Eli Pariser––Notes to Address Power Session at EGA 2003 Fall Retreat

Good morning.  My name's Eli Pariser, I'm campaigns director for MoveOn.org, and I thought I'd start by talking a little bit about how I got here.

On September 10th, 2001, I worked for a little nonprofit in the Boston area as a web and IT guy.  I was a little more than a year out of college, and I was 20 years old. After the attacks unfolded on the morning of September 11th, I went home.  As so many of us were, I was struck by the terrible tragedy of the situation. The next day, as the President and the pundits began their public statements, my thoughts turned to the future.  I considered the possibility that out of this tragedy might come more tragedy––that in addition to the lives of the victims of September 11th the United States might kill many others.
 
That evening, I started messing around with a website––a site that would lay out some constructive principles for the American response to September 11th.  I didn't really have it thought out––I just figured I knew how to make websites, and so I made one. I called it 9-11peace.org. Late that night, I sent out a message about it to 30 friends––including, incidentally, my training group from the Rockwood Training I'd attended, which is how I know Andre.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 18th, I woke up and checked my email.  There were thousands of messages there––I just couldn't figure it out. Then I got a call from the guy who'd offered to host it for free––he said the server was crashing because there were too many people trying to access it. Then I checked how many people had signed the petition I'd put up on the site, calling for the President to exercise restraint––49,000.

And then the BBC called.  And they said, "What's up with this website and who are you?"
 
And I thought to myself, well, let's see.  I'm 20, I don't really know anything about international policy, and I'm a smartass.

Now I'm 22, and I know a little more about international policy, and I'm still a smartass.  So for me, on some levels, things haven't changed so much.  But in the time between then and now, the world has changed a great deal.  And my little website became the beginning of something much bigger.
 
As the second anniversary of September 11th rolled around, I started thinking about that Margaret Mead quote.  I'm sure you all know it––the one that goes, “never doubt that a small group of highly committed people can change the world––indeed, it's the only thing that ever has”.
 
And I thought, she's right.

Al Qaeda is a small group of highly committed people who with dedication, and skill, and drive, have certainly changed the world.

Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, and of course George W. Bush––another small group of highly committed people––have also affected the course of history.

And then I thought about my own small group of highly committed people––although we have 1.6 million members in the US, and another 600,000 abroad, we still only have five staff.  Pretty small.
 
So if what we're talking about today is the power to change history, then the question on my mind is: should small groups of highly committed people be able to change the world?  And, if small groups of people have the potential for such great power, how can they ensure that it be used to create a better future, rather than one of fear and hatred?

And I think the answer is that all power is not equal.
 
I believe that the capacity to build societies is fundamentally different from the capacity to destroy them.  Al Qaeda is only able to change the course of history in one direction––no number of September 11ths will ever create a fair or just society.

Coercive power is the hierarchical power: power to make people do things.  Violence and the threat of violence are extreme examples of coercive power, but it exists in everyday life as well––it's arm-twisting power, police power, the power that asserts one person's dominance over another.

I believe that the Bush Administration excels at wielding this kind of power.  The President's ideology is predicated on the idea that society is essentially a group of selfish individuals scrambling for power. Respect, compassion and fairness, in this view, are attributes of the weak––in order to "win," individuals must seize every competitive advantage with no regard for others.
 
Creative power is the power to build. It's based on the idea that collaboration and community build stronger societies––that if we strengthen the bonds between each other, if we trust, respect, and empathize with each other, we will be more creative, more resilient, more fair, and ultimately more collectively powerful.  Positive social change––creative power––only happens when many people participate.  I believe it can't manifest in small groups, it can't be isolated.

Creative power takes time.  Building connections takes time.  Coercive power feeds off a culture of fear and distrust––it harnesses people's hatred and enmity.  If we want to build our power, we have to build it on the basis of trust and respect.

(I was thinking about making a comparison here to the bonds in the atom––how there's a lot of energy unleashed when you split an atom––but then I figured this wasn't the right crowd to lionize nuclear energy in front of.)

There are some very concrete ways to organize and utilize creative power.  I'll just lay out a few of the practices that we at MoveOn follow in order to connect with this power:

• Listen to people. What are folks concerned about and why?  What do they believe in?
• Lead. This follows listening and, I believe, is critical to embracing creative power.  Creative leadership directs the energy of people’s hopes and concerns in a concrete way.  I don't propose that we all work by consensus––leaders should lead, because everyone else has a lot of other stuff to do.
• Connect.  The impact of making a direct, honest and emotionally compelling appeal can never be overestimated.
• Reinforce.  Creative energy thrives on feedback and positive reinforcement.  When we tell our members we're looking for 100,000 signatures, we get 125,000.  We report back: wow, 125,000 signatures, can we reach 200,000?  And then we get 300,000.

I'm very pragmatic––I'm only interested in guidelines to the extent that they allow us to do better work.  But I know that this approach to power can work: It's been my life for the last two years.
 
By the end of that week in September 2001, when the BBC called, my website was one of the top 500 sites visited on the Internet.  I got a call from a Romanian journalist––she'd received the petition by email five different times from five different people.  The petition traveled by word of mouth––people sent the email to their whole address book, who in turn sent it to their whole address books.

Two weeks later, over 500,000 people had signed the petition from 192 countries. And those 500,000 people, who asked President Bush to change paths in the days after September 11th, stayed active.  And as the Bush Administration pushed towards war with Iraq, we kept getting stronger and stronger.  MoveOn reached out.  We added more people, we tripled in size, and the movement against the war grew.  On February 15th, we held the largest day of protest in the history of the world.

Yes, the war did happen: that's true.  But creative power takes time. Building connections isn't easy.  We're just getting started.  The momentum that began with the anti-war movement is changing American politics.  And I do believe it has the potential to change the world.
 
We're told often that September 11ths may happen again.  I think that's true––terrorism is a real threat.  And so we must consider what happens when our societies are under attack.

Do we shatter, or do we heal?  Creative power creates cohesion: we stick together, and we're able to knit together over a wound. Coercive power either deflects or shatters.
 
So what stands between us and chaos, between al Qaeda and democracy? I think it's our responsibility and respect for each other.   By unleashing the energy in our connections to each other, we can gain the power necessary to build a better future.