On the last day of this month, bayanko.org.ph, our website for crowdsourcing a new constitution for a new county, will hold an acquaintance party at the Club Filipino. The website has gained many hits and visits. We want to meet some of those who had become our FB friends in the web as persons in real life. Bayanko.org.ph has had a phenomenal response since it was first put up a little over a month ago. The website has now been visited by more than a 100,000 Filipinos from here and abroad.
* * *
Although we were inspired by Iceland’s crowdsourcing for a new constitution, we knew from the start that doing the same thing in the Philippines would be different.
Iceland is a small country with a small population of politicized citizens so they responded to the call to crowdsource a new constitution enthusiastically during the international banking crisis that hit Iceland. Icelanders were dismayed when it seemed that their government was unable to cobble policies that could help solve the economic crisis that the banks’ failure brought about.
Civic spirited citizens gathered together a panel of a few dozen individuals who would draft up a new constitution that came from suggestions and proposals from people at large using the Internet.
Although like any other country, Iceland had its elite and ordinary citizens, its establishment did not put up obstacles to the crowdsourcing enterprise. It was able to proceed from the gathering of opinions and proposals from the ‘CROWD” to the drafting of the constitution and finally to a referendum.
The referendum gained two thirds of the vote that mirrored the division of its society with the elite voting against it. It was remarkable that it was able to reach referendum stage. But it was tougher to get the crowdsourced constitution approved in their elitist Senate. With two thirds of the referendum coming from ordinary citizens they had their foot on the door and could not be ignored. The people’s crowdsourced proposals did find their way into new and better government policies. The President said Iceland recovered faster than US and Europe because “his government bailed out the people and imprisoned the banksters.”
* * *
Bayanko.org.ph, the Philippine version of crowdsourcing opinions and proposals from the public at large will inevitably be different. There are millions of Filipinos who use the internet, and believed to be a third of its 100 million population. But most of them use the Internet for games and sales. Few would be engaged in using the technology as social media to spark protests and challenge government. But it is a growing phenomenon. With restrictions from oligarchic media, journalists/advocates are using facebook, twitter as their media.
Bayanko.org.ph attempts to use crowdsourcing as an alternative to the Edsa-type of protest that depended on massing people into the streets. Filipinos no longer want to mass in the streets nor do they articulate advocacy for reform.
Earlier protests of this kind had in the end proved useless in the long run. Edsa 1 as they called the protest that dislodged the Marcoses from power and put up Cory Aquino instead did not bring the reforms the people wanted. On the contrary it paved the way for worse political blunders (and plunders) in governing the country. Worse because it created the flawed 1987 Constitution that remains an albatross on the Filipino nation. It was flawed on behalf of an oligarchy determined to keep the status quo.
Reformists want a more sustained protest that would last longer than a day and shout more than mere slogans.
They want real change and to achieve it by peaceful but no less revolutionary means. They want a new constitution for a new political structure for the country even if only a few are able to articulate it eloquently.
I am convinced that in time bayanko.org.ph will perform the function of mass protest represented by numbers and intelligently led by articulate citizens dedicated to the Filipino people’s aspirations.
* * *
I first discovered “crowdsourcing” through a negative article written by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker entitled “Small Change” and subheaded “Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” This came after I had realized that there were issues that will not be printed by mainstream media. Gladwell might have been right to say that a “revolution will not be tweeted” but he should have added that “tweeting can lead to a social revolution.” If advocates were to stop at tweeting then Gladwell would be right. But if we tweeted as regularly on what is wrong with our government and society, we could start a revolution in time.
I also agreed with Gladwell’s reasons that FB or Tweeter friends are fragile relations. A revolution required deeper relationships in the real world unlike in social media. On the contrary, he said of the original million march from Alabama to Washington, those who marched might not have been connected in the Internet but when the time came they were united in purpose. They suffered the same indignations, knew each other by name and most were close friends in real life. The roots of the revolution were firmly on the ground and flourished quickly to become reality.
So does that mean that we cannot tweet a revolution. I believe that we can and bayanko.org.ph is proving it can be done even in a generally apolitical populace because it becomes a vehicle of contact.
It need not stop at Facebook or Twitter. And if Filipinos are divided into small, differing groups it does not mean that they cannot unite and look for the common cause that can unite them against bad government.
So yes, Mr. Gladwell, the revolution can be tweeted as a means, not as a goal. It can begin by FB and tweeting and put together a movement through hundreds of thousands of hits and visits. And yes, Mr. Gladwell, they will not end by tweeting or friendships in virtual reality.
We will move to the next phase and become friends in the real world. That is what the membership party of bayanko.org.ph in Club Filipino on July 31st will be about. If you want to do more than just post in FB or Tweeter come and make friends in real life with those who think like you — those who want to change our country and ready to suffer and face the dangers of what Gladwell calls a true revolutionary. They do not necessarily carry guns but are armed with sheer numbers. supporting the ideas and goals of a good society.