4 Wednesday February 9 2011 | the times
It’s finger
clicking good
Harnessing people power on the internet, Ricken
Patel is trying to bring governments and businesses
to heel around the globe, says Sarah Bentley
I f public opinion is the
new superpower, is Ricken Patel its
prime minister? The 34-year-old
Canadian is the founder of one of the
world’s biggest online communites, the
campaigning network Avaaz —
meaning voice in Farsi — which has
seven million members.
Fashioned in the citizen-politics spirit
of MoveOn in the US and 38 Degrees
in the UK, it galvanises public opinion
online and uses it to influence those
with the power to implement change.
While MoveOn and 38 Degrees focus
on national issues. Patel and the Avaaz
faithful want to fix the world.
When I meet Patel at his
headquarters in Manhattan he is
chewing over the language of a
campaign e-mail. His computer pings
incessantly with Skype alerts. In the
three days I spend with him he takes
dozens of calls from his internationally
scattered team but also from royalty,
diplomats, politicians, activists and
non-governmental organisations
looking for guidance on how to set up
similar projects. Posters from
campaigns decorate his office walls.
One urges Robert Mugabe to recognise
Morgan Tsvangirai as the winner of the
2008 Zimbabwean election. Another,
the campaign Avaaz launched in 2007,
shows Tony Blair alongside the caption
“Even He Is Pulling Out/Block The
Escalation In Iraq”.
Looking up from his computer, Patel
explains why the minutiae of messaging
is important. “There are two types of
fatalism. The belief the world can’t
change, and the belief you can’t play a
role in changing it. If in a few hundred
words you produce a convincing
counter-argument, people respond.”
The message he is poring over asks
for a show of solidarity with the
protesters in Egypt who are calling for
Hosni Mubarak to step down. A
sentence of the rallying call personifies
the ethos of Avaaz: “There are
moments when history is written not
by the powerful, but by the people. This
is one of them.”
The campaign aims to collect one
million signatures and to encourage
members around the world to

telephone their governments to
demand that they support Egyptian
citizens’ quest for democracy. The
campaign is also seeking donations to
pay for satellite internet terminals to
thwart attempts to shut down public
communication channels.
The theory is that such massive
attention from the international
community will reduce the potential
for human rights abuses, encourage
other governments to do the right thing
and keep open communication
channels vital to the democracy
movement. “Our goal is to support
Egypt’s protesters by showing that the
world stands with them,” Patel explains.
This kind of rapidly employed,
results-focused campaigning has made
the pressure group, whose mission is to
“Close the gap between the world we
have and the world most people want”,
one of the most important new voices
on the global stage. It has members in
all 192 UN countries, including Iran
and China where the site is illegal. The
UK has just over 500,000 members
making it the fifth most “Avaazie”
nation after Brazil, France, Germany
and the US.
Desmond Tutu, Al Gore and Gordon
Brown are fans. Rather than separate
politicians into good guys and bad guys
it has a policy of “slamming” them
when they’re judged to be wrong and
supporting them when they’re right.
Brown has been on the receiving
end of both, yet still praises the group
for “driving forward the idealism of
the world”.
In an era of issue-numbness how did
the group earn such eminent
cheerleaders and become one of the
favourite meeting places for global
netizens? “I think people with
compassion and public spiritedness in
their hearts were yearning for it,” says
Patel, a man described by his
employees as a Mr Miyagi character
[from The Karate Kid]. “It’s like we put a
call out saying ‘Practical idealists of the
world unite’ — and they have.”
This union claims to have achieved
impressive results, including upholding
the EU ban on GM crops; preventing
the introduction of a law to gag the
media in Italy; halting the passing of a
law in Uganda that would sentence
homosexuals to death; stopping the
international whale-hunting ban from
being overturned; helping Iranians to
access news by keeping banned
internet sites live during the 2009
election; pushing through a law in
Brazil to block politicians convicted of
corruption from running for office, and
bypassing the Burmese Government’s
block on international aid after
Cyclone Nargis by depositing $2
million (£1.25 million) in donations in
MAIN IMAGES: TIMOTHY FADEK / POLARIS, BELOW: HANNIBAL HANSCHKE / EPA
smoothly. Last year Avaaz tangled
with the Canadian broadcaster
Sun TV over its licensing application to
launch a news channel that would
have to be included in all cable and
satellite packages. Avaaz raised
concerns that it would be a conduit for
the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper,
and was receiving preferential
treatment because Kory Teneycke,
the channel’s development
vice-president, was Harper’s former
communications director.
