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14 January 2008

Huck's network

Interesting piece in yesterday’s New York Times that highlights the interplay of old and new ways of organizing, vis a vis the grassroots efforts for Governor Huckabee. A few notable points to highlight: (1) how the Internet facilitates bottom-up collective action in a way that would have been much more difficult a decade ago; (2) the emergent collective action builds on pre-existing evangelical networks; and (3) how the technology, in particular, potentially disintermediates the old guard leadership. That is, the old modality of collective action would have been more top down, reflecting the privileged informational position of the old guard, who had built up mailing lists and the like that enabled them to mobilize their constituencies. With the Internet, their constituencies can now find each other.

Excerpts from:
Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Guard

WASHINGTON — Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers…
…
In Michigan, the Huckabee campaign had spent no money, hired no staff and had no office until last Wednesday, six days before the primary. But Gary Glenn, a conservative Christian advocate based in Midland, Mich., has been leading an informal effort to turn out evangelical voters. Some pollsters expect them to make up as much as 40 percent of the state’s primary voters this year.

Last week, Mr. Glenn lined up 50 local pastors to attend a closed-door breakfast with Mr. Huckabee in Grand Rapids. And he has compiled an e-mail list of more than 600 volunteers — many in Internet groups that Huck’s Army is connecting — who have been using church directories to make phone calls, courting local pastors and leafleting church parking lots .
“Recruit volunteers to stand this Sunday on public sidewalks across the street from the parking lots of the biggest evangelical churches you can find,” Mr. Glenn urged in a recent e-mail message.
….
[In South Carolina]… more than 500 people, many of them young evangelicals, have signed up for online Huckabee meet-up groups, said Christian Hine, 30, the state coordinator of the Huck’s Army effort. Unaided by the campaign, volunteers have borrowed church directories and bought their own phone lists to try to identify likely Huckabee voters, Mr. Hine said, and even paid to print their own Huckabee signs when the campaign ran out.

Posted by David Lazer at January 14, 2008 9:18 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Valdis Krebs at January 14, 2008 12:04 PM

Notification

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