FEATURE: ACTIVISM INC.

Can activist organizations grow without losing sight of their original mission?Can activist organizations grow without losing sight of their original mission?by Josh Leitner One doctrine in history books cites that change-seeking factions are most successful, at least in terms of gaining public support and awareness, under an administration hostile to their cause. Perhaps that accounts for the '80s boom of 'responsibility group' awareness (also helped, no doubt, by the double headline Sting and Springsteen of Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! Tour). The '90s taught us that every day was Earth Day (though April, 1990, seems more noteworthy than anything going on today). We've been admonished to think globally and act locally (though most global thought is focused on fear of foreign economic foes). The '90s also witnessed the arrival of 'Green Knight' Vice-President Al Gore. Now those early, bright-eyed days are gone, and Gore's environmental record has displeased scores of voters. Hell, even green-minded rockers like Sting and R.E.M. began to ring of frustration and futility. Many of the groups that sprang from that concern – the reputed harbingers of a better tomorrow – are still around. You can tell: mail boxes are bulging with donation requests. Annual interaction with any organization (and the thirty others to which your address is sold) tends to involve little more than black and white tragedy photos, recycled paper statistics, and a conveniently addressed donation sheet. And that's for the members. In fact, that's just about all the correspondence members receive. No calls to arms, no picketing or marches, just a request for an annual donation. Sure, these groups are still making noise, but the question remains: for whose benefit? Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that UNICEF is absconding with your $25 tax deductible, no postage required charitable gift. It's just striking that the enemy of the people – the soulless corporation – the demon whose very essence eliminates individual character and minimizes personal contact between its members and the outside world, should be the model for the groups whose strength is based on deep-seated personal convictions. The corporation seeks to maximize efficiency; the caring individual does the right thing despite apparent costs (at least according to all those Disney films). But, in a sense, these organizations have grown into businesses. Most groups sprung, as a general rule, from enthusiasts and observant individuals who felt strong personal commitments to change the state of things. Their ideals were based on a commitment to action. So why aren't these groups out there marching on Washington, and why are they all hawking t-shirts and frisbees (embossed, of course, with market-friendly logo) to altruistic 'freedom fighters.' Oftentimes, it appears they're promoting awareness of their own existence far more than awareness of the problems they had been established to resolve. mnesty International gained massive press exposure, mostly during its star-studded concert tours featuring enlightened rockers like Sting, U2, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, and Tracy Chapman. Much more than just concert promoters, though, Amnesty International members are the hardest working human rights advocates in show business. See, AI works for universal fair trials for the accused and the unconditional release of prisoners of conscience, those being people imprisoned solely on account of political, religious, or other expressed beliefs. They are prisoners denied fundamental safety, speech and legal rights, all of which have been secured by each U.N. member nation in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. The organization is strictly nonpartisan. AI is run mostly out of its headquarters in London, and has gained attention largely for its efforts to fight torture, which, believe it or not, is still practiced with frightening frequency throughout the world today. Amnesty International's strength and tactics have been derived from the notion thatEinformed individuals can actually affect government decisions. AI has taken this idea beyond sappy political rhetoric and actually pushed it into realized action. Tales of prisoners released because of persistent letter-writing campaigns could serve as persuasive AI advertisements. The thing is, Amnesty International, whose success was created by the individual (well, lots of 'em working together, but you get the idea) has taken a back seat to organization and administration. According to Christine Haenn of Amnesty International USA's Washington, D.C., office, much of the letter-writing (which comprises the bulk of Amnesty's membership's activities) is focused through community chapters. Depending on the activities for which a person signs up, she will receive a selection of cases along with Amnesty's bi-monthly newsletter. Yet action every two months seems a limited engagement. And though Amnesty International is officially nonpartisan, the ranks of the local chapters are often burdened by politics, both internal and external. In practice, there is little room for the individual solely interested in protecting human rights. Perhaps more skewed, though, are Amnesty International's merchandising efforts. AI offers an entire spectrum of official t-shirts, stickers, and pens, all, of course, in the name of alleviating the suffering of victims of human rights violations. While Amnesty International is definitely not in the business of turning a quick dollar, the fact that a significant amount of their mailings to the members involves offers to buy 'official club merchandise,' makes it is easy to see where concerned individuals could soon become disillusioned. Surfers are, perhaps, the most stereotypically portrayed subgroup in American culture. From Gidget to Patrick Swayze's brainless Point Break Kodi, surfers are generally shown as irresponsible (though well-tanned) thrill-seekers. The truth is, surfing, as a sport, involves practiced sophistication to match its characteristic style. And surfers, as a whole, are far more socially aware than they are given