Section 1: Where to Begin

Most of the social issues we face seem overwhelming when considered all at once. One of the most frequently asked questions when people learn of an injustice or a failed policy is some variation of "What can I, as just one person, do about it?". As the respected human rights and social justice advocate Noam Chomsky has indicated, the answer to this question is not so much unknown as it is unpopular. You can do a great deal about an issue, but you need to start at the beginning and work forward slowly. Your actions on an issue should be driven by a thoughtful and careful examination of the available information, which in turn may have been initiated by an emotional reaction to an upsetting policy. While a strong emotion provides you with a good incentive to start working on an issue, you must be diligent about fueling your passion with knowledge as you proceed. As you learn more about an issue that is important to you, your reason and emotion should begin to work in concert, and this authentic blending of passion and reason is much more likely to convince others to consider your position than either would alone. Admittedly, balancing these two forces can be much more difficult than expected in many cases. Outrage and anger may very well be the natural reaction to what you learn, but you must not allow your anger to short-circuit your compassion. By forcing yourself to sit down and calmly study the issue, you will learn to channel your anger into productive (and rather creative) endeavors and will therefore accomplish much more than you would with a more impulsive approach.

As I continued to research the unethical and illegal policies that allowed President Bush's administration to establish programs of torture and abuse, my blood pressure rose steadily. More than once, I would slam a book down on the desk, utter a colorful comment about politicians and begin a brisk pace around the room. I remember feeling like a race horse stuck behind the starting gate; I wanted to do something, but I didn't have enough information to know where to begin. So, after a bit of pacing, I would return to the text. Eventually, I started writing letters to my local papers and politicians and with the help of Amnesty International, I began contacting my legislators in the U.S. Congress. At one point, one of my Representative's top staffers attempted to refute my position on Guantánamo, and then the extensive research began to pay off. While our debate could not change his position on the issue (the gerrymandering of our Congressional districts have successfully marginalized the majority of the independent voters in our region), it did convince a third-party observer to reverse his position and it forced the staffer to carefully re-examine the issue (even if it was only to come up with more esoteric excuses). I was also able to use my knowledge to help my colleagues prepare to meet with other legislators, and I am still reasonably well-equipped for a public debate on the issue.

The purpose of the preceding anecdote is to convince you that taking the time to learn everything you can about your issue can reward your efforts in ways that you might not foresee. It is also an effective way to disabuse the elitists in politics and the media of the notion that the general public is too stupid to have a voice in important political decisions. While I can assure you that you do not lack the intelligence, you may very well lack the information required to weigh the alternatives properly. This is where the research comes in. While it is available, finding the most reliable and useful information on an issue is not always easy. The Internet can greatly facilitate this task, provided you know how to use it effectively. We will examine some of the more common and accessible sources of information in this lesson.

What to research

Also, make sure you examine multiple sides of the issue, not just the position you agree with. You do not truly understand your position unless you can argue against it nearly as well as you can argue for it . If you have a team of people available, then you might want to ask if someone is willing to concentrate on researching the issue and synthesizing the information for the rest of the group. The Recommended Reading at the end of the course includes links to helpful information sources.

Factfinding

When you start pushing for change, the people in power will challenge your position from multiple directions. Your best defense against this onslaught is a thorough knowledge of the issue you are addressing and a compelling justification for the change that you are promoting. To gain these resources, you will want a thorough understanding of the factors that led to the situation that you are trying to resolve and of the implications of each of the possible courses of action. Here are some facts you should look for:

• How has the issue evolved? Learn the history of the issue and what actions and policies led to its development. When researching the illegal detention system, I studied the history of the intelligence community and its desire for a method of detaining persons outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. This helped me understand what security issues need to be addressed by any alternative plan. You should also identify decisions or policies that established precedents on your issue
• Who are the key players? Identify people who have been active on this issue and what their efforts have accomplished. Also, learn more about the people affected by your issue and the impact it has on their lives. Finally, identify any parties who have acted improperly on the issue, and try to learn why they acted accordingly.
• What can be done? We will address this important feature in more detail momentarily. Learn what courses of action have been suggested, and take note of any that you think would resolve the issue.
• Where is it headed? Look for intelligent speculation about the effects of perpetuating the status quo and the effects of alternative courses of action. Identify the benefits and the detriments of each of these.

