Beverage-based political organizing

In 2006, Latino students in Los Angeles organized a school walk-out, based around a disapproval of proposed immigration policies and increased criminalization of U.S. immigrants. Thousands of teenagers left school to protest—filled the streets, shouted through megaphones, showed their frustration in full force. But what everyone talked about was their surprise at how the whole thing was orchestrated—through MySpace.

Though only a few years ago, I remember people’s amazement in seeing social-networking turn into social-organizing. Now it seems obvious. Start a Facebook page, find some friends, let the snowball begin. Soon your friends will be bombarded with messages from your new political page, and they’ll be thankful for the break in Farmville updates from everyone else. But it’s not often that we hear about large-scale grassroots organizing.

With the exception of the current UC system, students protesting budget cuts and tuition hikes (I’m a UC alum and am there in spirit), the last political rallies I really remember are the LA immigration protests. And that makes me so sad. In the past two years of economic demise, through the long and painful process of health care reform, I thought we were all being silent. No one seemed to be considering that, as jobs dwindled and construction projects shut down, maybe we should all be pissed. Maybe we should all be questioning the state of our government, and asking for change.

Initially, I dismissed the Coffee and Tea Parties as little more than popular Facebook pages, with cyber fans but little else in the way of action. Now I see rallies forming, meetings scheduled, and a sense of movement on both sides. And so, despite my immediate dismissal of these groups as temporary internet stars, I feel a certain pride about them. I’m not particularly interested in sharing my own political persuasions and showing a partisan take on the issue, because the principle itself impresses me. Two groups with very distinct views on what they want our government to look like. They base themselves not on individual issues necessarily (though I see them both addressing individual issues), but a vision of a government that is not performing the way they’d like as a whole. And through the groups, people that have perhaps been pissed for a long time with no outlet for complaint can get involved.

For a nation that has seemed so downtrodden and complacent in its recent demise, I like the idea of people finding their political will. Maybe in reality they’re all crazy, leading blind campaigns towards bad politics. But they are, at the very least, a sign of our frustrations. And if you don’t agree with them, perhaps it’s time to start your own beverage-based political organizing campaign. I hear beer’s pretty popular.