Sun threatened legal action and ran
articles in its newspapers claiming that
Avaaz was a George Soros-backed
interest group meddling in Canadian
affairs. The mud-slinging came to a
head in a live TV debate. Teneycke
suggested that the petition had false
signatures. Patel offered to trace the IP
addresses of any dubious signatories to
the account of a local businessman to identify the computers they were from.
pass to the monks running the relief Teneycke’s face crumbled. Days later he
effort. “In terms of numbers of lives resigned, admitting that he had
saved, that’s one of my favourite “debased the debate”.
campaigns,” says Patel. But it’s not only from campaign
These victories, and most people opponents that Avaaz has encountered
whether they lean to right or left would criticism. Online debates have waged
regard them as such, have been between activists enamoured by the
achieved by collating monumental speed and efficiency of the
petitions — with vast numbers of “clicktavism” model and those who
signatures — and then dropping them think it encourages lazy, ineffective
into the inboxes of their targets. If this “armchair activism”.
doesn’t work the organisation stages Adding to this argument is The Net
sit-ins, rallies, phone-ins and media Delusion by Evgeny Morozov, a recent
friendly stunts such as taking a herd of polemic that suggests the internet
cardboard pigs to the doors of the represses and controls as much as it is
World Health Organisation to demand liberates. It’s a debate that Patel is
an investigation into the link between exasperated by. He regards the internet
swine flu and giant pig farms. It also as a tool that allows people, whatever
created a three mile human chain their agenda, to do the things they’ve
handshake from the Dalai Lama to the always done but faster and on a larger
doors of the Chinese Embassy in scale. “To reduce our actions down to
London to request dialogue between clicking is silly. It’s what happens
the parties. If such genteel acts are after the clicks — how we use that
ignored, campaigns are honed into support — that’s what brings about
F
hard-hitting adverts on billboards, TV incredible change.”
channels and in newspapers.
Patel assures me that such
bare-knuckle tactics are employed only
when an individual or organisation
refuses to negotiate. For example, when
the Hilton hotel group apparently failed
to act on a petition requesting that it
introduce a scheme to help staff identify
guests trapped in the sex trade, it was
given four days to come good, otherwise
adverts highlighting its inaction would or all his potential foes
be run in the chief executive’s Patel has no security. He doesn’t feel
hometown newspaper. Hilton signed that his job puts him at risk, although a
up. Some might see this as blackmail group opposing female genital
but for others it’s an efficient way of mutilation did threatened violence
forcing corporations to put people unless he got behind their campaign.
before profit and is the quintessence of But he’s concerned that there may be
the group’s “the world in action” motto. risks ahead. If Avaaz is to make a real
“Hotels are ground zero for the rape impact against the international rape
trade,” says Patel. “Now 80,000 eyes trade, then the main benefactors,
and ears [Hilton employees] will be organised crime cartels, will take a hit.
trained to spot it. I’m not going to lose Although Patel steers the ship, the big
any sleep over how that was achieved.” decisions are made by the community.
Not all parties come on side so An annual poll of 10,000 members
guides what issues are focused on.
Before a campaign goes live it is tested
to gauge uptake, and campaigns are
tweaked or dropped according to
majority rule. This January all aspects
of the organisation — staff salaries,
office rental, campaign costs — became
100 per cent member funded. These
costs were previously covered by a
start-up fund raised from various
foundations on the understanding that
they had no influence over the group.
“That was vital to remaining true to the
global citizenship model,” says Patel,
who rarely veers from speeches of ultra
sincere, commonsense-rooted
optimism. “People lead, not members of
Protesters in Egypt have benefited a board, and that’s why it works. People
from the support of the Avaaz aren’t bogged down with bureaucracy.
network created by Ricken Patel, top They see the big picture and want
The rise of
slacktivism
It could be because of the
450,000 people who
signed Avaaz’s petition
last year, that Uganda
did not pass its
Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Perhaps the country’s
leaders really did fear
incurring the wrath of
thousands of people, far
away, who felt so strongly
about the issue that they
typed their e-mail
address into a website
and clicked “send”.
