies, the main role of nonprofits remains relegated to source of

financial and logistical resources for political economic resistance organizations. Primarily

through the funding of operations and events, or the furnishing of permanent websites for the

facilitation of e-tactics (E.g Moveon.org)

Overall, what is lacking within the literature is interactions that are inherent in the virtual

realm of activism, specifically outreach to virtual communities and new e-fundraising technology

platforms. There is also little to no analysis to the connection of informally organized volunteer

groups that either support the efforts of a given non-profit, or carry on its initial mission in an

alternative format.  

Theory Section - Space of Flows, Repertoire of Contention, Affordances.

In order to situate my analysis of multiroots activism in the globalized, networked

society, I will use a theoretical framework that encompasses theorists which address three

concerns: State-Capital, networks, and strategic evolution. Tarrow and Castells are utilized to

address the formation of the state-capital superstructure of society. This dominant structure

11 Saxton, Gregory, and Chao Guo. 2011. Accountability Online: Understanding the Web-Based Accountability Practices of Nonprofit Organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 40, no. 2: 270-295.

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organizes (through flows) various networks of institutions responsible for facilitating capital

accumulation, production, property rights, and market circulation. Consequently, the flows serve

as processes which provide civil society and activists the ability to contest the directions of flows

through the formation of networks of “resistance” and “altruism”. Social movement RoC’s,

which once relied upon existing grassroots strategies, evolve as a result of digital technologies

created initially to transcend spatial barriers to capital accumulation12. The ensuing consequence

however, is the “affordance” of technologies to civil society and social movements, which foster

new, cheap, and private forms of participation and fewer opportunities for retaliation from the

state. This in turn, provides a basis for the evolution of a digital RoC that fosters virtual forms of

contention on social, political, and economic issues. With this logic in mind, I will now explore

the varying theorists that compose this model, beginning with Tarrow

Tarrow13 conceptualizes the state as national actors that act within a transnational stage of

globalized capitalism. Nation-states (varying on their strategic, economic, and political power)

still have a degree of purview over their sovereign territory, policies, and strategic interests,

disputes within areas involving internationally recognized boundaries and resources are no

longer handled bilaterally. The conflict becomes globalized, with international bodies such as the

World Trade Organization being called to mediate the situation. Even so, nation-states still

remain principal actors within the process thusly creating a need for action by civil society

activists on both the front of the nation and global state. In correspondence with the state is

capital, which also acts in both a global and national stage. As such, activism unfolds globally,

12 Harvey, David. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. i – 31.13

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with networks of interlocutors operating through civil society and social movements exerting

pressure on all involved state actors.

As such, I bring in Castells to illustrate how information technology interacts with the

processes and organization of society through networks. He categorizes this interaction as the

“Space of Flows”. Space, as Castells conceptualizes it, refers to the material expression of

society through place, which is also the site where time sharing practices take place. Flows as

constructed as the “purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction

between physically disjointed actors in the economic, political, and symbolic structures of

societies”.14 They are the very expression of the processes that dominate different aspects of our

daily lives. The 7 types of the flows that Manuel states include: Capital, information, technology,

organizational interaction, symbols, images, and sounds. Although comprehensive for

understanding globalized capitalism and the central processes to its formation and manifestation,

Castells omits the explicit role of state policy as a flow within his “Space of Flows” model. In

reality, the state has three major implications that are critical to creating a holistic understanding

of the dominant social, economic, political, and cultural structures that constitute globalized

capitalism. Firstly, state policy itself, be it fiscal, monetary, or otherwise, is a programmable and

repeatable process of exchange and interaction that takes place within network of governance

that ultimately, affects the organization of space. Secondly, as a flow, state policy reproduces the

logic of the globalized capitalism by legitimating (through force) the value of currency, property,

and market institutions that allows capital accumulation to take place. It also subsidizes the

supply of critical inputs such as labor power through education, which provides capital with a

skilled workforce that is necessary to the circulation of surplus value. Lastly, without the state,

14 Castells, Manuel. The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture Vol.1. The Rise of the Network Society. London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2010. Pp. 407-459

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labor relations or nonprofit registry would be non-existent, which in-itself, would complicate the

expression of power within networks that fall within the anterior positions of the network

hierarchy. Therefore, my own contribution to the model will be the incorporation of state-policy

as a flow due it’s manifestation of the dominative political structure of society. I’ve created a

conceptual model that illustrates the “Space of Flows” and it’s situation within a super-structure

of physical and virtual networks of society:

Figure 1.1 – “Space of Flows” Conceptual Framework

Diagram 1.1 – “Space of Flows” and network structure. Derived from Castells.

The SoF is therefore set in contrast to the “Space of Places”, where physical place

determines the organization and function of space and those who reside within it. The conjoining

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of these two forces formulates the dominant social structures that support the organization of

networks of people, infrastructure, and institutions the prerogative of late-stage capitalism.

Castells also applies this logic to active actors in social movements by noting how virtual

networking tools facilitate collective power and the creation of autonomous space and

knowledge.15 This in conjunction with physical action and co-presence allows various agents

within the system to undertake social transformative projects.

The contemporary application of Castells “Space of Flows” focuses on networks of

resistance, hope, and revolution. These networks formulated as a result of a crucial

transformation of capitalist development through telecommunication technology, social media,

and internet technology. Specifically, Castells argues that the resulting proliferation of wireless

network and internet technology transforms the communication environment. This

transformation occurs through the increased usage of internet based social networking

technologies, such as custom websites, facebook, twitter, tumblr, livestream.com

(http://livestream.com), etc. These technologies provide a platform that seamlessly integrates

audio, visual, and typographic media with instantaneous virtual feedback mechanisms. This

culmination of media, user-input, and online discussion alters meaning construction and power

relationship formation due to the change in physical presence and experience when engaging in

communication outside of the context of the movement. He states:

“In our society, which I have conceptualized as a network society, power is multi-

dimensional and is organized around networks programmed in each domain of human

activity according to the interests and values of empowered actors. Networks of power

15 Castells, Manuel. The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture Vol.1. The Rise of the Network Society. London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2010. Pp. 407-459

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exercise their power by influencing the human mind predominantly (but not solely)

through multimedia networks of mass communication.”16

These multimedia network are formulated through the actions of programmers, or people

with the power to create the networks that people depend on, and switchers, who facilitate the

connections between said networks. The positioning of such programmers and switchers,

determines power-relations within and between networks as part of the overall network logic.

The predominant networked logic is located within the system of globalized capitalism

coordinated through the operations of the financial-state nexus17, the primary apparatus that

appropriates productive means, technology, and labor power to the purposes of capital

accumulation and socio-cultural control. Within this state-capital institutional structure, a number

of industrial complex’s (academic, military, entertainment, and more) form part of the intricate

network of socio-economic institutions utilized to support the complimentary capitalist logics of

accumulation, circulation, and commodification.

One of social movements implicated in Castells analysis, in which he acted as a

participant-observer, involves the Indignadas movement in Spain. In 2011, austerity measures,

unemployment, and electoral disillusion spurred a popular wave of urban style occupations in

Spain. As organizing groups began collaborating on movement building, platforms of digital

communication for the movement, such as “Democracia Real Ya” and its accompanying social

media tools Facebook, twitter, tuenti, etc. facilitated further discussions and eventually calls for

action. As the movement capitulated into the occupation phase following the May 16th Cataluña

Square action, collective neighborhood assemblies exercised democratic leadership and control

with permitting the realization of alternative cultural and economic values, such as barter 16 Castells, Manuel. A Network Theory of Power in International Journal of Communication 5. 2011. Pp. 773-87. 17 Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge and Malden. Polity. 2012. Pp. 7-15.

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networks, cooperativism, reciprocal solidarity networks, and social exchange.18 These facets of

an alternative society, along with general coordination of the movement are essentially tied to the

intimately clustered networks of resistance and support that respond to calls for logistical support

or political, provide space for the dissemination of information within and outside of the

movement19. In essence, the unfolding of political, social, and cultural resistance articulated

through the reclamation of public spaces in the form of acadampadas, helped constitute

democratically transformative communities that remained intimately tied to digital platforms of

communication, affording ever greater degrees of democratic participation and input within the

Indignadas networks.