credit for. It is no great stretch to see that surfers, along with most beachgoers, have a vested interest in clean water. What is rather noteworthy is that surfers and beach aficionados have organized as vocally and effectively as they have. Enter the Surfrider Foundation. Established in 1984 by a group of hardcore surf enthusiasts, the organization began, according to national communications director Pierce Flynn, "to protect and preserve the environment around the beaches and the coastal sound." Surfrider members have staged paddle-out protests to interrupt ocean dumping, run water-quality testing to augment meager EPA check-ups, and effectively taken on corporations in lawsuits. "We do multi-leveled research, starting from the family on the beach walking and they see syringes all over and they call us to surfers in the water getting sick with hepatitis, or gastroenteritis, or skin rashes to more systematic research that we do," explains Flynn of the Surfrider strategy. "We have our Blue Water Task Force, which is a nationwide ocean water testing program where we have EPA certified testing kits that we train our chapter members in, going and actually taking water samples, telling us if an area is getting polluted or not. With that information, we work upstream and actually find out who the polluters are." In fact, in 1991, Surfrider fought and won the second largest Clean Water Act violation case to date in a suit against two pulp mills polluting Humboldt Bay, California. "Initially, they sort of laughed and said 'how cute, these surfers are threatening to sue us,'" relates former Surfrider Steve Merrill. "Then they actually found out that we meant business, and they came around, and we had a number of meetings with them. And they found out we were very, very serious. They came around and offered us $50,000 to back off. Finally they came out and offered us $500,000-- they offered us half a million bucks, and we wouldn't take it. Their lawyers said "what do you guys want?" [The Surfrider attorneys] looked at him and said 'we want clean water, we don't want money.' These corporations don't get that. They're so used to everything in dollars and cents on a balance sheet and everything has a price. They just couldn't figure out that we would not go for the half million bucks and let them go on their way." The Surfrider Foundation has a history of taking such direct action against polluters. The results of its bold moves have been telling: Surfrider's ranks have swelled to 25,000 members (including celebrity supporters like Tom Hanks, Eddie Vedder, and Chris Isaak), prompting the creation of 22 local chapters nationwide (including 8 on our Eastern, lesser, coast). "Within the last two years, we've gotten computerized. It was a gradual process, as most environmental groups are. They have a process of growing up to being able to handle everything," states Flynn. Yet some would say that this 'growing up' stage of organizations works at the expense of their commitment to their original ideals, placing an emphasis on funding and administration rather than on activism. With the booming interest and activities of the community chapters, the national Surfrider Foundation's role has been dramatically reduced. The problem is, they're the ones with all the money. In fact, the reported stagnation prompted several of the key Surfrider figures, including founding member Steve Merrill and attorney Mark Massara, to jump ship altogether and launch their own Surfer's Environmen- tal Alliance (conveniently abbreviated SEA). "Although the [Surfrider] chapters were doing lots of good environmental work, it seemed to us that the national had lost its teeth for getting into the thick of things and we found that a lot of the people who had come onto the board... seemed to want to put more of their energy into administration and operating it as a business," explains SEA's Steve Merrill. "Doing things like selling t-shirts and coffee mugs and license plate plaques became more the focus of the national office and also trying to oversee and manage, sort of maintain their control over the chapters." Flynn admits that "the community chapters are the watchdogs of the coast. A lot of our activism has been very successful through the chapters," and compares the national to a "nervous system." Such a splintering of momentum, though, seems to only hinder the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the Surfrider Foundation as a whole, and weaken its strength of numbers. The chapters are comprised of individuals in the thick of the environment they care about. Their motives derive straight out of concern. The national's shadowy, background stance indicates its own removed status. Merrill explains Surfrider's shift, noting, "as certain people left the board and new people came in, a lot of the new people seemed to be of much more conservative philosophy and felt that we shouldn't be putting ourselves in a liability position by taking on lawsuits and such. That was the word that kept being bandied about, that it was too much of a 'liability' to get involved in these kind of actions, although everything Surfrider did involved a lawsuit that was any of our major victories. Or, if not a lawsuit per se, leading up to it." Of course, the difficulty of eternal vigilance grew when, as Merrill cites, "our legal action department, and our environmental department were both entirely stripped of money in order to maintain the funding for the administration. Roughly three-fourths of the budget was going into the administration of Surfrider, and the remaining 25 percent was divvied up between the environmental program and the legal program." And such stilted priorities reflect the price of all organizations' "growing up" phase. Although Steve Merrill and several other top-rung Surfrider members fought against the gradual changes, the evolution toward corporatization progressed. Merrill recalls that funding began to be alotted to maintaining administrative offices. Positions, according to Merrill, increased: "we started out as five volunteers that comprised our board of directors," though the number jumped to 15. Also, Surfrider now has six full-time