But there could be
another explanation. It is
worth considering that
President Obama —
along with most of the
world’s richest countries
and biggest aid donors —
had condemned the
legislation as odious.
Then there is the equally
pertinent fact that the
Ugandan bill was a
private member’s bill
that may never have
passed in any case.
The web, as Avaaz has
shown, can be an
extraordinary way of
gaining mass support. To
become a target for such
a campaigning group
would, for a company
such as Hilton, be a PR
disaster. And if a small
fraction of virtual
campaigners end up
protesting in the real
world, then they can
achieve great things.
But, increasingly,
commentators have
been pointing out, the
ease of achieving these
huge numbers largely
negates their value.
It might, after all, feel
good to be one of the
650,000 people who have
signed an Avaaz petition
to “Stand with the people
of Egypt”, but if the
people of Egypt win
democracy it will be
thanks to the thousands
who physically stood —
in the face of stones,
the Army and
counter-protests — in
Tahrir Square.
Evgeny Morozov, in
The Net Delusion, refers
to internet campaigns
not as activism, but
“slacktivism” — the kind
of protest that requires
almost no effort.
On Facebook, 1.9
million people have
become supporters of
saving African children,
a commitment that
involves clicking
“support”. How many
have gone on to give
money to its charities, a
commitment that
actually involves . . .
commitment? Well,
$13,416 has been raised:
considerably less than a
single cent per person.
Tom Whipple
Times modern
what’s best for all of us. That’s what
makes it an amazing powerful
community. My role in it is an honour
and a tremendous responsibility.”
Patel has probably been preparing for
this role all his life. Born in Edmonton,
Canada, to a Russian-English mother
and a South African-born Indian father
it’s no surprise his affinity is with a
global rather than national idea of
citizenship. Aged 3, he knew about the
Cold War and the structure of the
human cell and by 6 was striking up
conversations about colonialism. He
went to school on a Native Indian
Reservation where he endured bullying
but, having read about the
communities’ plight, claims to have felt
empathy with his persecutors. “I’ve
always felt solidarity with people
suffering injustice,” he says. “My theory
is that my Mum gave me so much love
I’ve always had extra to give.”
He went to Oxford to study PPE
(Politics, Philosophy, Economics) and
it’s there that his passion for activism
was born. He played a central role in
the 1998 tuition fee protests, drafting an
alternative graduate tax plan. At
Harvard, where he took his Masters in
Public Policy, he joined the living wage
campaign for the institute’s workers, a
formative experience that saw the first
on-campus occupations since 1969 and
gained support from national press,
local congressmen and even the wife of
the president of the University.
For four years he worked in war torn
nations such as Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Sudan and Afghanistan. He lived
locally with families rather than in
expat compounds and says that
through jobs for the International
Crisis Group he learnt how to bring
rebel forces to the negotiation table, to
monitor elections (covertly), to restore
public faith in once corrupt political
systems and to spot when foreign forces
were being manipulated.
After returning to the US he
volunteered for MoveOn, which was
voicing opposition to the Bush
administration’s attempt to marry
support of war to the Patriot Act.
Through this experience he grasped the
power of organising public opinion
online. His travels had already
convinced him nations were more
united than divided on the issues that
really mattered, and so his idea for a
global advocacy citizenship was born.
Despite campaigning against and
witnessing the shortfalls of the
institutions of formal politics, Patel has
never lost faith in them. If the UN
council were an elected body he’d be
“excited” to run for a seat and he regards
Black Block and other disaffected youth
libertarian movements that use violence
to express disenchantment with the
status quo as tragic.
“Refusing to engage in politics
declares victory to all the unscrupulous
forces trying to use it for their own
ends,” he says. His mission appears to
be to reform the present system into an
injustice-free, alpha version of itself.
But if the path to this utopian land is to
be laid by governments, why choose
advocacy over politics? “There’s
massive consensus on human rights,
poverty, corruption, the environment
and finding diplomatic ends for war.
What’s lacking is political will to
implement these things. The only way
to achieve that will is if a global
community pushes for it.”
So if that community is Avaaz, does
that make you the prime minister of the
new superpower of public opinion? He
looks aghast. “No, more like its steward.”
avaaz.org