Rise of single-issues

“The Bono-isation of protest, particularly in the UK, has reduced discussion to a much safer terrain,” according to Naomi Klein the author of No Logo and more recently of The Shock Doctrine. In a recent article in the Times she is more than skeptical about the impact of celebrities engaging in campaigning. She’s also not keen on campaigning through blogs: "It’s safer to mouth off in a blog than to put your body on the line. The internet is an amazing organising tool but it also acts as a release, with the ability to rant and get instant catharsis . . . it’s taken that urgency away”.

This is very interesting. Crusaid is a single issue organisation (HIV and AIDS) and yet over the past five years we have seen many other organisations add HIV to their range of issues to campaign with and in the UK HIV services are being dilluted into general sexual health and other areas. We don’t see a rise of the single issue from where we stand, we see the demise of it. The dissolution of issues and causes into larger broadbrush approaches that are aimed at the 30-second attention span and become just noise can become a real threat to niche players like ourselves.

I wonder whether the fact that this trend looks like a growth in single issues isn’t because that’s the way we, as voluntary or campaigning organisations, make it look.

There are lots of people out there who are engaged in multiple ‘single issues’. (See Flexibility, Honesty, Collaboration). That’s because (a) they’re trying to behave like responsible, passionate, angry, caring global citizens, and that involves many issues; and (b) we serve them up with single-issue channels for expressing themselves, rather than a broader ‘movement of global citizens’ to be activists in. And we do that because we’ve learned a lot about how to make change happen. It works.

So the media and politicians see single-issue campaigns, but the real people inside them are as multiple-issue as ever.

‘Bono-isation’ – if that means trivialisation, which is not very fair on what Bono’s actually up to – may be what it looks like from the outside, but I don’t know of any single-issue big-scale campaign that hasn’t been run in the background by hardened voluntary/community sector campaigners who are pulling all the levers of power and mobilising committed activists, as well as trying to achieve broad-span public appeal for those with other things to do with their lives. It’s never been one or the other, it’s both.

What we’re seeing is not necessarily a weakening of popular passion or of its power to change things – in fact, if anything, it’s the opposite – but it probably is a weakening of people’s willingness to devote themselves to one single organisation.

So Robin, I believe, shouldn’t be worried about a decline in people’s willingness to engage in the politics of HIV and AIDS, for example; there are lots out there, some of whom will be willing to understand and campaign on the detail, while others will stick to the short-attention-span outskirts of a campaign.

But he’s probably right to be worried that this won’t translate into so many loyal supporters for his own organisation – not because their politics has been trivialised by the media pictures of Bono, but because they are also engaging in many other issues.

Complex lives mean complex engagements; I wonder if the part-time activists out there aren’t more sophisticated than we give them credit for!

Complex engagements are probably mostly seen as a threat by organisations, partly because this challenges their existing approaches and processes. I guess more sophisticated citizens and activists mean that organisations need to be really flexible and offer a range of options. But in terms of management and planning this is of course very challenging and demanding. It would be great to learn from people’s experience and the responses of their organisations.

Written as Policy Officer at NCVO

Richard’s point about people being engaged and interested in multiple single issues is spot on, and can also be considered in light of Naomi Kleins point about blogging. The internet enables us to access information, to gain knowledge and an understanding of a whole host of issues – and crucially it is also a medium through which we can participate in various ways. This ability and flexibility to get involved has contributed to the perceived rise of our interest in a multiplicity of single issues. Whilst I take the point about blogging ‘taking the urgency away’ there is also a point to be made about the posterity of the blogosphere – when you have commented in the public sphere its there for the world to see forever, so whilst its not the same as putting your body on the line, in a different way you are making your point and in some ways you will always be linked to that point beacuse its out there….

complex engagement in multiple issues may seem like a threat to organisations but can also be harnessed for positive gain – I recently met a CEO of a local infrastructure organisation who had capitalised on some of his volunteers ‘other’ interests. This had led to the LIO’s involvement in furniture recycling, ICT training, community transport and a lending library! and all because existing activists had discussed other issues they were involved in, interested in and campaigned for.