A quick-look at our action project presents mixed results. The issues we chose to direct calls to, the repeal of Net Neutrality and the GOP Tax Plan, are both expected to pass with relative ease despite our group’s opposition. Initially, we set out to help in preventing these two potentially dangerous legislative actions. While we likely won’t succeed in this objective, we were able to indirectly accomplish something more abstract: inspiring political agency within a politically passive demographic. Overall, I’d say our project was a success, but there are a couple aspects to it that I think we could have improved on.
Many people that were initially apprehensive to the idea of calling their representative left our tent feeling relieved and empowered. It’s hard to feel important within our society’s very structured power model, but as Active Hope discussed, power can be drawn from conversation. My hope is that the conversations we had with people inspired them to have conversations with others, and that this momentum led more people to feel politically powerful in this era of uncertainty. Even if this merely gave people the confidence needed to call their representative the next time they see a reason to do so, then I’d consider that a wonderful conclusion to our project.
The idea that an ethical dilemma is prevalent with some of our tactics was already discussed during our presentation, thought I think I should open it up to debate within this blog. I maintain that we were never coercive in getting people to support our political views, and that we encouraged people not to use the scripts we provided if they felt comfortable enough to do so. I do think, however, that our usage of the slogan “call for a cookie” perhaps promoted the incentive more than the political engagement itself. This by itself isn’t too problematic, but when combined with the scripts, that were written from a stance of opposition to the legislation, things become a little more questionable. Without the cookies, scripts, and slogan I’m not sure how many interactions, and consequentially what kind of impact, our project would have had.
I’d like for you to pretend that an anti-abortion group, or any group promoting a conservative cause, used the same “questionable”, incentivized tactics to gain support. Would they have experienced more backlash than we did on this predominantly liberal campus? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Source: Eric Palma, Fast company (https://www.fastcompany.com/3057178/what-if-we-paid-people-to-vote) I’m glad our project successfully empowered many students, but are there ethical questions surrounding some of our practices?