Another aspect of my theory that explains political organization behavioral focuses on

Charles Tilly’s Repertoire of Contention. The Repertoire of Contention” is a set of protest tactics

and strategies available to individual or collective actors in a social movement during a given

timeframe. It is historically constructed through the previous use of a successful tactic or strategy

in a previous iteration of the movement or companion movements. Like all other social

phenomena, it is context dependent and subject to transition as technology, culture, and structure

develops. The RoC is however a potentially stagnant element, as certain social movement actors

can rely familiar forms of resistance that apply to the accepted level of risk, initiative, and

pedagogy which ultimately constrains innovation. There are 3 formats of contention present in

the literature include the following: Traditional, which focuses on social movements taking place

prior to the industrial/modern age. The next format is Modern, which encompasses much of late

18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, spanning the entirety of the industrial age in Europe and America

18 For Castells complete report of the Indignadas movement, please refer to, “a Rhiszomatic Revolution, Indignadas in Spain” in Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. 19 Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge and Malden. Polity. 2012. Pp. 109-116.

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and Cold war. Lastly, there is the digital RoC of the 21st century, which emphasizes the specific

trend of e-tactics, mobilizations, and campaigns with web 2.0 technologies and onwards.20 The

majority of social movements today (exceeding potential domestic uprisings) and situated within

either or both the modern or digital RoC’s due to the varied conditions under which SM actors

operate in communities across the world.

The final theory in my model is referred to as “leveraged affordances”, by proponents

Earl and Kimport. Affordances21 include the ability users to employ objects (in this instance e-

tactics and related infrastructure) to engage in protest outside of the traditional frameworks of

social movement theory. The affordance leveraging approach is contemporary online organizing

approach with a key implication, the reduction of barriers to organizing. The first major

reduction is that of cost due in part to online e-tactics such as emails, e-petitions, outreach, etc.

which can performed from anywhere at any time. The second is the reduction of risk, due to

physical dislocation and in certain cases online anonymity which prevents concerted, targeted

enforcement actions by state-capital enforcement apparatuses against activists.

        This process, in addition to the time, energy, and funds necessary to engage in such

activities were costs that created a high threshold for participation and organization. E-tactics on

different websites, however, allowed affordances, such as lower costs of participation to be

leveraged by various actors. Anyone could take a site such as moveon.org, create a petition or

utilize any other e-tactic to seek redress an issue that they were passionate in. In essence, it

open's wide the possibility for forms of involvement that weren't seen previously on issues that

20 Joss. 2011. @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture. NewYork: Pluto Press. 1-210

21 Earl, Jennifer , and Katrina Kimport. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Ch.8

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aren't even considered to be in the sphere of political consideration. Additionally, digital

organizing forces the re-conceptualization of 2 key tenets in social movement theory, aptly

referred to in this volume as collectivity and physical togetherness. The authors argue that tactics

that take place almost exclusively in the virtual realm represent a different form of collective

action. It involves more coordination on the part of autonomous individuals taking action on an

issue that they are mutually concerned or passionate about.

Methodology – Mixed Methods

The primary research method for my research is the case study, which can be broadly

defined as a systematic approach to gathering sufficient information on a given person, social

setting, event, or group to understand how a subject functions or operates.22 Generally stated

then, the case stated is used to explain a wide range of phenomena through multiple avenues for

data-collection, and is capable of making use of, or contributing to the application of theory. For

the purposes of this project, I will incorporate four case studies of political/non-profit

organizations. The case studies are composed through mixed methods emphasizing personal

experience and a structured analysis of each organization’s website and the literature and

publications, and social media presences present in it. General campaign information,

organizational structure and pedagogy are scoured through these means. 7 question semi-

structured interviews with recognized organizational representatives are also undertaken to

integrate personal experiences and reflections of campaigns, approach, and structural

considerations. The interviews provide a further layer of depth elucidating on the practice of

22 Berg, Bruce. 2009. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. Boston: Pearson. Pp. 317-335

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strategic and tactical approaches vis a vis their campaign events, actions, coordination efforts. It

also expands on how the organizing approach was informed historically, culturally, or politically

and how localized efforts are undertaken by each case organization.

The political organizations include 2 chapters of a state-wide non-hierarchal resistance

organization, called Students for a Quality Education. The nonprofit’s include the German non-

profit organization Your Siblings, which is an organization centered around effective and

sustainable humanitarian aid via the support of locally initiated community projects in the

developing horn of North Africa. The organization was founded in 2010 to channel humanitarian

aid in a manner that circumvents the issues surrounded governmental development aid in African

countries.2. The second non-profit includes the LIN foundation, a Vietnam based public NPO.

LIN was founded in 2009, and encompasses consultation, volunteerism, and philanthropic based

programs that support fellow NGOs operating on a variety of social-political issues. The LIN

Center for Community Development is rooted primarily in South Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City)

and is focused heavily on building networks of interconnected NGO

s capable of supporting each other’s work while improving the effectiveness of their

operations.

In order to frame the comparison will between the organizations, a qualitative

comparative analysis is performed following the case studies. Qualitative Comparative Analysis

(QCA)23 is methodology that allows me to systematically match my cases based on their

qualitative description and contrast the dependent variables in my comparison as informed by

theoretical framework.

23 Charles Ragin, and Benoît Rihoux, Configurational Comparative Methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques (Applied Social Research Methods), (Thousand Oaks. : SAGE Publications, Inc., 2008), chap. 2.

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This includes Castells, “Space of Flows” concept; where I apply flows characterize the

effects on the organizational structure of my case organizations and their strategic approach

within the networks they operate within. Kimport’s and Earl’s affordance leverage theory and

Tilly’s repertoire of contention allow me to more specifically explain why certain tactics are

used, and how informs each groups approach towards organizing for justice and equity. Tilly’s

Repertoire of Contention will also be used to frame the progression of tactics and strategies as

part of the integrative RoC. The range of tactics and strategies in each approach, evidenced

through the description of each campaign, demonstrates the degree of success achieved through

the use of their given the conditions of the organizing context. The combination of tactics and

strategies formulates the basis of the causal relationship between the approach and the degree of

success. This then analyzed in an equifinal manner to illustrate how the varying combinations

taken have led to the achievement of equity and justice goals within campaign based organizing.

These goals, such as fundraising targets, political objectives, or participation rates in programs,

actions operationalize success, and it’s actualization with a given approach. This comparison

allows us to contextualize the concept of IO and to determine the range and potential direction of

IO’s that has and could potentially yield the greatest degree of success.

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Results

This section presents the cases and results of the aforementioned research procedures. It

is broken down into two sections that cover the breadth of the analysis. Firstly, each case

organization (Students for a Quality Education, followed by Your Siblings and Lin) and a major

campaign identified via organizer interview in 2012 is provided. The second portion focuses on

the QCA, which covers the commonalities and variations in organizing approach respective to

the orientation of each case along with the factors that yielded the varying degrees of success and

failure in each organizations pivotal 2012 campaign.

Case Overview – U.S PE Cases – Students for A Quality Education

Students for a Quality Education (SQE) is a statewide partisan political organization,

forming part of the upswell in student activism within California following a decade long trend

of intense privatization efforts within the California State University system. The organization is

funded in part by the California Faculty Association through organization interns (which vary

from campus to campus) who receive training, resources, and facilities to engage in organization

efforts. These interns in turn report to an intern coordinator, which in turn reports to the CFA.

Aside from these paid interns, all other organizers within a given SQE chapter are self-declared

volunteers working with the selected intern to engage in both the statewide and university

specific agendas.

SQE, along with the CFA are posited dialectically to the CSU Board of Trustee’s and CSU

Chancellor's office, the primary administrative apparatuses of the system responsible for

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determining system-wide financial, organizational, and curricular policies. With regards to SQE

comparison, each policy is re-constructed as a given “flow” acting upon specific spatial aspects

of the university. Each flow in itself is a point of contention where tactics and strategies are

employed on both the state and local level to forward the agendas of the San Jose and Monterey

Bay chapters of SQE.

Table 1: SQE Flows table.

Flows Direction (Arena of Contention)

SQE Strategy

Capital Restructuring public education - Privatization, market orientated education

Removal of private services through public demonstration or exposure, fighting for additional funding. Anti-corporate campaign, offering alternative model for service provision

Information Production and limited distribution of academic knowledge

Open-sourcing of academic knowledge, fighting for accessible public higher education. Mooc model.

Technology Online classes, clickers, Gmail Resistance against implementation of technologies. Emphasis on value of one-one education

Organizational Interaction Private services (housing, dining, book-store) vs. Public services

Reform of leadership structure, direct democracy (collective assemblies).

Images, Sounds Negative media portrayal to delegitimize public demonstrations as loud, obnoxious, and misguided

Targeted demonstrations against administration, independent media coverage

State Policy Austerity measures - Tuition, Budget cuts, institution of fees, faculty, and staff contract adjustments. Administrative Clout

Anti-austerity campaign exposing policies, creating internal systemic pressure through disruption of BoT, chancellor operations.