employees alongside several part-timers, including "an executive director, and administrative director, a communications director, an operations director, and on and on." Aside from personnel growth, foundation money went the way of office supplies, including the purchases of computers, copiers, and "a Star Wars type of phone system." Merrill claims that "All were needed in some ways, but others of us felt that the priority was to the environmental work. The administration-oriented felt it was very important to build up this infrastructure to service what they envisioned would be this increasing membership, and that was one of our points of departure, because we felt that a lot of people's interest and initiative in Surfrider came from the fact that we were active and doing things. If we ceased to be active, the membership will fall. That will pretty much be seen in the next year and a half, though it's too early to say. I hope not, but it's my feeling that the money follows the action." As for the Surfer's Environmental Alliance, well, Merrill describes the group's ambitions, "we will do basically whatever it takes to make polluters stop polluting, short of breaking the law. We're not afraid to get in their face. We've found that some companies may be open to changing their ways. But a lot of these big corporations have had it their way for so long that they're not going to change until you threaten them, or they're looking at the government coming down on them." Surfrider Foundation, though small compared to the likes of Greenpeace, is in fact one of the more established ocean conservation groups. And unfortunately, the 'corporitization' that occurred is not the exception among activists, it's almost the rule. Many of these groups have become, in fact, businesses, and the product they sell is socially responsible action. For example, take the World Wildlife Fund. Though it relies on 1.2 million members for annual membership fees, there is little room for the interested would-be activist. Abby Spring, a spokesperson for the orgaization, noted that WWF is "not the Peace Corps, we're just not that sort of activist group. We do stand behind causes, but we're not the type of organization that's going to march on Washington. We do it in a different way. We're much less a sort of community-based activist organization." Spring said. "We do have a Congressional Relations department, though." Truthfully, there is nothing philosophically wrong with well-trained professionals instead of teeming masses tackling issues. But, in fact, there seems little passion in their efforts. What WWF's Congressional Relations staff does "pretty much, more than lobbying, is monitoring a lot of what is going on in the Hill. We're also in the business of educating senators and congressmen of issues that we feel strongly about," she explained. Talk about standing firm. Should these methods prove effective, though, there would be nothing wrong with them. Yet, it seems, that the group was able to accomplish more in its earlier, feistier days. "In the old days, the thought was you can save a species, so the early conservationists were setting out to save pandas or save tigers or save rhinos. They would go in and say, okay, how can we save this animal?" explains the WWF source. "We are sure that if we had not gone into China when we did in the 1970's, the panda would definitely be extinct now, because we raised awareness of the need." Now, though, the ideas have changed. "It became very well known that you had to take human needs into consideration. So what we do now is we work in countries all over the world and?work with local people, by giving them options on how they can have eco-ventures." And while minds are set on more realizable, 'real world' goals, involving "eco-ventures," Third World business projects that 'respect' the environment and create "a vested interest in saving their wildlife and their habitat," industrialism and environmentalism seem principally at odds. And the goals seem far more compromised than ideal. The seemingly countless altruistic organizations have each settled down for long haul existence. The groups were founded out of frustration, anger, and a desire for a clean break from the dictatorially and corporately produced by-products of efficiency; namely injustice and pollution. Their efforts have moved from front-line face-offs to Capitol Hill conference rooms, and the passion has been lost. So, in the reality of our cultural surroundings, the question remains: are organization and growth indelibly linked with a dilution of principles and inactivism? "Some people seem to think so, but I don't see why it has to be that way, especially if you're aware of that. If you see that as a possible phenomenon then you have the opportunity not to have that happen. I think what happens with a lot of these groups is that they just kind of end up going that way," explains Merrill. Naturally, Merrill and the SEA founders are going to great efforts to insure that their latest effort doesn't fall into a similar pitfall. SEA will endeavor to be "financially responsible," claims Merrill. "Within that simple premise is a little more detailed directive in that a maximum of 20 cents of every dollar that comes into the organization will be allowed to go to the administration?and the other 80 percent will go to the program. The way we're going to insure that is our mission statement: we're a project driven organization. We have a menu of projects right now and they will choose whatever program they want [to donate funding to]. And within 30 days of our receiving that money, that 80 percent will be available for that project." In fact, activists and environmentalists have taken measures to insure that the administrations don't become so, well, administrative. Dave Foreman, an alumni from the ranks of Sierra Club and Greenpeace, among other groups, cites in his novel, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, that administration members of activist organizations should be required to spend at least 20 hours per month surrounded by nature. And the reason for this is evident -- the direct contact fires the feelings that prompt activism.