Log on to Activism

His 529 friends on the social networking site and their friends were potential petitioners. And so,on January 1,2009,he created a group on Facebook called, Help Bring Israel To Intl Law CourtsYes It Can Happen With Your Support! He sent invitations to all 529 friends and asked them to invites their friends. On the first day,50 people joined. On the second day,124 joined,on the third day,there were 300 and within a month,more than 25,000 members of the group. They discussed the latest situation in Gaza,posted news items,videos and images related to the conflict on the groups wall.

But Hassan didnt want it to be a virtual affair. So,he organised a rally in London. He posted the planned rally in the events section of the group inviting everyone to the protest on January 10. Some 674 members turned up at Londons Hyde Park. We demonstrated through London to the Israeli embassy,chanting,Down,down Israel, Hassan recalls.

Encouraged by the response,Hassan started a charity organisation called Army of Justice. When I saw 15,000 people join the Facebook group in just 20 days,I was excited and felt an urge to do something on the ground, he says. 

He has devoted a small room in his house to Army of Justice. On February 2,he met 30 members of his Facebook group of which only six are his real-life friends and has recruited them as volunteers for distributing pamphlets,designing or procuring merchandise and making placards to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza, explains Hassan,whose Facebook profile picture is now the logo of his charity and who has given up his social life for the cause.

Hassans calendar of activities attests his claim has seen him,along with three other group members,stand outside McDonalds,Marks and Spencer and GAP on Londons Oxford Street,telling shoppers on the megaphone to boycott these stores because they allegedly fund Israels military. People were shocked,intimidated,most of all appreciative. says Hassan enthusiastically.

He is also holding a confidence-building workshop for the 30 recruits in Surrey and on July 9,is planning a big rally its listed on the Facebook groups page and is inviting experts to speak there, he divulges.  

Hassan is a classic case of how Facebook,which turned five recently,has grown from connecting friends to connecting total strangers with a common cause and turning them into real-life activists. From a social tool,it has become a weapon for political activism,admittedly mostly virtual. But whats also true is that last year saw governments across three big countries in three different continents wake up to Facebook activism.

The other activists

Jordan Sterling,a 17-year-old Grade 12 student in Hamilton,Canada,is too young to vote but last December,he forced the Ontario administration to withdraw a proposed legislation that would have prohibited under-19 drivers from having more than one teen passenger in their vehicles. Jordan formed a group on Facebook called Young Drivers Against New Ontario Laws,whose membership swelled to more than 1,50,000 in a few weeks. Jordan asked members to e-mail their complaints to Ontario legislators which they did in huge numbers,forcing premier Dalton McGuinty to withdraw the proposed law on December 8,2008 12 days before 593 group members had registered for a drive through the Queen Elizabeth Way at 100 km/hour. McGuinty admitted the Facebook group had influenced hi decision: I think we need to find a way to engage people in a dialogue in a social network where they are.

Facebook activism shook up authorities in Egypt too. Last April,a 74,000-strong Facebook group,The April 6th Youth Movement,had called for a strike in Cairo to protest against inflation,low salaries and rising unemployment. The government arrested Esraa Abdel Fattah,a 30-year-old woman who founded the group in March 2008,and detained her for two weeks,prompting Facebook users to campaign for her release. While in jail,Esraa gave her groups password to Ahmed Maher,a 28-year-old engineer.. In May,the police picked up Maher and allegedly beat him up for 12 hours to extract the password from him.

Wael Abbas,a prominent Egyptian blogger and journalist who had posted pictures of Mahers bruised back on his blog,says that in the absence of freedom of speech,Facebook has emerged as a fertile ground for political dissent. That the police arrested members of the April 6 group shows that the authorities take them seriously. Collecting donations or any gathering of more than five protestors is prohibited in Egypt. That leaves the Internet as our only outlet, says Maher.

An inspired Asmaa Mahfouz,a 24-year-old student of business administration in Cairo,joined the April 6 group. Besides the April 6 strike,she is busy organising the second anniversary of the April 6 protest. I am afraid that I too maybe arrested but I believe in what I am doing, she says.

While governments in Canada and Egypt reacted to Facebook activism,authorities in Colombia have been pro-active in supporting a Facebook group thats opposed to the guerilla organisation,FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. In fact,33-year-old engineer,Oscar Morales,who created the group,One Million Voices Against FARC,is now hailed as an Internet hero of sorts by not just the Colombian youth but also by Facebook. Oscar had formed the group on January 4,2008. I thought the platform of social networking would be perfect to spark something. All I wanted was to tell the president that we,young people,were no longer going to tolerate the kidnappings, Oscar said last December at a summit in New Yorkorganised by Facebook,Google,YouTube,MTV,the US Department of State and the Columbia Law Schoolon effecting social change using online tools.

Oscars group attracted 1,500 members in the first 12 hours of its creation,4,000 the next day and within a week,it bloated to 1,00,000 members. On February 4,2008,some 5,00,000 people took part in widely-covered rallies across 100 countries to raise their voice against FARC.

Said Jared Cohen,author and member of the US State Departments Office of Policy Planning: What Oscar did in Colombia was a watershed movement because it was the first time we started to grasp and appreciate the importance of what social platforms like Facebook can do as a tool for youth empowerment. 

The bugs

Though a breed of activists are turning to social media to kick-start their charity dreams or make a socio-political statement,Facebooks magnanimous reach more than 150 million active users is actually too little to clear the earth of plastics,terrorists or corrupt leaders. The April 6 Youth Movement group by Egyptian Facebookers,says Abaas,was a mere fluke. Only about 50 people from that 74,000-strong group turned up to protest. The others were just sitting in their pajamas in their bedrooms, he says.