Symbols (Culture) Specialized skill school, job training.

Reassertion of university vision, protection of all academic programs

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Table 1.1: Model of flows, effects of flows, and response strategy by SQE resistance network.24

The campaign of interest for SQE comparison is the continued #nomorefees campaign, which

took place within the 2012 academic year. This particular year is of interest due its situation

within a proposition election year in California. Proposition 30, a high income tax initiative that

provides funds directly to K-12 and university education in California along with a direct tuition

refund resulting from a post-poned tuition hike and budget earmark. This proposition, especially

its tuition refund, was touted as a concession resulting from the cumulative and sustained

resistance in the CSU, which forced the chancellor’s office to politik in a transparent manner. As

such, the electoral campaign around prop. 30 campaign became central to SQE’s Fall 2012

organizing efforts. It ultimately passed in California’s November 6th elections, granting SQE its

first substantive victory over the legacy of tuition hikes and budget cuts in education plaguing

California for over 2 decades. Both the CSUMB and CSUSJ chapters were part of this campaign,

utilizing a commonly set approach to help meet the outcomes of the campaign, which we will

now explore in greater detail.

Overall Strategic Approach - Online and offline praxis

SQE drew upon a militant repertoire of contention embedded within history of contentious

student movements inside and outside of California:

24 Model derived from Castells “Space of Flows”, et al.

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Table 2: SQE Strategies and Tactics Table

Super-Structure (State-Capital)

Strategies and Tactics (action and actors)

Evolution (Next steps)

Governer Brown, California

Congress - Proposition 30.

Chancellors office, BoT –

(Realm): Registering students to vote, class presentations, flyering, phonebanking, public informational events and demonstrations. Website with media coverage, literature, surveys, contact information.

Reframing struggle towards bringing fees down through public tax initiatives, increase state funding.

Course repeat, graduation incentive, added units fees, online classes

(Hub): - Exposure and direction action (disruption). Disruption of BoT meeting, online petition, awareness actions through class presentations, guerrila actions

Additional facebook campaigns, creating long term coalition for justice by tieing multiple struggles together.

CSUMB – Campus administration - Sodexo, Housing (Alliance), University Corporation.

CSUSJ – Campus Administration, University Housing Services, Spartan Shops, etc.

(Node): - Guerilla tactics, exposure. Facebook group, anti-monopology actions.

CFA, campus orgs., students, staff, faculty, local communities (San Jose County, Monterey County)

Intensifying use of e-tactics - blog, petitions, mass-advocacy emails.

Table 1.2: Contingency table illustrating relationship to super-structure, S&T, and strategic evolution of IO.25

Within California, the main inspiration derives from the series of building confrontational

protests, building occupations, and otherwise in 2009 following a proposed 32% tuition increase

approved by the University of California Board of Regents. Although the around anti-austerity

measures in public higher education. The upsurge of protests eventually forced the UC board of

regents to temporarily postpone the tuition increases. However, the seed of dissent had been

sown, and soon the movement would spread to the UC’s sister system, the CSU. It was in this

backdrop of state fiscal turmoil that Michael Fredrickson, former CFA intern for the CSUMB

chapter of SQE, drew his inspiration to get involved in the movement, which would later

25 Model derived from Tilly’s RoC, Earl and Harris Affordances et al.

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transform into SQE:

...I saw what was going on in other university campuses in the fall of 2009. And then,

over the next semester we started organizing on campus because a lot of us were

interested in those really militant occupations. In the spring of 2010 we formed our little

group on campus and towards the end of the semester, we decided to affiliate ourselves

with Students for a Quality Education. (SiC)

His CFA intern counterpart in San Jose, Herlinda Aguirre, became a part of the movement after

being made aware via an SQE class presentation on a direct attack on her primary source of

financial support for attending CSUSJ, the Cal Grant. She explains how:

I was financial aid student and I found out that calgrants were on the chopping block

around the same time a past SQE member presented at an organization. I just decided I

wanted to do something so I went to my first SQE meeting the next week. (SiC)

One of the central aspects of both Micheal’s and Herlinda’s training centered on the class

presentation, which served as the first step to any organizing campaign. It allows organizer to

make a physical presence of the organization within the classroom space, present information

orally and textually (flyers, pamphlets, contact info. sheets) and facilitate questions, concerns, or

interested students. It also provided Michael and other student interns with a “captive audience”

situation that provides maximum exposure to the issues being presented upon. Overall, it was the

most practical venue from which to distribute information, briefly overview campaign concerns

and efforts, and build the construct the email list of interested students. From the pool of those

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students who showed up to actions or demonstrated interest in anti-austerity actions, Michael and

fellow SQE organizers would target potential students for recruitment into SQE or other related

projects. This class presentation heavy approach illustrates the importance of that SQE placed on

the classroom, the locus of activity within a university setting.

The classroom also provided the bridge for connection-building between SQE organizers

and faculty members. Partly due to adverse effect of budget cuts (particularly class size

increases) and workload increases on faculty members which facilitated a conflation of common

interest in anti-austerity movements. To present in a given class, SQE organizers would ask for

permission from faculty members for class-time as the start of period to present and pass out

information pertaining to the current campaign. Following presentations, which allowed

organizers to take collect contact information and gauge interest, additional in class would even

be afforded for topical discussion. In other situations, faculty would even encourage students to

pursue SQE as a potential avenue for democratic participation projects. This particular kind of

support almost always transcended into action co-presence by the offering of academic

incentives to participate in public demonstrations or other campaign efforts.

Both SQEs made it an imperative to perform outreach towards campus organizations in

touch with the respective African American, Latino, Asian-Pacific, and Chicano populations of

their campuses. This is mainly due to SQE’s messaging, which illustrates how people of color

share the disproportionate burden of anti-austerity measures due to the elimination of support

programs, grants, and discretionary funding that would otherwise be allocated to supporting the

success of these students. However, due to the greater size CSUSJ, SQE only one among several

other student lead organizations organizing against budget cuts and tuition hikes. Student

Advocates for Higher Education and SPEAK are also involved as part of San Jose SQE’s

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solidarity network of allies, whose resources, energy and presence are lent to networking efforts,

consciousness raising, and demonstrating at actions. In contrast, CSUMB’s primary locus of

student activism rests upon SQE, who’s singularly responsible for engaging all of the

aforementioned efforts on campus. Overall though, the networking and outreach tactics of SQE

were tailored to take full advantage of the classroom space to foster consciousness-raising, calls

to action, and interpersonal exchange.

This is also indicative of more traditional, grassroots approaches to mass community

organizing, focusing on the spaces where students congregated, communicated, and interrelated

on a daily basis. This physical emphasis carried over into SQE’s approach to actions, which

almost usually involved some form of public demonstration and action. However, instead of

utilizing more militant tactics such as strike or occupation, SQE vouched for less militant direct

actions as evidenced by their March 1s t, 2012 action structure: A short rally, picket line, and

social media blast (tweets, mass-texting, facebook event) to gather passing students, staff and

faculty. This is followed by a series of short yet energized speeches calling students to march and

take action, which then ends with an open-mic event or sit-in. This tactical approach to actions

explicitly avoids aggressive physical confrontation that could risk arrest or worse. This is partly

due to the CSU’s having experienced such a highly militant student movement that actively

utilized such tactics or strategies. The contention can be made therefore, that CSUMB did not

possess the social-political environment or actors that allow such actions to be undertaken with

the necessary support from the university body. This contrasts to U.C. Berkley, which has played

host to a number of student led movements throughout the 20th century, be it the Free speech,

anti-Vietnam war, anti-nuclear, and antiprivatization movements.    

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In the online realm, the statewide SQE hosts a primarily descriptive, blog based website

providing news and information on austerity measures (fees, budget cuts) and campaign

developments via archived blog posts. For any given ongoing campaign, informational materials

and news coverage pertinent to a new fee or persistent austerity proposal are posted. A “Join

SQE” tab is also listed, linking to a page with each active SQE chapter at a basic contact email.

Chapters also contain facebook and twitter pages as contact points. Photos and news coverage

from selected periodicals are also featured to highlight actions undertaken during “statewide”

days of action. The statewide days of action form the base of the semester long strategy that

command the networking, outreach, and tactical preparations of each SQE chapter for a given

academic semester or quarter. This website format however is not a standard for each chapter,

since each chapter approaches online communication differently given their relative

circumstances or approach.  

