Scott Cobb outlines below how Texas Friends and Allies Against the Death Penalty Abolition Movement is leveraging the social web to rally support around their cause.
I would like to nominate for The Jenzabar Foundation Social Media Leadership Award: a group of allied organizations in Texas that have been using social media to effectively work together against the Texas death penalty: Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the Austin chapter of Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Kids Against the Death Penalty, Students Against the Death Penalty and the Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center. These groups have a cause on Facebook called Abolish the Death Penalty in Texas. Each organization brings unique skills and experiences to the cause. Decisions on how to use any award money will be made jointly by these organizations.
This alliance is a great example of how small organizations can have a remarkable impact way out of proportion to their funding by using social media tools to work together.
These grassroots groups work against the death penalty in the state that has executed more people than any other state. Texas has executed 436 people since 1982. The second place state has executed 103.
Texas Moratorium Network was an early adopter of social media tools from its start back in 2000. Our first website, created using phpWebSite, allowed us to make blog posts long before the word “blog” became popular. We have sinced starting using Blogger as our main blog while keeping our main website at texasmoratorium.org. In addition to our own blog, we reach a larger audience by posting occasionally about death penalty issues on other community blog sites, such as DailyKos and Burnt Orange Report.TMN uses Google Reader and Blogburst to destribute its news to a wider audience. If we win the social media award, we plan to use part of it to begin a joint Texas death penalty news and action site using the open source program OpenPublish.
TMN and its allies have used Joomla to create websites such as SharonKiller.com, deathpenaltyartshow.org, TexasAbolition.org, SaveJeffWood.com, and others. The TMN PAC website uses WordPress. TMN’s main website still uses phpWebSite, but we want to transition to another content management system soon in order to integrate better social networking tools. We also want to link the social networking tools across all of our allied organizations.
Texas Students Against the Death Penalty offers a website creation and consulting service for families and supporters of people on death row who want to bring their campaigns online. TSADP’s Online Mobilization Program has created sites include freerodneyreed.org and howardguidry.com. TSADP would like to offer every family with someone on Texas death row the opportunity to have an online presence.
TSADP and SADP run the award-winning program “Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, which brings young people to Austin for a week of education and activism so that they can become leaders of the next generation in the anti-death penalty movement. It has been featured on MTV. SADP has 2,200 members in its Facebook group, which it uses to organize spring break.
TSADP and TMN operate one of the most successful non profit channels on YouTube. Stopexecutions on YouTube. The channel already has 180 videos. In 2007, TSADP and TMN created a group on YouTube dedicated to winning a commutation for Kenneth Foster. It was the first video campaign ever created on behalf of someone on death row.
You can find TMN on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Change.org or read its blog. TMN feeds its blog automatically to Twitter using TwitterFeed and through the SocialActions website.
TMN routinely uses an online service to allow its supporters to send messages to the Texas governor, members of the legislature and the board of pardons and paroles. For example, during the campaign for Kenneth Foster, more than 6,000 messages were sent through TMN’s system.
The Austin chapter of Campaign to End the Death Penalty organized the successful campaign to save the life of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who was sentenced to death under the Texas Law of Parties despite not having killed anyone. CEDP organized marches, speak-outs, sit-ins, and emails and phone calls to the governor and Board of Pardons and Paroles to achieve a rare commutation of Foster’s sentence from execution to life in prison – a major victory in the capital punishment capital of the United States. CEDP and the other allies used social media tools to help coordinate the multi-faceted campaign that included attorneys, activists and members of Kenneth Foster’s own family.
Kids Against the Death Penalty is the newest member of the Texas group of allied anti-death penalty organizations. They were recently named the 2009 Youth Abolitionists of the Year.
The Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement is a good example of a veteran organization that is moving online by working with younger members of the alliance. Members of the “Abolition Movement” have been organizing against the death penalty since long before the internet existed. Their members now use Facebook and Myspace to organize online.
The Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center is a 501 (c) (3) that works to facilitate collaboration among the Texas allies against the death penalty.
Here are some other online tools TMN uses that could be adopted by other groups in their online campaigns to increase their impact without spending a lot of money.
TMN has found many new volunteers through VolunteerMatch.com. TMN most recently started using the social collaboration site Amazee.com. Its “Abolish the Death Penalty for free voice mail.
TMN uses ConstantContact for its email newsletter that goes out to thousands of people.
TMN uses Magnify.net to run a video aggregation page
TMN uses Picnik to edit photos for flyers and websites and stores them on Picassa, Flickr or Photobucket. See photos of the recent March in Houston on Picassa here
TMN uses Wufoo to collect information through forms, such as registering people for Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break. Texas Lobby Day Against the Death Penalty and for online petitions, such as the recently published petition to protest the 200th execution under Rick Perry and a petition to remove Sharon Keller from office. A past online Keller petition resulted in charges being brought against Keller after we turned in the names and a complaint to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
TMN uses SproutBuilder to create widgets to promote actions such as the Save Jeff Wood widget.
TMN uses Scribd.com to post documents online.
TMN uses Widgetbox to get more people to read our blog posts and Feedburner to allow people to subscribe to receive our blogposts by email. Subscribe to Texas Moratorium Network blogposts by Email
The Texas allies against the death penalty recently worked together using online social media tools to organize a Lobbby Day Against the Texas Death Penalty and an ongoing campaign to end the death penalty under the Law of Parties. We just convinced a committee in the Texas House of Representatives to approve the Law of Parties bill, which was a major victory. By using our website SharonKiller.com, we helped win an indictment against Texas’s highest criminal judge on charges of misconduct and we got the Texas Legislature to hold an impeachment hearing against her on April 27.
Texas is a challenging environment in which to work against the death penalty, but these groups have found a way to make significant progress against the death penalty by working together both offline and online using social media tools for education, outreach and grassroots organizing. Texas is a large state, so it is vitally important for groups here to use social media tools effectively. In the future, we want to increase our capacity to work for human rights in Texas by finding new ways to expand our use of online social media tools in order to identify new activists and grow our movement to achieve legislative victories on policy and to organize campaigns to stop specific executions.
If you think we have have been doing a good job using online social activism tools, especially considering that we are all-volunteer organizations, please vote for us in The Jenzabar Foundation Social Media Leadership Award by leaving a comment below.
TMN uses Upcoming.org and Eventful.comto promote events, such as upcoming execution protests.
” project on Amazee recently won $1,000 from Amazee for the Texas alliance of anti-death penalty groups to use against the death penalty. We won by having the most members add our Abolish the Death Penalty project to their Facebook profiles, which was the goal of the contest.
TMN uses GrandCentral
Since 2003, TMN has sent text alerts about executions to cell phones using Upoc
Kjerstin Erickson
