Freaky days, these, what with the war on NPR, Planned Parenthood, and Wisconsin. Freaky enough that people feel the need to make a gesture, which is what Wigg Party neighborhood activists were doing last night while most of us were finishing up that third glass of wine, tucking in the childrens, or being lame and sleeping. Facebook solidarity, baby – social network activism.
“We do feel the larger progressive agenda is really being attacked at this moment in time.” Morgan Fitzgibbons heads up the Wigg Party, Western Addition’s neighborhood sustainability group that by night throws bean sprouting classes/parties in a four-story Victorian called the Sunshine Castle and by day works with the SF Bike Coalition on improving the Wiggle, among other ventures.
So Fitzgibbons – who heard about people doing a similar move on Sarah Palin’s Facebook profile (it’s kind of gem, check it out) – and eight Wigg partiers changed their profile photos on Facebook and social networked that shit out, commenting in tandem on the walls of AFSCME, The Heroic Wisconsin 14, Stand Up For Ohio, PBS, Planned Parenthood, US EPA, AFL-CIO, and 350.org.
“We chose these groups because they have shown great resilience under direct threat, whether due to proposed budget cuts or because they are central to the fight for organized labor,” says Fitzgibbons. Well, mostly. “350.org doesn’t quite fit into that, but they were instrumental in organizing nationwide demonstrations in support of the labor issue. In addition, they were recently called a communist organization by Glenn Beck, and they’re our friends.” A decent use of a half hour on a Wednesday night that went off, mainly, without a hitch. “It takes a little while for someone to identify as the letter “T” when you’re calling them out,” says Fitzgibbons.
So why does it matter, in the grand scheme of things? How many times have you checked your notifications already today? Whatever your thoughts on online activism, a group of people in their twenties and early thirties just spent an evening using their prodigious Interneting skills to show love for the labor movement and other causes, so yay. Says the man in the Wigg: “Ultimately I think the big motive is to inspire other people to do stuff like this with their friends. We all have to be creating right now. We all need to be bending every corner, poking and prodding to see what might help ignite the fire.”