Overall though, both organizations utilize email as the primary means of communication

within their respective networks. They use it in two ways. The first is to initiate one way

communication in-house with members, relaying crucial tactical information or sharing general

information from meetings. The second purpose is to serve as an informational transmission to

share general campaign information with SQE’s primary stakeholders. Since the usage of

university email lists are restricted to administrators or department analysts, the collection of

emails through class presentations serves as a crucial part of the overall outreach capability for

SQE, even if students aren’t always inclined to read through their emails. Other social

networking technologies are used within this vein of thought, usually extending this

informational design to popular web 2.0 social networking tools, most notably facebook. Below

is facebook user data for the both the CSUMB and SJSU presences:

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“Education Action Now” –CSUMB FB Page

SJSU Students for a Quality Education – SJSU FB Group

431 Subscribers 596 Members29 page posts (Admin), 6 user

posts.229 user posts

7 comments26 likes

24 shares

281 comments410 likes

250+ Shares

For instance, CSUMB’s SQE chapter had used web. 2.0 technologies and their successors

to serve primarily one-way informational functions in order to put out literature, action

information (through FB events), and to issue calls to action. In lieu of the formal state-wide

website, CSUMB SQE relied on one Facebook page, “Education Action Now”, for their online

presence. An analysis of page activity in 2012 reveals. CSUSJ operates a Facebook group called

“SJSU Students for a Quality Education”, which includes similar information to its CSUMB

counterpart. However, there is a significantly greater number of posts from Herlinda and other

self-identified SQE organizers, Associated student representatives, and individual students.

There is also a greater abundance of posts describing experiences at SQE events and actions,

individual reflections and adverts, associated students election information, online video links

and recordings, online surveys, and SQE propaganda material. The semi-daily basis of

communication between administrators on the page (Herlinda and Robert Carrera) indicate the

greater role that played in facilitating two-way communication and collaboration between SQE

and its student, community stakeholders.

We can infer however, that both Facebook groups/pages do allow for a degree of

responsiveness between organizers and students while serving as another means to mobilize

students for actions through event pages and alert posts, even when it’s not an integral part of the

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organizing campaign.

However, there was one instance where Facebook served as the basis for a campaign

concerning tenants’ rights in CSUMB university housing. In spring 2012, Alliance, the housing

company responsible for managing off-campus apartment housing, began a series of illegal

inspections and searches to crack down on illegal subletting. Fredrickson describes the situation

and his interest to organize around it:

“We’d been talking about organizing around housing issues, especially with regards to

the level of control that they have over our lives. That is a major thing since time and

other things...Well either way, it’s an important issue and uh, a bunch of my friends were

undergoing a ton of inspections at their houses and after having spent 3.5 years living on

campus, I was just sick and tired of the level of surveillance and control over our lives.

And so, I wanted to do something but I couldn’t because I was in the middle of these

other campaigns with SQE and other groups, so i didn’t know what to do. (SiC)

Eventually, he decided to respond by putting together a facebook group called, “The

CSUMB Tenants Union” to serve as a safe hub of discussion for those students affected by the

searches. As the page continued to garner more and more activity, a reporter from the Monterey

County Herald sent Michael (the founder of the page) a message requesting an interview for a

potential article on the practices. Since the group was essentially virtual and not physically

based, Micheal spoke to a few of his friends and asked them to participate in the interviews as

members of this sudo-tenant’s union group. Eventually, these media efforts lead to the

publication of a front page story on the Herald detailing the situation going on in the university

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housing and exposing Alliance. A follow up article including perspectives of lawyers versed in

tenancy law, only furthered the illegality of Alliance’s actions which of course, provided the

grounds for legal recourse. Alliance, completely taken aback by sudden coverage, was

essentially forced to immediately suspend its actions. Fredrickson states how the “CSUMB

Tenants Union”:

“…was an entirely virtual campaign and the only one that I’ve ever experienced since

then. To really have formed a tenants union during that fight to resist those policies and

to organize so that at this point we could call a rent strike it would have taken so much

more effort. Making a FB page is easy, download a logo, slap on a description, invite a

few people and that was it....” (SiC)

His testimony illustrates how powerful an online organizing campaign can be when it is utilized

in a situation that relies upon information exposure. It also shows how simple it could be to

utilize a technology such a Facebook to organize cheaply and encumber a minimal degree of risk

compared to the organizing a formal tenants union around the issue to achieve the same result.

Overall however, he is insistent on the primary purpose of social networking as another useful

tool when it comes to organizing. He concludes with:

“...There is no simple solution. Organizing is hard work and you really have to be smart

about it, be strategic about what struggles you take on and how you get involved with

them wit people...” (SiC)

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This ultimately returns to what Knoche describes as several of the key indicators for success in

any campaign launched by direct action orientated community organizations:

“...People learn skills needed to analyze issues and confront those who exert control over

their lives...(3)Community residents realize some direct benefit or some resolution of

problems they personally face through the organizing work....(5)Community residents

feel stronger and better about themselves because of their participation in the collective

effort.”26

Global Cases – Your Siblings and LIN – Space of Flows

Both Your Siblings (YS) and the LIN Center for Community Development are more

philanthropic based NPOs that operate within institutional parameters determined by their

respective socialist state governments. Given this situation, both NPOs occupy part of the

institutional position within the logic of global capitalism. As NGOs, they are caught within a

state of constant tension between validation of the system and its deficiencies, such as famine,

war, injustice, and corruption and resistance to the perpetuation of these failures. This

dependency robs them of a certain degree of political agency, which would allow them to

confront the dominant power-relations created within their respective nation-states. It also

constrains them to potential radical solutions to the various points of contention within the

political, social, economic, and cultural flows that accompany Informational capitalism.

In addition, the “Space of Flows” theoretical framework will therefore be adjusted to

reflect developmental operations, which is not categorized as part of contention against the

26 Knoche, Tom. "Organizing Communities." Social Anarchism Journal. (1993): 1-21.

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dominant system. The following tables provide the re-adjusted nonprofit specific model of the

Space of Flows for both Your Siblings and LIN:

Table 1.3: Your Siblings Flows table.Flows Direction (Arena of

Contention)Strategy

Capital Patterns of international development, dependency between developing world (Africa) and developed world

Bi-lateral humanitarian aid through independent, self-sustainable projects

Information Discrepancy in IT proliferation in Africa, scarcity of environmental and social data from government

Independent information gathering through direct project visits and local NGO coordination

Technology Livestream, online fundraising platforms (Betterplace.org)

Reappropriation of commercial media technology for online fundraising efforts

Organizational Interaction Your Siblings - UN - Local NGOs, community groups. Language barriers

Fostering multilingual organization communication, support of persistent organizations in Uganda, Burundi.

Images, Sounds Situated within over-saturated market of images, sounds pertaining to competitors

Specific image/sound branding (Seeds of Kindness albums) constructed with fandom that distinguishes group with fandom network

State Policy Gemeinnützigkeit (Public benefit status), tax exemption, clear laws for online fundraising. Professional board meetings

Clear laws online fundraising, facilitation of nonprofit activities through tax-exemption.

Symbols (Culture) Participation in online sub-cultures (fandoms).

Creating symbols that establish YS as part of fandom

Table 1.3: Model of flows, effects of flows, and organizing strategy by YS altruism network27

Table 1.5: LIN Flows table.

Flows Contention/Direction Strategy

27 Model derived from Castells “Space of Flows”, et al.

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Capital Patterns of international development, rapidly developing nation (Vietnam) with continued integration into global economy.

Supporting community development as part of industrial, commercial development.

Information North-South discrepancy in informational legal resources for NGO operations.

Independent information gathering and digital distribution through center and website. Training on IT.

Technology Computers, internet, Facebook, newsletters and data.

Utilizing Facebook for sharing NGO updates, photos, and event notifications.

Organizational Interaction LIN, NGO partners, educational institutions, and volunteer associations. State institutions.

Reciprocal partnerships with NGOs and non-political relationship with government institutions.

Images, Sounds Professionalism and philanthropic image.

Emphasized through use of social media tools and professional website design.

State Policy Vietnamese, NGPO No. 741/QD-LHH Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations and Registration. Limit on fundraising sources, political oversight on operations, implicit censorship.

Focus on working relationship with government, compliancy with government registry procedures and avoidance of anti-government political positioning.

Symbols (Culture) Informed, sustainable, and smart philanthropy.

Integrating project and consultation into one system that supports advanced, networked culture of informed philanthropy.