Plan of Action

Generally, you'll want to approach people with something more than "we need to stop doing this". Promoting a positive change is much more powerful than opposing a negative one. Consider the issue of closing the illegal prison at Guantánamo Bay. While you might be perfectly justified in demanding that President Bush and his staff stop torturing people, your message is much more effective if you offer an alternative strategy. For instance, you could demand that the prisoners be allowed to challenge their detainment in a federal court, that all current and future prisoners be placed in a high security prison within the U.S. where interrogations can be monitored (discreetly, if necessary) by ICRC and U.N. personnel, that each prisoner be granted representation by an attorney (and, of course, that the attorney actually be allowed to see the prisoner), that prisoners be tried within 7 months of capture, etc. This gives you and your team a much more precise agenda, which in turn allows you to ask the relevant policy-makers to do something specific. A clear plan will also allow you to measure your success, although success may not always mean accomplishing your original objectives, but you will hopefully have been able to reach some compromise. In some cases, your objective might be to simply raise awareness of an issue. This is a valid goal, and your plan would then detail different steps to achieve this level of awareness. The key point to remember is that the difference between complaining about a problem and actually trying to solve it is central to the organization and empowerment of the people. By learning how to start a movement, you're already starting to do the latter in stead of the former.

Background Check

In addition to your issue, you need to spend some time researching the politician(s) you plan to contact. The first thing you'll need to do here is figure out which politician(s) you want to contact. If you're having trouble deciding which people you should go to, the section on Civics 101 might help you make your decision. Since the legislative branch is the one responsible for making the laws, it is often the branch you'll want to contact to try to change something. Before you contact your legislators, you should try to find out more about them. Review their voting records, and search their web sites for position statements or press releases that pertain to your issue. In addition to official web pages, initiatives like Project Vote Smart offer detailed accounts of politicians' positions on most major issues.

Strategic Alliances

Finally, you should find out who else is on your side. In all likelihood, several people agree with you on the issue, and some of them may be in your community. Invest some effort into locating groups of activists in your area and in determining whether any of them have taken on your issue. In addition to multiplying your impact, you will probably welcome the opportunity to share some of your workload. Working with other grassroots organizations can be particularly helpful, as it not only allows you to share resources, but also introduces you to other people in your community with similar objectives. If no organization in your area is capable of or interested in addressing the issue that concerns you, you may wish to consider starting one of your own, either as a local chapter of a larger effort (e.g. Amnesty International, American Civil Liberties Union) or as a local organization built around a local issue (e.g. the Friends of Sabrina's Swamp or Springfield Air Quality Action). We will discuss the importance of forming alliances in more detail shortly.

Where to research

Basic Internet literacy

While the Internet is awash with information, you need to know how to use the 'net if you want to find helpful information.

Building queries

Building an effective query is an important, but often overlooked, part of finding information online. As a rule, general terms will return many generic results, while more precise ones will return fewer results that are more specific to the issue you're researching. Hopefully, you are already somewhat familiar with keywords. If not, then this simple exercise should help you understand how to use them:

1. Summarize your issue in a single sentence:
   The U.S. Government is illegally detaining people it accuses of being suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
2. Underline all the nouns verbs and adjectives in the sentence:
   The U.S. Government is illegally detaining people it accuses of being suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
3. Now, remove any generic words and try to identify the nouns or noun-adjective pairs that describe your issue:
   The U.S. Government is illegally detaining illegal detention people it accuses of being suspected alleged terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
4. Enter the resulting search phrases into your search engine's query box:
   

This is usually how you design a query. As you do this more often, you will begin identifying the keywords subconciously. You can increase the precision of your results by adding keywords, or you can increase the breadth of your results by removing specific keywords.

Evaluating sources

As you review the results returned by your query, you should evaluate the reliability of each source. While no method is entirely foulproof, the following should help to guide you to more accurate information:

• Check the TLD -- This is the code after the last dot in the address. While it is only a very rough indication, and many exceptions exist, it can sometimes give you a sense of what to expect from a site. I typically rank the expected reliablility of sites with common TLDs as follows:
  1. edu: Educational institution, often a University. Depending on the source, can be fairly reliable.
  2. org: Non-profit organization. As reliable as the reputation of the organization supporting it.
  3. gov: Government site, typically U.S. While not reliable in terms of bias, an excellent way to find out what their story is.
  4. com/net: Commercial or private venture. While commercial ventures are the least reliable, private sites and individual home pages can offer more reliable information.
• Count and check the sources -- An honest author will almost always cite other sources, or at least provide references at the end. Once you find the sources, check them. In addition to helping you establish the veracity of the author's claims, these sources can provide you with more information.
• When in doubt, be suspicious -- If you are not sure you should trust a source, try to verify everything the author claims in sources that you do trust.