Table 1.3: Model of flows, effects of flows, and organizing strategy by LIN altruism network28

Global Cases with Development Goals – Your Siblings and LIN

Your Siblings is an international German-based philanthropic organization founded on

September 26th, 2010, by co-chairs Lisa Wiese, Denis Drescher and others. Their primary focus

involves supporting the construction of physical infrastructure such as hospitals, orphanages, and

28 Model derived from Castells “Space of Flows”, et al.

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communal living projects in developing nations. They are geared to address fundamental social

or material needs left unmet by both state and capital.

YS operationalizes sustainability as local leadership and financial independence formulated

through ad hoc revenue sources and efficiency as project management and financial expenditures

outside of state or profit driven development models. YS has no paid staff members and operates

primarily on volunteer support. Your Siblings is also distinctive for completely covering its

operational costs. Their FAQ states their rationale for covering all of the operational costs as

such:  

“Each donor is a human being with their own values and morality. If a part of the

donation is used for administrative costs, as it is often the case, one person might think

that the office of Your Siblings furnished much too luxuriously, while someone else

might think that the organization is not paying its employees enough. Thus, an aid

organization could never please everyone. But if the organization is in no way dependent

on the donations and doesn’t keep a cent of that money, the donors don’t have to read

through a swath of documents to investigate whether their donation was handles properly.

They just know it. 100% of their good intentions reach fruition.” (SiC) 

Your Siblings’ website features an intuitive design with the majority of their site displaying their

current projects and details, campaign information, project developments, and an embedded blog

function with comments. Embedded links to a YS twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr page are also

included, indicating their heavy social media presence. The site is also coded in both German

and English, accommodating for international audiences. Specific instructions for supporting

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advertising efforts, fundraising efforts, and donation cans for the collection of useful amenities

are also included. The multi-layered functionality facilitates multiple avenues for involvement

and multiple direct avenues for individual and collective participation. This is a general overview

of the tactics and strategies that Your Siblings utilizes within its respective organizing context:

Table 1.5 YS Strategies and Tactics Table

Super-Structure (State – Capital)

Strategy and Tactics(action and actors)

Evolution (Next steps)

Global non-profit industrial complex. Hasbro - MNC.

Realm: Establish positive relations with U.S. and German Hasbro branches – Create connections with International nonprofits.

Extend global virtual network of partner NGOs. Intensify breadth and scope of online e-mobilization tools for SoK campaigns.

Gemeinnützigkeit (Public benefit status). German PirateParty.

Hub: Donor, co-chairs initial start-up support network. Private endowment.Privately conducted operations with independently set African NGOs.

Providing additional volunteer infrastructure in Berlin for fundraising, supporting African partner NGOs.

African governments - Uganda/Burundi and project sites.

Nodes: Performs extensive connection building within virtual brony community. Heavy social media presence (twitter, facebook, tumblr). Direct integration of fundraising platform (Betterplace.org) and project information on YS Website.

Increasing presence in Africa through permanent connections with local NGOs.

Providing volunteer infrastructure for African projects.

Table 1.5: Contingency table illustrating relationship to super-structure, S&T, and strategic evolution of IO.29

.

Similar to LIN, YS’s focus primarily entails developing connections with locally run project-based

NPOs or groups in their regions of interest. Lisa expresses the initial difficulties that Your Siblings

faced when scouting for projects:

29 Model derived from Tilly’s RoC, Earl and Harris Affordances et al.

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“It was always me visiting the project on side in africa and i paid from my own pocket. Now this

year for the first time it was Ben who did the same. Of course this means we have limited

possibilities.  We only work with small local projects that you cannot find so easily, most of

them didn't even have a website. The project need to have a plan how to come out of the circle of

depending on donations, the responsibles and founders have to be local and those who are

supposed to benefit should be in a big need and not able to help themselves. Trust is a very big

issue as well, but we figured a system to limit the risks to a minimum.”

Each project is examined conjointly by YS, and its local NGO partners whom operate in Uganda,

Burundi, and Tanzania. These include the following African operated nonprofits: Green Life

association30 in Burundi, which works with empowering and educating street orphans; Childneed

Africa31, a healthcare focused nonprofit based out of Uganda; Another Hope Children’s Ministries32

based out of the capital of Uganda, Kampala; and Human Revelation Organization33, an organization

supporting HIV positive orphans and Widows. Their respective projects, a communal living project,

healthcare clinic, an orphanage, and a livestock investment, are analyzed for their relative benefits and

costs, material inputs, and operations plan is further developed in the project proposal. YS then consults

with its board of directors and informs its core network of stakeholders (donors, supporters) in Berlin

and globally of each phase of the project planning process. Once the projects are approved by the board

and with no stipulation from stakeholders, fundraising efforts begin by formally publishing the

proposed project on their website as a dedicated entity that is later tied to Betterplace.org for online

donations. Both pages offer full descriptions of the project and the varying “needs” (E.g construction

30 http://yoursiblings.org/projects/green-life/details. Retrieved on 5/15/13.31 http://yoursiblings.org/projects/a-clinic-in-uganda/details. Retrieved on 5/15/13.32 http://yoursiblings.org/projects/another-hope/details. Retrieved on 5/15/13.33 http://yoursiblings.org/projects/widowsorphans-chicken-farm/details. Retrieved on 5/15/13.

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materials, personal training, etc.) of the project that can be met through reaching its funding goals.

Initially, YS’s focused on outreach to local businesses and organizations within Berlin, along with

friends of friends within their sponsor and donor networks. They also worked early on with a German

online fundraising platform called Betterplace.org. Initial efforts were meager at best. Lisa Weise

expressed her initial frustrations with fundraising efforts in Germany.

“Uff, in the beginning, i tried almost everything, we were working a lot with betterplace.org in the

beginning too. Later on we achieved a lot via facebook, but all these things cannot be compared to the

success that YS experienced from the campaigns with Bronies for Good/Seeds of Kindness. (SiC)

YS’s physically based, grassroots approach had therefore allowed for the formation of its partnership

with translate into concrete fundraising that would propel the goals of their campaigns forward. This all

changed in early 2012. That year, Your Siblings began collaborating with an autonomous altruistic

organization called Bronies for Good based out of the vibrant internet community of fans34 around the

TV show, My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.

Together, they put together a spring fundraising campaign called “Seeds of Kindness.” The

initiative featured a multigenre charity album put together by musical artists within the MLP:FiM

fandom, provided as an incentive for donating. Prizes were also made available for top donors to the

campaign while live online fundraising events through online TV broadcast platforms (referred to as

livestreams) were put together to help support the effort. By the end of the year, they had collected over

$120,000 through two instances of the Seeds of Kindness campaign, funding all 3 of Your Sibling’s

34 See Appendix for further resources on MLP:FiM fandom.

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2012 philanthropic projects (Preventative care clinic in Uganda35, Green Village project in Burundi36,

“Safe Project” Orphanage project in Uganda37, and Chicken Farm in Tanzania.38)

The LIN Center for Community development is a registered Vietnamese NPO founded in May

2009 by Dana and others*. Following Vietnam’s integration into the WTO along with the rapid pace of

development that the country underwent, which invariably led to the massive widening of economic

inequality. Within this context of rapid development, Dana and others were attempting to  find effective

ways of attempting to engage in efforts that would address this issue, among others. However, after

years of frustration with a lack of readily available resources on the “grassroots not-for-profit

organizations and individual and corporate philanthropists located in and around Ho Chi Minh City,

Vietnam”. As such, Dana and fellow founding members decided to take matters into their own hand by

forming a nonprofit following an independent inquiry into what need were not being met in Ho Chi

Minh City.

LIN formulates itself around the central value commitment of creating “A Vietnamese society

where all members are respected and supported to have equal access to opportunities“. They carry out

this work with the desire to help their fellow Vietnamese, through informed philanthropy and social

responsibility, better address the critical social, political, and economic issues in Vietnam. They do this

through the provision of nine support services:

Small grants (up to 30 million VND) to help improve or extend service delivery or

programs

35 For reference: http://yoursiblings.org/projects/a-clinic-in-uganda/details (accessed May 2nd, 2013)36 For reference: http://yoursiblings.org/projects/green-life/details (accessed May 2nd, 2013)37 For reference: http://yoursiblings.org/projects/another-hope/details (accessed May 2nd, 2013)38 For reference: http://yoursiblings.org/projects/widowsorphans-chicken-farm/details (accessed May 2nd, 2013)

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Introductions to skilled volunteers who can serve as mentors and technical advisors;

and/or

Workshops and information sharing to help build organizational capacity.

Introduction to volunteer and giving opportunities in the community;

High-level volunteer placement services;

Consultations with prospective donors;

Due diligence on area not-for-profits;

Hosting Donor Clubs; and

Information, workshops and resources for donors.39

Here is a general overview of the tactics and strategies that LIN deploys within its altruistic

network in Vietnam:

Table 1.6: LIN Strategies and Tactics Table

Super-Structure (State – Capital)

Strategies, tactics, stakeholders Evolution (costs and risks)

Global non-profit industrial complex. Vietnamese nation-state.

Realm: Establish positive relations with Vietnamese government, fosters connections with international nonprofits. North (consultation orientated) South (Project orientated) discrepancy in NGOs.

Expansion of donor network into transnational online communities.

No. 741/QD-LHH Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations and Registration.

Hubs: NGOs, Volunteers, Donors. LIN Center came following efforts to centralize roots in HCMC.

Integration of more online fundraising platforms.

Fundraising laws and volunteer associations. Surveillance from State officials, political neutrality.

Nodes: Supporting NGO efforts through dedicated training and seminars at center, digital and physical information/resource repository, providing volunteer placement infrastructure, Facebook page,

Utilizing state connections to reform outdated fundraising laws.

39 Taken from LIN Center for Community Development website “About” page: http://www.linvn.org/?mod=content&act=view&cid=4&section=about Accessed May 1st, 2013.

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e-newsletter, email list, fundraising events (Narrow the Gap).

Table 1.6: Contingency table illustrating relationship to superstructure, S&T, and strategic evolution of IO.40

LIN consolidates the provision of these services through their community HCMC community

center, with specific rooms dedicated to NPO training and development, volunteer matching,

community outreach, and information. Their mission statement goes on to state how:

“LIN also serves as a vehicle through which donors can effectively contribute their

knowledge, energy and resources to support these NPOs.”41

LIN is primarily composed out of volunteers staffing various positions in the organization that

address fundraising, program and finance analysis, PR, and organization. They are split into

multiple tiers: Board members, skilled volunteers, and program volunteers. Dana “R.H” Doan

serves as one of the founding board members of the organization. She explains how initially,

LIN’s approach centered around networking with fellow NGOs (As partners) in Ho Chi Minh

City to understand what they could do to help others through pilot funding and inquiry as they

worked to acquire their own operating license. After receiving their license, they began to

organize informational workshops. Dana describes how the workshops allowed them:

40 Model derived from Tilly’s RoC, Earl and Harris Affordances et al. 41 LIN Center Website “About LIN” page: http://www.linvn.org/?mod=content&act=view&cid=3&section=about Accessed May 1st, 2013.

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“…to gather the different non-profits on our network and try to attract others. And so we

held a workshop bringing in one person, like a lawyer and bringing in another non-profit

to talk about their experience in setting up the non-profit.” (SiC)

Subtly however, these workshops also served as sites where organizational representatives could

share their experiences, information, and perspectives which allowed LIN to slowly construct it’s

NGO partner network. The contact information of attending NGO representatives would then be

filed into a general database, that would later form the basis of their most successful information

sharing projects, their monthly Vietnamese e-newsletter (4000 recipients), which provides

volunteers with useful information and resources for involvement and program opportunities.

Additionally all research results, presentation and workshop resources, and reports are posted on

their website. LIN’s website therefore operates as a cheap and effective means for being able to

facilitate the involvement of their main stakeholders, volunteers, donors, and NPO’s with

information that eliminates their requisite for co-presence, thereby equalizing the distribution of

knowledge. This general low input approach for information sharing is now becoming a base

from which LIN has begun to explore e-fundraising.

Dana explains how LIN has begun to experiment with online fundraising (despite the

incredible reporting bureaucracy and legal ambiguity of doing so) through Globalgiving.org,

which offers tax exempt donations to U.S. donors for non-profit organizations with registered

projects on their page. LIN currently has 3 projects on the page, with one project (Empower

Nonprofits to Reduce Inequality in Vietnam) from 2010 having been fully funded at US$16,707.

The two current projects (New Year Lights Campaign: Build Home 4 Vietnam NPOs and Skilled

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Volunteers Help Empower Vietnam Nonprofits) have yet to be fully funded, with US$800 split

between them.42 LIN primary shared these online fundraising projects through Facebook, which

not only spread the word about the projects but supported user feedback and communication with

some of their stakeholders. Dana notes how:

“We (LIN) started to see something different where there could be a two-way exchange

and that was really interesting....on facebook you could see the people responding and

you could answer enough right away to answer their questions. It’s really easy to pose a

quick question, and it’s really easy to answer them. So we got some ideas from ti, we’ve

gotten a new perspective from that kind of a conversation that I think has been helpful.

Were also, we’re a little bit unsure about the people that were acting on Facebook are

truly representative of our umm, our target audience, umm, we find they tend to be

younger and more representative of volunteer groups that they are instead of established

nonprofits based on what we know.” (SiC)

These fundraising successes stand in contrast to LIN’s most recent August 2012 fundraising

event, called “narrow the gap.” This fundraising event encompassed months of planning, staff

resources, and volunteer coordination from LIN. In order to keep the event inclusive, they

charged low ticket prices and provided low-cost games and activities for participants. According

to Dana, the event was successful in serving as a networking opportunity that managed to bring

in partner NGOs, community members, and donors together in good spirit and company.

However, they were only able to raise little over $3,000 U.S.D, which was far below their goal.

She goes further to say that a similar gala-like event, targeted for wealthier donors, would have

42 Figures retrieved from LIN Global Giving Page. Accessed May 1st, 2013.

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raised easily double that amount, if not more. So although LIN meets certain desirable outcomes

that corresponded with certain campaign goals, the present concern of attempting to develop

independent funding sources was not met. This particular example account illustrates a key

parameter that LIN and other NGOs operating in less developed countries (LDCs) must keep in

mind, the donor-base of their fundraising events, which brings in the important dialectic between

the support of efforts that meet goals of justice and equity, or procurement of more traditional

steady revenue sources that allow for any operating funds, but eliminate stakeholder inclusivity.

Insights from two SQEs - Similarities, Differences, and Degrees of Success in Political Resistance

SQE operates within the United States, a highly developed nation with a massive virtual

network infrastructure that allows almost all residents the ability to access social networking

tools. CSUMB, with its campus wide wireless network and abundance of computer and mobile

technology is no exception. Despite this highly networked context however, SQE’s statewide

campaign structure was and still is primarily grounded in physical networking, outreach, and

demonstration efforts in physical spaces at both CSUMB and CSUSJ. Success for their still

ongoing #nomorefees campaign is measured through the fulfillment of 2 key goals. The first

being the development an active network students, staff and faculty engaged in resistance against

ongoing budget cuts and tuition hikes. Functionally, outreach capabilities through both

grassroots and netroots social networking such as class presentations, Facebook, leafleting, and

protests of various shapes and sizes played key roles in this effort. In 2012, the culmination of

their efforts proved vital to the passage of proposition 30 in California, which fulfilled one of

SQE’s desired outcomes by temporarily halting tuition increases and budget cuts for the 2012

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fiscal year.43 Actualizing this campaign goal presented SQE with its first concrete legislative

victory, but how much of this can be attributed to emphasis on physical or virtual tactics? The

answer lies in the manner in which CFA interns Michael Fredrickson and Herlinda Acquire

conceptualized online social networking and communication technologies such as Facebook,

email, and twitter. They regarded them as “tools” that served to facilitate the existing grassroots

tactics and strategies they emphasize. This indicates therefore, that their multi-roots approach

emphasized the role of the web 2.0 technologies and by extension netroots as an amplifier. Thus,

additional outreach would extend to the creation autonomous, critical spaces for the engagement

of direct political action. Since this pattern persists in both CSUMB and CSUSJ chapters of SQE,

it is possible to extrapolate this formulation of the integrative Repitoire of Contention to other

CSU campuses with SQE chapters, due in part to the standardized organizing training that each

CFA intern receives in accordance with the statewide campaign initiative.

However, there is an internal variation that exists in the strategic approach when

considering localized issues to both CSUSJ and CSUMB. In CSUMB’s case, Facebook, upon a

whim of frustration from CFA intern Michael, became the primary mechanism for exposing the

illegal apartment inspections being performed by a local branch of Alliance Residential Housing

Company. The entire campaign, which successfully managed to force Alliance to suspend its

actions, was coordinated and executed with Facebook as the main organizing platform. There are

several reasons that can be attributed to why the use of Facebook was more effective in this case.

Firstly, given SQE’s preoccupation with their more time intensive grassroots statewide

campaign, only a minimal amount of effort and planning could be allocated to engaging with

Alliance Residential Housing. Secondly, east campus apartment housing in its design as a suburb

43 Referenced from Proposition 30 Voter Guide: http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/. Accessed May 6th, 2013.