Search Engines

Google is the dominant Internet search engine, and is usually quite useful. Yahoo! probably follows closely behind Google, although Microsoft is presently trying to take it over. I personally am not very fond of Microsoft's search engine, Live Search, but some people swear by it. Several other search engines are also available, and these are listed in the Recommended Reading section.

Wikipedia

The collective encyclopedia named Wikipedia is an excellent place to find reference information. A study published in the journal Nature found that the accuracy of Wikipedia articles pertaining to the sciences did not differ significantly from those of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Information on more contraversial issues, on the other hand, is not as reliable when taken from the Wikipedia. You should definately review such information with a fair degree of scepticism and verify the claims with their sources.

Now that you understand some of the basics, we will cover a few of the more common sources available both on- and off-line.

The Media

The corporately owned media is arguably little more than a mouthpiece for the wealthy elite in the United States, and the amount of important information that its gatekeepers exclude is substantial (to say the leas)t.1. In addition to its sparse coverage of global issues, the mainstream media in the U.S. rarely provides any meaningful depth to its coverage, and often seems more interested in the private lives of its subjects than in issues that will actually affect most U.S. citizens. If you know virtually nothing about an issue, however, the mainstream media can provide you with some useful starting material (provided you are able to sift through the layers of disinformation and rhetoric to find the few reliable facts). The degree to which an article either cites outside sources or provides other references for more information (beyond other articles written by the same media, that is) can serve as a quick (albeit not always reliable) indicator of the quality of the content. If the author doesn't provide any reference to back up her statements, then I generally assume that (s)he is simply spouting her personal opinions. You'll also want to examine the sources she does cite, both to determine whether they truly support the author's conclusion and because they should provide you with more in-depth information about your issue .When reviewing the media's coverage of your issue, do the following:

• Go to multiple sources. -- Admittedly, they will all say more-or-less the same thing, but this is a good exercise in 'simultaneous sourcing'.
• Identify facts and opinions. -- Opinion columns can give you an idea of how the media views the issue, which is useful. Be careful when reading reports, though. Many reporters seem to have a habit of slipping conjectures in alongside facts, presumably in an effort to sensationalize their reports.
• Note the holes -- The media reports you find will be largely incomplete, as the corporate press tends to leave out information that its owners dislike. Sketch out the information you've found, and take note of the missing parts.
• Find alternative perspectives -- Search the independent media for information on your issue. Their coverage will probably be much more thorough and riddled with fewer suppositions. For a list of independent media outlets, visit our page on the Independent Media.

Government Documents

The U.S. government retains copious records of all its policies, initiatives, procedures and (especially) expenditures. While sifting through the reams of official records may not be very appealing, it is an effective way to gain somewhat of a firsthand perspective of the current administration's position on an issue.

If you are fortunate, someone else may have already requested the information you are looking for and posted it on the Internet. If not, then you might want to check the Government Printing Office, which offers printed and digital copies of several executive and congressional documents (largerly at the federal level). If you cannot find what you are looking for there, then you may need to submit a FOIA request. Fortunately, such requests are common and relatively strightforward (as far as government procedures go) to make. Almost every government office provides the instructions to make an information request, and the ACLU offers a comprehensive text on government information in its online store2.

The United Nations is also an excellent place to go for information, and the independently compiled reports are generally more accurate (and honest) than the ones prepared by the U.S. Government. The U.N. also works hard to make sure its information is readily accessible and in multiple languages. Consulting these resources will help you to understand how the international community views your issue and what its members thinks of U.S. policies regarding the issue.