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was not explicitly created to provide areas where residents could congregate safety en masse and

discuss the nature of the illegal inspections without warranting potential surveillance from

Alliance. Thus, Facebook, being relatively simple to use, provided a quick and cheap to ways to

set up informational hub in a residential complex that provided complimentary wireless

infrastructure to its tenants. However, once more, the CSUMB Tenants Union page helped

facilitate exposure process especially once Michael, the sites administrator was contacted by a

Monterey County Herald reporter after suddenly stumbling upon the page. Ultimately, the

exposure and in depth coverage from the Monterey County Herald44 article is what brought

Alliance’s activities to an end. This was due to Alliance being potentially subject to direct

punitive redress from Monterey County officials over the flagrant violation of tenant’s law. As

such, SQE and fellow angered residents in CSUMB’s east campus apartment housing managed

to expose the illegal inspections without undertaking major personal and fiscal risk and cost.

When considering the broader arena of contention formulated by the Space of flows

however, CSUMB’s SQE east campus housing efforts was still physically situated. Alliance’s

inspections were physical action, the Monterey County Herald article was in a physically

distributed newspaper, and the potential mechanism of legal physical enforcement by the state is

what ultimately compelled Alliance to back off. Invariably, the flows of virtual technology and

information provided the means for engaging in a multi-roots exposure campaign and the local

tenant’s code in Monterey County provided SQE with its organizing context in California.

Although also confronting campus specific issues, CSUSJ SQE, according to Herlinda,

had not found themselves organizing any sort of explicit online campaign against local

institutional elites. This could potentially due to Facebook being seen more as an informational

hub that was not in a situation to create dialogue over the engagement of local CSUSJ

44 For reference: http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_19841794

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administrative elites in illegal activity. Moreover, it seems that the page was more explicitly

geared to exchanging information and supporting mobilization efforts since a far greater number

of actors within CSUSJ’s network of resistance were actively engaged in the statewide

proposition 30 campaign. This is partly due to principal functions of the page granted from its

structure, which unlike CSUMB’s SQE pages, was designed to allow multiple interlocutors to

plug content which would then be followed by students who contributed literature, discussion

topics, and vice versa.

Overall, CSUMB SQE’s Facebook exposure campaign is evident of the advantages of e-

tactics, SQE’s overarching integrated arena of contention indicates that the role of netroots is to

support then effectiveness of the more traditional, political campaign. This strategy attempts to

be comprehensive in scope by targeting institutional elites such as the BoT, Chancellors office,

and local administration, and private entities with centralized physical resistance efforts within

the university campus community itself. However, e-classroom technologies, especially as the

Massively Open Online Course (MOOC)45social networking, free information based model of

education will require both virtual and physical mobilizing efforts due to its implementation

within the physical infrastructure of the CSU. Operating under the logic of providing education

on the cheaply and efficiently, this exclusively virtual form of educational service provision

could become a new process as part of the SoF that continues the digital transformation of spatial

logic. In real terms, this could translate to an individualization of learning while simultaneously

creating a shift in the purpose and formulation of the existing university space. Networks of

actors engaged within the CSU system would be reshaped according to the direction of flows 45 As its name implies, MOOC’s are essentially massive virtual classrooms built from a single web address, with social networking tools and online libraries of information being the main material inputs required from the organizer. “A MOOC generally carries no fees, no prerequisites other than Internet access and interest, no predefined expectations for participation, and no formal accreditation.” Alexander McAuley , Bonnie Stewart, George Siemens, and Dave Cormier, "The Model for Digital Practice," Digital Ways of Knowing and Learning: 2010. pp. 3

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accompanying a MOOC model implementation which falls within the overarching flows of

privatization and austerity thus stirring SQE’s networks of resistance to challenge its

implementation through IO as part of a blockage of the flows it constitutes part of.

International Development NGOs: Similarities, Differences, and Degrees of Success

The two developmental NGO organizations, Your Siblings and the LIN Center for

Community Development, are situated in Germany and Vietnam respectively. Each of these

nation-states are at different levels of political economic development with Germany being the

more developed of the two. Overall, they are part of the same globalized capitalist society and

thus subject to the same flows, dominant social structures, and informational networking

technologies that form part of the “Space of Flows” spatial and communicative logic. YS and

LIN are both structured as NGOs, which is a legally-recognized status that grants privileges and

parameters for operation, such as the ability to receive tax-exempt revenue and donations. Your

Siblings however, has the unique situation of operating in both a developed (Europe: Germany)

and developing world (Africa: Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania) context which requires it to adhere to

state policies and market conditions in the African nation-states they operate within.

LIN and Your Siblings both fall within the category of developmental NGOs that support

philanthropic activity through partnerships with fellow nonprofits operating in their respective

physical and virtual sites of activity. However the desired outcome, be it the construction of a

grassroots nonprofit network support or the funding of sustainable physical infrastructure

primarily situates the organizing context in the physical. Despite the greater integration of

netroots, it still means more of a means as an end when it comes to the manifestation of the

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multi-roots. With regards to their altruistic network therefore, both LIN and YS act as the

respective hubs of flows and time-sharing activities. The bulk of these activities include physical

and virtual consultation in the form of project analysis and vetting46 to ensure the material and

financial feasibility, along with a measurable impact. For Your Siblings, this would specifically

entail the definition of how many children can be housed in an orphanage and how a source an

income such as boarding house within the orphanage can sustain the overhead costs incurred by

the orphanage. However, the intimate relationship between LIN and their partner NGOs is point

of departure from Your Siblings. LIN helps these organization determine their strengths and

weaknesses, provides them with trainings sessions on how to address specific issues such as

fundraising, long-term strategic planning, or NGO registry process in Vietnam. LIN also trains

each of their NGO partners in the use of online social media, website development, and more at

specific sessions and spaces in their training center in HCMC.

All of literary material and audience input garnered during their presentations, seminars,

and gatherings are made available publicly through their website. The posting of project updates,

event schedules and information through their e-newsletter are emailing list is also essential to

their goal of freely facilitating the flow of digital information within their stakeholder network in

Vietnam. LIN also provides funding grants to partner NGOs that meet their grant criteria, which

is one facet of the financial support they provide to their network of partner NGOs. LIN also

helps match unofficial individual and group volunteers (referred to as “volunteer associations”)

from educational and community institutions to partner NGOs based on needs, interests, and

logistical circumstances. All of their activities however, are undertaken under the exceptionally

watchful eye of the Vietnamese state. For LIN, the space of flows is forcibly coerced by

46 Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment, conferring an award, etc. in Vetted Law & Legal Definition". USLegal.com. Retrieved 5/15/13.

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Vietnamese state to be restrictive. Tangibly, this translates to the political objectivity of

nonprofits with regards to the conduct of the state, a lack of clarity on tax reporting regarding

online fundraising platforms such as globalgiving.org, and constant surveillance on their

operations.

In contrast, Your Siblings serves more as a distributor of specifically tailored grants

proposals that it then chooses to fundraise for. The state, outside of registry procedures for

nonprofit status and fundraising laws, does not nearly have degree of control over the

manifestation of the Space of Flows in Germany or Africa. Within the state-capital

superstructure therefore, the flows (at least with regards to YS’s multi-roots strategy) mainly

affects the availability of e-mobilization, e-fundraising, and social networking tools available to

YS for its online fundraising prerogative. With regards to this prerogative, Your Siblings was

able to fully fund all of its projects for 2012: Safe Project, A Clinic in Uganda, Widows and

Orphans Project in Tanzania, and Sustainable Village in Burundi, which essentially amounts to

€85,229.47 This fundraising success contrasts enormously with LIN’s own efforts in online

fundraising, which totals to less than $6000 U.S.D48 through 3 global giving campaigns and their

“close the gap” august fundraising event.

In terms of measuring success therefore, Your Siblings can be attributed to having an

extremely high degree of success in quickly funding their physical infrastructure projects in part

to their use of e-fundraising, networking tools. Your Siblings, with an amount of material input

that follows its general adherence to cost-minimization, has also been able to develop

connections with a globally expansive online fandom that participates actively as donors and

volunteers in their fundraising and outreach efforts with Bronies for Good. LIN however, has

47 Taken from “Seeds of Kindness” Betterplace.org pages. Accessed May 7th, 2013. 48 Taken from LIN’s GlobalGiving.org pages. Accessed May 7th, 2013.

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been able to build a far more expansive physically based network of involved volunteers, donors,

and nonprofits in Ho Chi Minh City. LIN has also been able to create and offer an exhaustive set

of both online and offline educational resource to its stakeholders. These resources have allowed

them to actively incorporate volunteer participation in both LIN, as center and staff volunteers,

and their partner NGOs.

Conclusion: Organizing in the Multi-Roots

This inquiry has produced several critical insights in Castells “Space of Flows” theory

and understanding of community organizing in the globalized, networked society that are

important to consider. Firstly, through the visual modeling the space of flows, I have found that

organizing in the multi-roots is still, despite the ever progressive virtualization of our society,

remains physically grounded. This is because resistance and altruism, although activities that can

be progressively performed online, are still geared towards creating a desired social, political, or

economic transformation in the physical space in which we inhabit. Thus, even with the notion

integrative repertoire of contention, the function of e-tactics, be it online social networking tools,

e-petitions, emails, e-newsletters, etc. mainly serves to facilitate or amplify the actions of

networks of individuals and groups engaged in the developed and developing world contexts in

which SQE, LIN, and YS are operating within. The Space of Flows to this effect provides the

contextualization the programmable and repeatable social, economic, political, and cultural

processes49 that determine the arena of contention or organizing context which can be acted upon

by networks at various levels in society in the reproduction or transformation of state-capital

superstructure that permeates society.

49 Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge and Malden. Polity. 2012. Pp. 5-6.

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With regards to the Space of Flows, the nation-state, far from being minimalized, remains

a critical determinant of the direction and articulation of the Space of Flows. In developing

nations where the state remains pervasive such as Vietnam, it has effectively exercised policy

that constrains the space, range of activities, and space in which NGOs, (domestic and

international) can operate effectively in, mostly through the creation of state-industrial

complexes. Both LIN and YS operate within the respective nonprofit industrial complexes of

nations while SQE remains immersed in state-supported academic industrial complexes which

have specific orchestrations of the Space of Flows. To be successful therefore, networks of

altruism and resistance must pay head to how and when the flows most directly orchestrated by

the state can be leveraged as both physical and virtual mechanisms for enforcement, financial

support, or exposure.

Therefore, in contemplating the concern of campaign success with all case organizations

in this study, we come to see the range of integrative organizing approaches that have been

successful for each organizations specific context:

SQE, being the most resistance orientated group of the cases, operates in an industrialized

and democratic environment where free speech, collective assembly, and direct action be levied

to combat systemic austerity and the lack of state representative accountability. Although the

strategy of each SQE chapter varies slightly with regards to the size, organization, and age of

each campus, their primary IO strategy remains concentrated around direct action, where they

leverage political pressure and disruption in the CSU.

LIN, although an active proponent of online social networking tools, concentrates its

efforts in the immediate physical community it inhabits, HCMC. Without LIN’s efforts to

directly involve and support their stakeholders at their various consultations, workshops, or other

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physical gatherings, they could not engage meaningfully in any of its virtual activities, such as

the composition of its digital data archives on its website or the construction of its e-newsletter,

emailing list. Your Siblings, although able to create a co-dependent physical-virtual relation than

the fellow organizations in this comparison, is still tied intimately to the grassroots due to their

efforts to create sustainable physical infrastructure in the developing world context of North-

Eastern Africa. Although their fundraising efforts, which take place primarily in America and

Europe, have been primarily re-located to the virtual context with the massive expansion of

virtual donor and support network, their operations ultimately dictate YS’s integrative organizing

approach.

With the respective strengths of each organization now determined, we can now turn to

the answer of the ever important question of how each organization can evolve it’s respective IO

strategy to ensure suitability and additional success in the future. Although there are many

potential answers to this question, I make certain recommendations based on the analysis that I

have performed in this capstone: Being physically strong, SQE could benefit from the intensified

use of e-tactics such as petitions and mass advocacy emailing to amplify the virtual collective

action that can be levied against administrators as it makes long term efforts to reframe the

struggle towards reestablishing the CSU to the accessible, affordable public higher education

system that it once was. Your Siblings, moving into the future, should work to build a physical

and virtual infrastructure for volunteers in both Germany and Africa so that it supplement its

substantial fundraising capacity with site volunteers who can support the further development of

its infrastructure projects in Africa or potentially increase the scope and size of humanitarian

projects it can engage in. LIN, with its powerful physical and virtual presence, should work with

its connections in the Vietnamese nation-state to create clear and concise laws on international

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online fundraising, so that look it can potentially better exploit online fundraising platforms as

sources of sustainable, long term income. Both LIN and YS can also benefit from finding means

to participate in online fan communities as well through either cultural value commitments or

related affinities that could be augmented into supporting online fundraising or awareness

campaigns for these organizations.

Future expansions of this research could include a quantitative network analysis of either

LIN, SQE, or YS, to map the structure of the resistance or developmental networks that these

organizations exist within. This could potentially demonstrate the types of organizations

involved with either of these organizations, what they’re issue of interest is, and whether their

degree of involvement with the primary organization is based on their position in the network.

Ultimately, this could tie into the analysis of how coalition formation takes place in social

movements. Whatever direction future study takes however, positive social change does not

happen without those agents actively involved in it pursuing it. Whatever means we can offer to

help aid them in this effort therefore, whether it is our bodies or our minds, is our obligation and

responsibility, since we are all part of an ever-changing world, immersed in struggles for justice

and equity.    

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Works Cited

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2. Berg, Bruce. 2009. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. Boston: Pearson. Pp. 317-335

3. Bronfenbrenner,  Kate, ed. 2007.  Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-border Campaigns . Ithaca: ILR Press/Cornell University Press.

4. Castells , Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, Malden: Polity. Pp. I-305

5. Castells, Manuel. 2009.  The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I . New York: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 355-407.

6. Charles Ragin, and Benoît Rihoux. 2008. Configurational Comparative Methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques (Applied Social Research Methods). Thousand Oaks. SAGE Publications, Inc. chap. 2.

7. Cray, Charlie. 2000. Global Village or Global Pillage? Multinational Monitor. 21, no. 4: 29.

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9. Harvey, David. 2012. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. i – 312

10. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. 2007 The Revolution Will Not Be Funded Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge: South End Press.

11. Knoche, Tom. 1993. "Organizing Communities." Social Anarchism Journal. 1-21.

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14. Olesen, Thomas. 2004. Globalising the Zapatistas: From Third World Solidarity to Global Solidarity?. Third World Quarterly. 25, no. 1: 255. 

15. Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. Technology's Role in Revolution Internet Freedom and Political Oppression: Revolutions Depend on People, Not on Social Media, and the Internet Both Promotes Democracy and Thwarts It, Says a Foreign-policy Scholar. Cyber-utopians Be Warned: Authoritarian Regimes Are Adapting to the Internet Age. The Futurist. 45, no. 4: 18-21.

16. Saxton, Gregory, and Chao Guo. 2011. Accountability Online: Understanding the Web-Based Accountability Practices of Nonprofit Organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 40, no. 2: 270-295.

17. Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. "Challenging Authority: The History of Contentious Politics." Fishnets, Internets, and Catnets: Globalization and Transational Collective Action, Edited by Micheal Hanagan, Leslie Moch and Wayne le Brake, pp. 228-244. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Appendix:

1. http://herdcensus.com/ - Provides descriptive statistical data that elaborates on demographic, personality, and behavioral information of MLP:FiM “Brony” Fandom.

2. Global Brony Meet-up (Physical community groups) google map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=209401507557205441458.0004d9a43bf74ed119278&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=5.441022,-111.445312&spn=77.392558,112.5&z=3&source=embed

3. Michael Fredrickson Interview Transcript (Google Docs.): https://docs.google.com/a/csumb.edu/document/d/1b6XjG4Qgp06GilHkRt6rtlFYlyi6Llt_OU4z3TjVmbw/edit?usp=sharing

4. Herlinda Aquirre Interview Transcript (Google Docs.): https://docs.google.com/a/csumb.edu/document/d/1GHEJU_-Cz-MBxdZQ1ry1TwXa1xU46kD3fXIwbYmU4aE/edit?usp=sharing

5. Lisa Weise Interview Transcript (Google Docs.): https://docs.google.com/a/csumb.edu/document/d/1IpMETXlQN_le3wsWn0afdtP62VesjjYxOvRb9fPgfUk/edit?usp=sharing

6. Dana RH Doan Interview Transcript (Google Docs.): https://docs.google.com/a/csumb.edu/document/d/1zkZfU-_Lb_XYSPr2YU0ZaU86qBzVbnF55WPVyLxUrLk/edit?usp=sharing