Non-Governmental Organizations

With the corporate corruption of the commercial media, the independent media and NGOs have become the most reliable sources of information available. Most major national and international services have fairly comprehensive web sites that include background information on issues and regular press releases. When researching government-initiated human rights abuses by the U.S. military, Amnesty International, the ACLU, the ICRC and PHR provided detailed reports, collections of government documents and background information about the abuses taking place. In fact, I first learned about the issue from the ACLU's "Restore Habeas Corpus" campaign. Many of these grassroots organizations will also provide you with resources and tools to lobby your legislators or other politicians on particular issues that they are working on.

Form a Coalition

Fighting the powers already entrenched in our government is a very difficult and wearying battle, and you will most likely burn yourself out far before you accomplish anything if you attempt to go it alone. Instead, look for existing organizations in your community that are working on your issue, and try to work with them. They will have resources to help you research your cause, meet up with other activists, alert you to key issues, etc. Alternatively, identify groups that might be interested in the issue, and propose to work with them to accomplish your plan. The following are key concepts to remember when trying to unify people on an issue.

Cross party lines

Partisan bickering has accomplished precious little of any merit in America. The polarization of politics into 'conservatives' and 'liberals' is largely an artificial construct propagated by the mass media and exploited by the ruling elites; one of your first goals is to shatter this illusion and convince people that your issue transcends party lines. Also recognize that nothing is the sacrosanct domain of either party, so neither party can rightfully claim ownership of an issue or a particular stance thereon. In other words, you can oppose torture and illegal detention as a republican. The bipolar nature of U.S. politics typically becomes easier to circumvent as you move from national to local levels, as local politicians are more accessible by the people and therefore more sensitive to their input than to that of a political party. This is also why more third party and independent officials appear in more local governments.

When dealing with your policy-makers, do not commit the Fallacy of Accident; e.g. do not automatically assume that because Conservatives resist government regulation, your Republican state senator will oppose a bill to reduce the mercury contamination in your local lakes. That person is your senator before she is a Republican senator, and if all of her constituents start dying of mercury poisoning, she will have a very big problem on her hands.

Seek out kindred spirits

Someone else in your area probably feels the same way as you about your issue. In many cases, popular support for your cause will be much larger than you expect. The difficult part is connecting with those people and convincing them that your idea is worthy of their support. A letter to the editor of your local paper is a good way to start pushing your issue into the local forum. You should also learn whether any major grassroots organizations that might support your position (e.g. Amnesty International, American Civil Liberties Union, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club) have a local chapter in your area. They may even be willing to commit their resources as an organization to your cause, which would provide you with valuable support.

Compromise

Be willing to compromise on the non-essential parts of your position, or to work with people you disagree with on other issues. While you should remain firm on any clear issues of right-and-wrong, you should also be willing to listen to other people's thoughts on how best to achieve your desired results.

Remain constructive

Finally, avoid denigrating your opponents as much as possible. Answer attacks on your position calmly and reasonably, and do not allow yourself to be baited into attacking an opponent's character or defending your own. Any married couple can tell you that few things destroy a constructive disagreement more quickly than a personal attack. Never initiate one, and if your opponents do, do not respond in kind3.

1. 1. The deplorable state of the contemporary media is a product of several factors, the most significant of which is the ownership of the majority of the outlets by a very small number of interconnected corporations. The interests of this ruling elite ultimately shape the agenda and treatment of issues presented to the people as 'news'. Consult Media Control (Chomsky 2003), Our Media, Not Theirs (McChesney and Nichols 2003) or Manufacturing Consent (Herman and Chomsky 2002) for a more detailed discussion of how corporate interests control the public forum.
2. 2. An online copy of Step-By-Step Guide to using the Freedom of Information Act is also available, and I have posted a PDF version of one of the ACLU's example FOIA request letters at the end of this article. Those of you who are comfortable with LaTeX may wish to download the template source that I also posted below.
3. 3. Admittedly, much of the American public seems to be obsessed with character attacks and peoples' private lives, and so a well-placed personal attack may quickly derail your efforts. I personally do not fully understand this fascination, although I have a growing suspicion that it is related to the fact that so many people have chosen to experience the drama of life vicariously, but safely, through a television set rather than take the risk of truly engaging with the people around them. If the attack is serious enough that it threatens your movement, then you may want to take the time to address it and to reprove your opponents for their shameful tactics. In his 2008 election campaign, then-Senator Obama provided some good examples of how to fight back against character attacks without turning the debate into a slugfest.

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